Everyone here has a line they cannot cross. Those lines co-exist here all the time. We don't stop to notice how often people here choose to keep communicating despite seeing something going on that seems deeply wrong.

What we CAN do is learn from the things we do. If people are going to unleash topics that provoke political rancor, there are going to be ripples that spread all over the Mudcat. Each time this happens, we can't go back and change what we did, but we CAN and we DO take note and change what we do NEXT. This is how real life works. It goes forward, always, even if we don't feel like it does.

One thing we can choose to look at is whether someone calling himself "[pick any demon, hitler, etc.]" IS that person.... if Hitler, Pol Pot, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. strolled in here, we would react a certain way and it would be justified by what they have actually done. But to react the same way to someone co-opting one of those names is as unnecessary as taking all 6 Jesuses at the your local madhouse seriously and praying to them.

Someone has taken a stance by using tactics that restimulate deep, justified distresses. But that does not rob us of our obligation to respond with our best selves, our minds, and our sense.

If saber-rattling is a skill one has, and one must therefore use it, is it not more effectively used on the REAL evildoers that compare to these historical "originals"? Is it worth the time and energy to try to deal with one so small as these we see here at Mudcat, when there are Big Bad Guys (and Gals) out there actually running things?

~S~