...that a lot of white people care more about property than about the lives of black people.
To be fair, I think the word "white" could be removed and the word "black" replaced by "other" without massively altering the truth of that statement.
The whole system in the US (I won't speak for other places) is structured to devalue Black lives. So no, it's not the same.
Can you define "the system" for me please.
The government, federal, state, county and city, and white society in general,* but in specifically those who actively pursued inequity and inequality.
*Obviously not every white person, but the active and passive racism that general white society participated in or ignored.
Add in estate agents more likely to show better properties to white people, employers more likely to give better jobs to white people, mortgage and loan companies more likely to give better deals to white people (in part a result of non-white people having shittier jobs and housing), cops more likely to stop and arrest black people, the media more likely to interview white people ...
I had thought that implicit in my post, but I guess it wasn't. But, yes, all those people are part of systemic inequality.
I'd say it was implicit, but if MrMandid sincerely wants to learn then Alan's post will be helpful as those are more examples of racism that many white people have not thought of.
Literally, the thing that changes legislation is impolitely (not necessarily violently, though the authorities nearly always bring that to the table first) demanding.
Is this true though?
I think it's a misreading of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. King doesn't say one can't get justice without being impolite; he says one can't get justice without doing things your opponents will call impolite. There is a difference. King is explaining at length that despite what the authorities say the campaign is actually being as polite as they can be.
It seems to me that no lasting change has ever happened without the side demanding change grabbing the moral high ground and holding on. That said, the moral high ground is relative. It's easier to get if your opponent goes low.
Literally, the thing that changes legislation is impolitely (not necessarily violently, though the authorities nearly always bring that to the table first) demanding.
Is this true though?
I think it's a misreading of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. King doesn't say one can't get justice without being impolite; he says one can't get justice without doing things your opponents will call impolite. There is a difference. King is explaining at length that despite what the authorities say the campaign is actually being as polite as they can be.
It seems to me that no lasting change has ever happened without the side demanding change grabbing the moral high ground and holding on. That said, the moral high ground is relative. It's easier to get if your opponent goes low.
Irish independence? Women's suffrage? The suffragists tried the polite approach and got nowhere. The suffragettes tried being ruder and had rather more impact.
In Ireland, the English surrendered the high ground by their tactics, e.g. executing the 1916 fighters. You could also say that an occupier has lost the high ground from the beginning.
I don't know. You'd have to ask those who ordered the troopers into the field at Peterloo, the police into Cable Street, the paramilitaries on the streets currently in the USA.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is reasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
It seems to me that no lasting change has ever happened without the side demanding change grabbing the moral high ground and holding on. That said, the moral high ground is relative. It's easier to get if your opponent goes low.
Irish independence? Women's suffrage? The suffragists tried the polite approach and got nowhere. The suffragettes tried being ruder and had rather more impact.
As I understand it that's untrue. If you look at the timing it was the suffragettes that had no impact; it was the suffragists who kept on steadily working after the war who eventually won the vote.
Irish independence was a case where the UK government ceded the moral high ground. It was also immediately followed by the Irish Civil War; I'm not convinced that's a one hundred per cent success.
If an action is going to seriously challenge the status quo then there will be people who consider it going too far. If no one thinks your methods are excessive then nothing will change, and if nothing's changing then it's necessary to up the stakes if you believe your cause is just.
That's just whataboutery. And besides, it's perfectly possible to think those things are wrong and that violent protests/riots are wrong.
It's possible to think fighting to defeat Hitler's Germany was the right thing to do and that the firebombing of Dresden was wrong. Even if the latter was done in service of the former.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, where to support a cause you have to support every single action taken in the name of that cause. The ends don't always justify the means.
Literally, the thing that changes legislation is impolitely (not necessarily violently, though the authorities nearly always bring that to the table first) demanding.
Is this true though?
I think it's a misreading of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. King doesn't say one can't get justice without being impolite; he says one can't get justice without doing things your opponents will call impolite. There is a difference. King is explaining at length that despite what the authorities say the campaign is actually being as polite as they can be.
It seems to me that no lasting change has ever happened without the side demanding change grabbing the moral high ground and holding on. That said, the moral high ground is relative. It's easier to get if your opponent goes low.
