A lot of sarcastic passive aggressive pompous people on here.

Sarcasm is fine if it's either VERY obvious or you use the correct emoji

Passive and Aggressive I usually simply remain assertive and that has been working. Until now. Aggressive has gotten out of hand.

Pompus. I got nothing, but usually just ignore them.

Self righteous folk acting like I am trouncing on them by asking for respectful dialogue.... that bugs me.

Maybe that is pompus? IDK.

I've considered taking a break myself, but decided not to.

I probably won't be on as often. But I'll be back.

of the reactions are these days on here. Passive aggressive stuff!

Patience and giving one another the benefit of the doubt seems to be in decline these days but its such a great skill for creating a welcoming environment and keeping folks feeling positive.

That used to be more prevalent here than it is now unfortunately.

Yep

Patience and giving one another the benefit of the doubt seems to be in decline these days...



I feel like a middle school substitute teacher always finding gum or worse on my seat every time I try to sit down.

is that the toxicity from those ratcheting up anger and hatred is having its own spill-over effect on everyone.

I feel like a school teacher too, wanting to remind people to Be Nice and use the Golden Rule. (Actually I was a school teacher for more than 30 years and some habits become ingrained.)

But seriously, part of fighting back against the toxicity so deliberately being used to attack us and turn us against one another is to remind ourselves that manners matter, including online. It's become a vicious cycle. We encounter poison pens in a lot of places and our instinct becomes to respond likewise, which just adds to that overall toxicity.

Of course free will, no requirements just wishes.

I will probably be on here less often when I feel stronger so I can be part of the solution instead of pushing back myself.

But if it continues to have this ill-mannered treatment of others and not giving the benefit of the doubt (a common problem online, although I know the jury tries to enforce the rules here unlike lots of places), I probably will be less involved in the community aspect here.

Manners are part of the social lubrication that keep things working well. Rudeness or abruptness throughs sand in the gears.

But it's all voluntarily agreeing to uphold social morés, and of course free speech values cause many to say no to that.

I lament that online culture has ditched good manners and living up to the Golden Rule.

ourselves. Don't forget we all in this together and we all need each other. The goal is to unite in the common goal of making America a better place ourselves and the generation that follow.

THIS IS WHY I JOINED DU:

Don't forget we all in this together and we all need each other.

The goal is to unite in the common goal of making America a better place ourselves and the generation that follow.


But when I ask people to go into this kind of space, I get called names and told what an awful person I am for asking questions and having feelings about being disrespected or a selfish person "making it all about me".

….fairly exhausting.

We’ll see you when you return…

It's been weird lately. I know the other side amped everything up and that could be part of every one being more on edge.

DU was always someplace to escape the crazy.

If it's appropriate, I highly recommend a few hours of gardening! It does wonders for your head - AND your muscle tone too. And it takes you away from "the madding crowd," the "noisy gong and the clanging cymbal," and all that.


Come back soon, though. We need ya!

I went back to an active job.

Left management. It was as awful as I thought it would be.

Every management staff meeting was a complete waste of time. A real dick dance. Everybody took their turn trying to impress the general manager and it drove me crazy. It was the closest thing to a circle jerk that I’ve ever witnessed.

But then again, I didn’t get into broadcasting to go to management staff meetings and write memos and quibble about budgets. I got into broadcasting to broadcast! To write, produce, report, and flick on that mic switch and go on the air.

I have had a few of those and am in awe of how they did it.

I did well as a team lead, but that was more lead by example and multi tasking to the max.

I found out my patience for creating process that doesn't get followed wears very thin.

I don’t know what it is...but I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a thread devolve into arguments about minutiae completely unrelated to the original topic. Suddenly an argument about something as the proper placement of a comma will completely hijack a thread!

Just take a deep breath, and give yourself a few days off. Mental break.

Twitter only posts feel exclusive. I think there is some sort of solution coming for that and I created a Twitter account, but finding what is referenced here is still problematic.

Conversations about religion used to be with folks who would listen to reason or have some sort of kindness or empathy. Now people are just throwing Qanan at religion and telling believers to STFU.

Conversations about white advantage go nowhere. Supposedly if the whites will do something, it will help but you ask what and get told to go figure it out, look it up. You make suggestions, and get to talk to a few people about progress, but still get so much flak back for not bowing to whatever the rules are about discussing white privilege other than yes, we are privileged, we suck.

I am a problem solver. I can understand the benefits of discussion in that process, but when every attempt to find a solution circles back to confusing assertions with no reference to further understanding, it seems pointless. So I get told to look "it" up when "it" is a huge subject with very little clarity.

So maybe it is a bunch of trolls trying to cause problems or a lot of DUers are new and just venting.

me from being able to see the threads for twitter posts. I don't like twitter only posts, but "exclusive"? As if you are being excluded? Really?

As for the rest of it, it sounds like you are looking for people to agree with you, or to educate you in things that are not their responsibility to educate you in.

I am white. I don't think it is the job of others to tell me what to do about my white privilege. I am a woman. When men come into conversations about sexism and demand that women educate them, and make the conversation about the relationship of men to sexism, I have no patience for that whatsoever. I imagine it is the same when white people come into conversations about white privilege and demand that black people instruct us in what it means and how to solve it.

