The age old argument on DU is over how to react to difficult times.

[Renew Deal]

What do we do when someone dies? Is the person political? Are they on our side? How politically offensive was the person? When if ever is grave-dancing acceptable?
How do we react to a natural disaster? Short term and long term? Should DU be gloom and doom the entire time?

Some other event... Is it acceptable to point out the political connections to the event? Should the political connections be exploited to make a political point?

We argue about this stuff pretty much every time something happens. Each situation must be evaluated on its own, and I lean towards openness.

[el_bryanto]

1. Openness and compassion I would say

"But you know if we can't do it with a smile on our face
You know if we can't love in our hearts
then children we ain't got no right to
do it at all
Because it just means we ain't learned nothing yet"
- Stephen Stills "49 Bye Byes / America's Children"

Bryant

[uppityperson]

Thank you. Openness, compassion, consideration.

Yes mom, sometimes I remember (aimed at my mom,not you)

[Tsiyu]

2. This is a discussion board

Not a memorial page or a religious blog.

People will post all sorts of nonsense here, emptying out the contents of their heads on a whim. And then we will have the "daddies" come on and post how we should all act, and someone will be outraged, and someone else will post more outrageous crap. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This is the DU.

If people want a sacred space to collect their thoughts, they might try a chapel or the piney woods or they might get off the internet entirely.

[Renew Deal]

3. "People will post all sorts of nonsense here, emptying out the contents of their heads on a whim."

:rofl:

[Tsiyu]

5. "Hey, I resemble that remark!"

We've probably all been there at one time or another.

I'm certainly all for sensitivity and I have been crying as I've seen pictures from Japan, but I'm not going to go off the deep end because some people find some small humor in dark times.

We're all crazy, or we wouldn't be on DU!

I'm for openness, too. :)

[hfojvt]

12. but what about the lines and the subsets?

There are lines, right, that when people cross them, then other people, in swarms, get to "call them out on it".

Plus, there are subsets. Things which no decent, rational, or compassionate person is supposed to say or think. Things that are (gasp) anti-Jet ( http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/122) Any Sharks in Jet territory must be stomped. It's not just common sense, it's the law. And everybody knows that there are Sharks here just pretending to be Jets.

That's just the way it is. Some people need to spend hours on the pillory where the rest of us can hurl the rotton vegetables and the insults that they so richly deserve right into their insipid faces.

[Tsiyu]

15. ...

"hurl the rotton vegetables and the insults that they so richly deserve right into their insipid faces."


:rofl:


Yeah, like that....I see you've been in GD awhile.....:fistbump:



(I don't always agree with you but I will give you props for that descriptive phrasing...)

[Kennah]

10. Well that explains a lot of brief posts

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. +1

Humans are messy in thought and deed.

[Tsiyu]

11. I believe you and I have had a messy moment

but I got over it. ;)

and I read some absolutely insensitive crap from some DUers last week about the unemployed - that we're all lazy and don't want to bend over for authority and we don't want to have to work any set schedule.

I left a job where the "authority" was screaming at me and throwing things. It was a tough call, but damn I couldn't take being treated like that. And it pissed me off that some DUers are so quick to cast the employee as worthless and all employers as "moral" and hardworking. To those Duers: Fuck YOu


(But I just got offered a job for twice as much money at a place where I don't have to get screamed at every day. So fuck you holier-than-thou asswipes who think work is some place you go to be underpaid and abused just so you can "have a job.")

We're all victims of "insensitivity" here. Nobody should feel special in the least....

[DCKit]

7. The Poutrageousness of it all.

"No, I can't come to bed right now, somebody's wrong on the Internet."

[Arugula Latte]

6. I will admit I've been looking forward to the "Dick Cheney Bites It" threads for years.

I can't decide if ol' Dick will be considered so loathsome that nobody will be offended by the instant grave pissing, or if there will still be the "tsk, tsk, it's unseemly" comments about even him.

[Renew Deal]

8. What do you think?

It will be the same predictable response, though I'm sure there will be less sympathy than normal. Were you here when Reagan went? The response was pretty split.

[frazzled]

9. Minimally, with some degree of facts and knowledge

Not with the kind of chicken-little, unscientific and ideologically generated "gut reactions" a la GWB that we are seeing not just here on DU but everywhere, especially with respect to the earthquake/nuclear disaster in Japan.

I could mention some other topics as well.

I don't comment much because I prefer to read and inform myself from a variety of sources that are as reliable as I can determine. If I were to post these, the response would be the usual attacks and conspiratorial denials. So most of the time I don't feel it's worth it.

The topic of the nuclear facilities in Japan is really critical to me, because I have close family (my nephew and his wife and daughter, plus their family) who live in Japan. My nephew is keeping close tabs on the scientific literature and reports, and he is somewhat less concerned, frankly, that the doomsdayers here. Which is not to say he is not terribly concerned: it's just based on the science, not on the mayhem.

[Rowdyboy]

13. The day Bob Hope died I was nauseated at the reaction of some here.....

I didn't particularly care for Hope's humor and his Republican leanings made me like him even less. But the level of sheer vitriol I saw here was astounding. Like it or not the man dedicated much of his time to voluntarily entertaining American troops. That's when I learned to just walk away from this site until the vultures had their fill.

I don't wish to limit anyone's freedom of speech nor do I wish to get banned after nearly 10 years here. Walking away works very well for me when the hate gets out of hand.

[LanternWaste]

14. I would imagine that in illustrating either...

I would imagine that illustrating either respect, or failing that, quiet deference would be the most appropriate and genteel form of passive comfort.

Beyond that, it becomes little more than petulant rationalizing and self-validating justifications.

[undeterred]

16. The "shocking meat video" gets on my nerves.

Looking at blood and guts does not help.