Burning a Target does not begin to "go low" when compared to more than 400 years of oppression.
ISTM the legitimate use of violence in political activity across the board relates to the same kind of considerations applying to embarking on (a just) war.
I thought that was pretty universal. It's rare to find an army which pronounces rape and torture and shooting prisoners as valid means, although probably some have practised that. Going back to Ireland, the Black and Tans were a propaganda disaster for the English.
That's just whataboutery. And besides, it's perfectly possible to think those things are wrong and that violent protests/riots are wrong.
It is. But one more fucking time, not supporting a cause because of the behaviour of a few of its members is not supporting the cause in the first place.
If a reasonable person said "I support BLM, but I do not condone the rioting" There whould be something to work with. But that is not what happened to start this sub-thread.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, where to support a cause you have to support every single action taken in the name of that cause.
You realise that the statement you are defending is all or nothing? And you trashing a black and white view is quite ironic given your posting history.
I don't know. You'd have to ask those who ordered the troopers into the field at Peterloo, the police into Cable Street, the paramilitaries on the streets currently in the USA.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
That's just whataboutery. And besides, it's perfectly possible to think those things are wrong and that violent protests/riots are wrong.
It's possible to think fighting to defeat Hitler's Germany was the right thing to do and that the firebombing of Dresden was wrong. Even if the latter was done in service of the former.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, where to support a cause you have to support every single action taken in the name of that cause. The ends don't always justify the means.
I also agree, but the axiom is, in these circumstances, being used to delegitimise the cause. Do you think that the police response to peaceful protests is far in excess of what is justified, and amounts to an attack on constitutionally-protected free speech? Further to that, do you think that the state response to the multiple, well-documented murders of black men and women at the hands of the same police has been woefully inadequate? Can you possibly see why the "the ends don't justify the means" is problematic here?
Alan Cresswell: ......., and if nothing's changing then it's necessary to up the stakes if you believe your cause is just.
Surely any raising of the stakes would depend on the merits of the injustice being addressed, not to mention a considerations of collateral consequences. Bearing those ills we have might the best course of action. What did the murder of Heydrich achieve?
ISTM the legitimate use of violence in political activity across the board relates to the same kind of considerations applying to embarking on (a just) war.
No. Not even close. The power structure is not changing unless threatened. The protests instigated by the murder of George Floyd has resulted in arrests, not only of his murderers, but in several other cases where nothing was being done. It has begun a real conversation and actual actions to address the underlying issue.
Occupy Wall Street, a peaceful protest, has done fuck all by comparison.
BTW, you are comparing burning a Target store to killing thousands of people. Yeah, that is equivalent.
I don't know. You'd have to ask those who ordered the troopers into the field at Peterloo, the police into Cable Street, the paramilitaries on the streets currently in the USA.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
Reposted to clear up the glaring typo...
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I'm not sure it completely did clear things up.
I don't know. You'd have to ask those who ordered the troopers into the field at Peterloo, the police into Cable Street, the paramilitaries on the streets currently in the USA.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
Reposted to clear up the glaring typo...
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I'm not sure it completely did clear things up.
I'm tired! I've been having bouts of insomnia since covid! Let me read that again and see if I can make some kind of sense of it!
It always seems that no measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
I don't know. You'd have to ask those who ordered the troopers into the field at Peterloo, the police into Cable Street, the paramilitaries on the streets currently in the USA.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
Reposted to clear up the glaring typo...
Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but I'm not sure it completely did clear things up.
I'm tired! I've been having bouts of insomnia since covid! Let me read that again and see if I can make some kind of sense of it!
It always seems that no measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
OK, now that is clear and aligns with what you reasonably would say.
Kwesi: ISTM the legitimate use of violence in political activity across the board relates to the same kind of considerations applying to embarking on (a just) war.
lilbuddha: No. Not even close. The power structure is not changing unless threatened.
I fail to see how your comment refutes my observation. Indeed, it would morally legitimise the actions and consequences undertaken and resulting thus far. Indeed, it would also justify more intensified activity than has happened hitherto.
It always seems that no measure, no matter how violent, is unreasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
I can see that such a double standard could be infuriating if you believed that both sides of an argument - in this case those who want change and those who don't - should be treated with some sort of even-handedness.
