A more left wing or centrist ATS anyone??

a reply to: Flavian

People are very easy to manipulate. Especially when half the population (statistically) are idiots compared to the other half.

Even the most brilliant people can fall prey to a mob mentality, and see the half of the nation that are idiots behaving in a certain way as permission to devolve into that themselves. That is how people you would otherwise find intelligent and delightful can end up nasty and venomous. There are members on ATS who, outside of politics, are among the most amazing minds I have met. Inside politics, I cringe as what is said.

It doesn't help that we seem to equate politics with fighting. On the news you hear things like, "The gloves came off" or "Landed a resounding blow". Its born into the vernacular of politics to equate it to fighting.

We are petty creatures. What should be an exercise in scholarship and logic has become an exercise in chest thumping and bickering. Then again...the half of the population that is on the lower end of the IQ scale is not well known for scholarly debate, and much more well known for fisticuffs and drama.

a reply to: bigfatfurrytexan

This is very true. The language of media has certainly become much more extreme (and therefore more acceptable to the public at large) over the last year - both from Left and Right wing media interests.

What is more worrying is how susceptible we all are to it - it really is a case of "monkey see, monkey do". When i was younger (and much more idealistic) i always held out hope (and belief) that we aren't that easy to manipulate. The older you get, the more you realise this simply isn't true.

originally posted by: nonspecific
As I said earlier in the thread there are certain topics I would love to discuss but am unable to do so as the freedom of speech regarding hate towards whole religions, races and gender types goes beyond what I personally feel is acceptable. I am not saying that the site should be censored as such but when you have people talking about dropping nukes on the entire middle east as a way to solve the current situation or talking about burning Koran's or throwing bacon at Muslims then I have to step aside from what could be an interesting and enlightening debate.

Yes, sadly, there a lot of interesting and enlightening things on here that we must walk away from in order to maintain our sanity (and the TOS agreement we made when signing up).

But that's the answer--ignore them. I get the feeling that all they're doing is being provocative in efforts to get attention anyhow.