But it seems that your whole argument here is against even-handedness. You seem to be arguing the position that the "woke left" are under no obligation to be as polite to anybody else as you'd like others to be to you.
If a fascist argued that he has to be violent in order to succeed, would you think that justifies his violence ? Of course not. But you don't think the same standards apply to you and your cause. Your end justifies the means.
You argue that "The good guys don't have to play nice" and then whinge about other people's double standards...
On a point of order, nobody recently has committed suicide by mod. A couple of people have been suspended, one indefinitely.
More generally, the Ship has a far more political tone than it used to have. The rise of right-wing populism has led to more political subject matter, and one of its tricks is to foster polarisation of debate which can, indirectly, lead to non-political Ship rules being broken.
I'm disappointed when folks on the right fall in with this polarisation - and even more so when folks on the left join them in populism's favourite theatre, the register of provocation and extreme statements.
On a point of order, nobody recently has committed suicide by mod. A couple of people have been suspended, one indefinitely.
More generally, the Ship has a far more political tone than it used to have. The rise of right-wing populism has led to more political subject matter, and one of its tricks is to foster polarisation of debate which can, indirectly, lead to non-political Ship rules being broken.
I'm disappointed when folks on the right fall in with this polarisation - and even more so when folks on the left join them in populism's favourite theatre, the register of provocation and extreme statements.
I don't think that is generally a fair statement. Often the leftists are responding to low level baiting by the rightward posters.
(ETA: "the leftists responding to low level baiting" often looks to me like "shooting fish in a barrel". I thought, generally, that leftists were smarter than that).
The problem is, that if a statement goes unchallenged, it looks like it's been accepted. We both know that we have a lot of lurkers, many of them unregistered who just come to read.
It behooves us all to raise our game. While not quite the Socratic debate we thought we'd all be having, we (whether socialist and free-marketeer, libertarian and authoritarian, liberal and conservative) ought to bring at least something of our A-game to the boards.
(ETA: "the leftists responding to low level baiting" often looks to me like "shooting fish in a barrel". I thought, generally, that leftists were smarter than that).
Got an example? I'm interested in knowing what kind of comment from the right you think a lefty like me should just let go by without responding.
It helps not to rise to the bait. People with the attention span of gnats who're really here to bait rather than debate quickly lose interest when they don't get the rise out of people that they're looking for. But at the same time it is hard to let obnoxious flamebaiters have the last word, (so that you can leave it and not respond or derail). It doesn't really work on a big scale because it's so psychologically hard for people not to go for the bait, there's almost always someone who will, which is what makes these tactics so attractive in the first place.
I don't think it's just the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I do think there has been a recent uptick in this kind of shallow flamebaiting behaviour. It doesn't sit well with either the Ship rules or the Purgatory discussion culture.
We're also in a horrible sort of world where it often happens that displaying any compassion, professional standards or shreds of decency is caricatured in some circles as left-wing whether the people refusing to go along with an immoral culture of 'what the leader says today is right and if he says it's wrong tomorrow, then we say the same' are former Thatcher cabinet ministers, Reagan republicans or Conservative evangelicals. It's like right and left cease to have any meaning in this bizarre world of populism where what matters is 'vice signalling' that there's nothing so cruel or nasty that you would have any standards that would stop you saying it.
It behooves us all to raise our game. While not quite the Socratic debate we thought we'd all be having, we (whether socialist and free-marketeer, libertarian and authoritarian, liberal and conservative) ought to bring at least something of our A-game to the boards.
Yes. And it ought to be possible to give an indication of why one thinks someone's statement isn't true or isn't good without either sneering or smearing ("that's the sort of thing that Nazis say"). But sometimes that can be hard to do concisely.
And it ought to be possible to give an indication of why one thinks someone's statement isn't true or isn't good without either sneering or smearing ("that's the sort of thing that Nazis say"). But sometimes that can be hard to do concisely.
Or indeed constantly sneering that the other person believes that the end justifies the means?
And it ought to be possible to give an indication of why one thinks someone's statement isn't true or isn't good without either sneering or smearing ("that's the sort of thing that Nazis say"). But sometimes that can be hard to do concisely.
Or indeed constantly sneering that the other person believes that the end justifies the means?
Identifying the other person's argument as being that the end justifies the means is giving an indication of why one thinks it isn't good.
And it ought to be possible to give an indication of why one thinks someone's statement isn't true or isn't good without either sneering or smearing ("that's the sort of thing that Nazis say"). But sometimes that can be hard to do concisely.
Or indeed constantly sneering that the other person believes that the end justifies the means?
Identifying the other person's argument as being that the end justifies the means is giving an indication of why one thinks it isn't good.
That's not sneering.
Behaving like a Nazi isn't good either, so by your definition pointing that out isn't sneering either.
Behaving like a Nazi isn't good either, so by your definition pointing that out isn't sneering either.
Nazism is a non-simple phenomenon, with much that is bad, some that is morally neutral, and some virtues (generally of the martial kind).
To use a cliched example, saying "Hitler was kind to animals" is a smear. It may be a true statement, but it denigrates by association a concern for animal welfare, which is morally good (if not taken to excess).
Whereas saying that something is "ubermensch behaviour" is identifying what's wrong with it.
(Sorry - I use my phone to access the Ship, and don't know how to do accents).
If hosting is going to operate with a 24 to 48 hr delay, in heated debates - then I think the ship needs to change how it thinks about “junior hosting”.
There needs to be away of responding to boundary crossing in real-time, without necessarily getting into a flame war in hell. Could we call people to Styx as well as Hell - Today I Call to Styx thread, TICS ?
Otherwise threads veer wildly off course in terms of commandments 3,4 & 5.
I am not taking about tone policing, but rather the situation where there is a clear commandment violation, and then dozens of posts before a hostly response. If you want the community to reflect, reinforce norms of debate, etc - then the community need some way to do that fast, that is accepted as legitimate.
In my view the worst offenders are those who by habit and cunning know how to play just inside the boundaries of the rules. The best way of addressing this abuse of privilege is not to fall in with that style. Rather than calling out commandment infringements, posters need to raise their game in terms of how they respond.
In general, additional steps tend to be in the warning phase - which can be a hostly "be careful where you're going" through hostly "you've broken a specific commandment" and then Admin warning if it appears the Hosts aren't being listened to. Most people will find they go through a lot of warnings before shore leave, and then more after a return before further shore leave or a ban. We like warnings because they leave room for sensible discussion in the Styx, and hopefully realisation of why a particular posting style is causing problems, not that Styx discussions always run that way. Someone who is suspended has no opportunity until they return to ask questions and learn. Shore leave, and especially bans, are our last resort when facing someone who is repeatedly disruptive.
Shore leave tends to be two weeks ish. It's just simpler that way.
@Doublethink Well, for my money, applying the rarely mentioned C2 is a good start:
Engage brain before posting message – Read the words you’ve written before you post them. Once they’re out there, you can’t take them back.
In a climate that tends towards polarisation, the leakage into the Ship of the virtiol of social media posts, and the pandemic driving us all up the wall, taking extra care to phrase things in what transactional psychology refers to as the "adult" mode is well worth it in my view.
I think anybody interested in preventing the Ship from becoming even more of an echo chamber than it arguably already is should seriously consider that approach, and I repeat my contention that this is as much about how the community in general responds - one poster and one post at a time - as anything the H&As can do. YMMV.
@Doublethink Well, for my money, applying the rarely mentioned C2 is a good start:
Engage brain before posting message – Read the words you’ve written before you post them. Once they’re out there, you can’t take them back.
In a climate that tends towards polarisation, the leakage into the Ship of the virtiol of social media posts, and the pandemic driving us all up the wall, taking extra care to phrase things in what transactional psychology refers to as the "adult" mode is well worth it in my view.
I think anybody interested in preventing the Ship from becoming even more of an echo chamber than it arguably already is should seriously consider that approach, and I repeat my contention that this is as much about how the community in general responds - one poster and one post at a time - as anything the H&As can do. YMMV.
Again, an imbalanced responsibility. The right-wing posters who draw the most negative reaction are those who do not appear to be engaging honestly. They stay within the bounds, but still appear to be trolling.
It is difficult. There are some posters who appear to play very close to the boundaries. Some appear to do it on purpose. Do we need to think of the spirit as well as the letter of the rules?
I think there are multiple kinds of imbalance in progress.
I agree that recent crops of apparently right-wing posters have posted problematically, but I don't think it's always been dishonest. I also think that the charge of longtime posters getting more lenient treatment may be a fair assessment - although that is perhaps justified, because they have proved their value over time, so might legitimately be excused more.
In addition, the age of the community makes it harder for new posters to break in. Over time, any community faces the danger of becoming inward-looking, and offsetting that does indeed require the usual denizens to go the extra mile - which includes not immediately suspecting the worst.
In one recent exchange by PM about all this I wanted to point somebody to the History of the Ship thread, but of course it's only on the old site and page 1 appears to be missing.
I put a very high value on the Ship as a place to confront conflicting ideas. The frequent, apparent inability to do that without it immediately descending into a slanging match concerns me.
It is difficult. There are some posters who appear to play very close to the boundaries. Some appear to do it on purpose. Do we need to think of the spirit as well as the letter of the rules?
I’m not proposing rule changes, just noting the imbalance of the approach being suggested.
Comments
I think it's a misreading of King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. King doesn't say one can't get justice without being impolite; he says one can't get justice without doing things your opponents will call impolite. There is a difference. King is explaining at length that despite what the authorities say the campaign is actually being as polite as they can be.
It seems to me that no lasting change has ever happened without the side demanding change grabbing the moral high ground and holding on. That said, the moral high ground is relative. It's easier to get if your opponent goes low.
Irish independence? Women's suffrage? The suffragists tried the polite approach and got nowhere. The suffragettes tried being ruder and had rather more impact.
It always seems that any measure, no matter how violent, is reasonable if it defends the status quo. No measure, no matter how peaceable, is reasonable if it seriously challenges it.
Irish independence was a case where the UK government ceded the moral high ground. It was also immediately followed by the Irish Civil War; I'm not convinced that's a one hundred per cent success.
It's possible to think fighting to defeat Hitler's Germany was the right thing to do and that the firebombing of Dresden was wrong. Even if the latter was done in service of the former.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, where to support a cause you have to support every single action taken in the name of that cause. The ends don't always justify the means.
If a reasonable person said "I support BLM, but I do not condone the rioting" There whould be something to work with. But that is not what happened to start this sub-thread.
You realise that the statement you are defending is all or nothing? And you trashing a black and white view is quite ironic given your posting history. No one has actually said this.
Reposted to clear up the glaring typo...
I also agree, but the axiom is, in these circumstances, being used to delegitimise the cause. Do you think that the police response to peaceful protests is far in excess of what is justified, and amounts to an attack on constitutionally-protected free speech? Further to that, do you think that the state response to the multiple, well-documented murders of black men and women at the hands of the same police has been woefully inadequate? Can you possibly see why the "the ends don't justify the means" is problematic here?
Surely any raising of the stakes would depend on the merits of the injustice being addressed, not to mention a considerations of collateral consequences. Bearing those ills we have might the best course of action. What did the murder of Heydrich achieve?
Occupy Wall Street, a peaceful protest, has done fuck all by comparison.
BTW, you are comparing burning a Target store to killing thousands of people. Yeah, that is equivalent.
I'm tired! I've been having bouts of insomnia since covid! Let me read that again and see if I can make some kind of sense of it!
I fail to see how your comment refutes my observation. Indeed, it would morally legitimise the actions and consequences undertaken and resulting thus far. Indeed, it would also justify more intensified activity than has happened hitherto.
I can see that such a double standard could be infuriating if you believed that both sides of an argument - in this case those who want change and those who don't - should be treated with some sort of even-handedness.
But it seems that your whole argument here is against even-handedness. You seem to be arguing the position that the "woke left" are under no obligation to be as polite to anybody else as you'd like others to be to you.
If a fascist argued that he has to be violent in order to succeed, would you think that justifies his violence ? Of course not. But you don't think the same standards apply to you and your cause. Your end justifies the means.
You argue that "The good guys don't have to play nice" and then whinge about other people's double standards...
More generally, the Ship has a far more political tone than it used to have. The rise of right-wing populism has led to more political subject matter, and one of its tricks is to foster polarisation of debate which can, indirectly, lead to non-political Ship rules being broken.
I'm disappointed when folks on the right fall in with this polarisation - and even more so when folks on the left join them in populism's favourite theatre, the register of provocation and extreme statements.
(ETA: "the leftists responding to low level baiting" often looks to me like "shooting fish in a barrel". I thought, generally, that leftists were smarter than that).
It behooves us all to raise our game. While not quite the Socratic debate we thought we'd all be having, we (whether socialist and free-marketeer, libertarian and authoritarian, liberal and conservative) ought to bring at least something of our A-game to the boards.
Got an example? I'm interested in knowing what kind of comment from the right you think a lefty like me should just let go by without responding.
Suffice it to say that there's a difference between leaving a comment without a response and responding in kind.
I don't think it's just the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I do think there has been a recent uptick in this kind of shallow flamebaiting behaviour. It doesn't sit well with either the Ship rules or the Purgatory discussion culture.
We're also in a horrible sort of world where it often happens that displaying any compassion, professional standards or shreds of decency is caricatured in some circles as left-wing whether the people refusing to go along with an immoral culture of 'what the leader says today is right and if he says it's wrong tomorrow, then we say the same' are former Thatcher cabinet ministers, Reagan republicans or Conservative evangelicals. It's like right and left cease to have any meaning in this bizarre world of populism where what matters is 'vice signalling' that there's nothing so cruel or nasty that you would have any standards that would stop you saying it.
Yes. And it ought to be possible to give an indication of why one thinks someone's statement isn't true or isn't good without either sneering or smearing ("that's the sort of thing that Nazis say"). But sometimes that can be hard to do concisely.
Identifying the other person's argument as being that the end justifies the means is giving an indication of why one thinks it isn't good.
That's not sneering.
Behaving like a Nazi isn't good either, so by your definition pointing that out isn't sneering either.
Nazism is a non-simple phenomenon, with much that is bad, some that is morally neutral, and some virtues (generally of the martial kind).
To use a cliched example, saying "Hitler was kind to animals" is a smear. It may be a true statement, but it denigrates by association a concern for animal welfare, which is morally good (if not taken to excess).
Whereas saying that something is "ubermensch behaviour" is identifying what's wrong with it.
(Sorry - I use my phone to access the Ship, and don't know how to do accents).
There needs to be away of responding to boundary crossing in real-time, without necessarily getting into a flame war in hell. Could we call people to Styx as well as Hell - Today I Call to Styx thread, TICS ?
Otherwise threads veer wildly off course in terms of commandments 3,4 & 5.
I am not taking about tone policing, but rather the situation where there is a clear commandment violation, and then dozens of posts before a hostly response. If you want the community to reflect, reinforce norms of debate, etc - then the community need some way to do that fast, that is accepted as legitimate.
Yes, but is there progressive discipline in the lengths of shore leave or is it simply a three step process?
Shore leave tends to be two weeks ish. It's just simpler that way.
How ?
In a climate that tends towards polarisation, the leakage into the Ship of the virtiol of social media posts, and the pandemic driving us all up the wall, taking extra care to phrase things in what transactional psychology refers to as the "adult" mode is well worth it in my view.
I think anybody interested in preventing the Ship from becoming even more of an echo chamber than it arguably already is should seriously consider that approach, and I repeat my contention that this is as much about how the community in general responds - one poster and one post at a time - as anything the H&As can do. YMMV.
I agree that recent crops of apparently right-wing posters have posted problematically, but I don't think it's always been dishonest. I also think that the charge of longtime posters getting more lenient treatment may be a fair assessment - although that is perhaps justified, because they have proved their value over time, so might legitimately be excused more.
In addition, the age of the community makes it harder for new posters to break in. Over time, any community faces the danger of becoming inward-looking, and offsetting that does indeed require the usual denizens to go the extra mile - which includes not immediately suspecting the worst.
In one recent exchange by PM about all this I wanted to point somebody to the History of the Ship thread, but of course it's only on the old site and page 1 appears to be missing.
I put a very high value on the Ship as a place to confront conflicting ideas. The frequent, apparent inability to do that without it immediately descending into a slanging match concerns me.