Also, "supposedly if the whites will do something, it will help." Seriously? You live in the world. Do you really need black people to tell you what white people, or each of us white people as individuals, could do to help? All you are able to do is say, "Yes, we are privileged, we suck?" Seriously? As a "problem solver," this is all you have been able to come up with? Perhaps you are not being honest with yourself.

As for religion, those conversations have never been anything but contentious and when someone approaches it with the idea that others "need to listen to reason," that will instantly shut down any conversation. Your "reason", no matter where you stand on religion, is another persons delusion.

I imagine you will see this post as simply more of what you are complaining about, because I don't agree with you. I guess that makes me a bunch of trolls.

I live with a geek. Our firewall doesn't allow me to go to the Twitter links, and others have similar issues.

But it works for you, so we are wrong, bad, stupid or whatever. Thanks for your kind support.

I hardly ask anyone to "agree with me" in fact, if you'd read any of my posts before going on your rampage, you might have seen that for yourself. I literally state that "I am not asking you to ..... " but I do try to find common ground with those who think religion is simply crap, by talking in rational measures. In the past, that has been a good middle ground. I don't try to convert, my request is for simple respect and lately that has been in short supply here.

I think it is strange that as a white woman you would NOT want to educate men about sexism. IF a man is actually in a place to ask the question, it's practically a done deal to get the information out there and how many other women could you have saved from their lack of understanding if you could have lowered yourself to take the time? Even if it doesn't sink in the first time, if the message is given again and again some day it might take root.

My first husband tried to kill me once and then another time tried to beat me up and take our kid. He was a piece of work, but in order to co-parent, I managed to learn to work with him without being a victim or resorting to aggression.

Ironically, in my growing up, I had a lot of guy friends and I thought it was really good to get the perspective from the other camp as learning to know a little bit about how they think helped me be more open and able to deal with people in business for example.

You don't know me from Eve or Adam and yet you can sit there and judge me, wow.

I actually have every reason to HATE black people, but I don't.

When I was 6 years old a 16 year old neighbor boy took me downstairs to get the black baby doll his older sister wanted to give to me to help me have a better racial outlook. With his mother and father, my mother and his sister upstairs, he asked me "to play a game with him" which consisted of him putting his 16 year old cock in my 6 year old vagina. Child abuse or rape, whatever you call it, could have made me think every black person was a sham and all that hype the KKK tries to put out there about black men raping white women was true. Of course, I knew nothing about that stuff then.

What I did know is that 1 person is not the whole race. Each of us are responsible for our own behavior. So I continued to look for the good in people even when I was molested by others twice in the years we remained in that location. The fact that I am at all sane is due to loving parents and people who helped me along the way.

As far as what I "can do" and "do" about the effects of white privilege on black people, I have lots of experience and actually presented ideas for doing things to help the situation and some people responded positively. But I don't have the mindset of someone who would exploit white privilege, so I was asking for MORE to do from people who might know what MORE could be done. And I got blasted from some of them the same way you are calling me a liar when you don't know me at all.

Moving helped me get out of a neighborhood of pedophiles, but as they say "out of the frying pan and into the fire" I wound up in gang neighborhoods where I got jumped by groups of 20 at a time, hit with a 2x4 and had to learn to fight back. When I could rip up enough of the 20 that they decided I was cool, they asked me to join their gang. I sidestepped that and said, "No thanks." I had some good role models that walked the middle line and did not join.

When I talk about "reasonable conversations" again, the goal isn't "conversion" it's simply to set a tone of respect in the conversation. It has been successful in my previous experience here and in person with Atheists, Agnostics, Pagans, Druids, Muslims, Wiccans, Buddhists, and multiple branches of the Christian faith that have a variety of approaches to it. I respect and support other's freedom FROM religion and only ask that they don't lump us all into one pot because that is a blind discrimination.

I follow the example of Christ because it is a very solid moral set of guidelines. If he is really who some say he is, isn't the point as much as what he's advised is a very noble and pragmatic way to live in this world that is full of crazy half the time and tipping over with it at others. So all I ask is that people see the good in that and don't throw Qanan at me just for being a Christian.

You don't have to agree with me. We are DEMs. It's like herding cats and cats are my favorite animal, so I am used to that. I simply try to elevate the conversation to a level of respect for each other because in a Democracy we should be able to have these conversations without having to devolve to virtual brawls. DEMs have to be better than that or we will fail even if we win.

People here and on Twitter want justice for TFG and all his minions, and also how certain senators are holding up so many things. I've seen a lot of intolerance and lack of humanity.

Anger can become all consuming if we forget we are all (except for the trolls) just imperfect people who are trying to do their best.

Even at home, with the love of my life, I have to keep resetting myself so that I don't suck up the frustration and spit it out on him because he's close by.

I can SEE the general level of frustration on the side of the DEMs wanting facts and reality to morph into justice AS IS THE POINT of America, but then also SEEING the Reich Wing flapping around and dumping the facts in the trash and opposing justice at every opportunity.... it is like walking home and winding up on the moon.

So I get it. We are all on edge as never before because these offenses continue to stomp on Democracy at every turn and it seems like nothing is changing the crazy script that has been running along with tRump's mouth.

Living with my own tRumpie son and seeing his reactions and knowing I did the best I could and then he STILL drank the Koolaid breaks my heart and drives me up the wall. He listens to NOTHING I say and when I come here and get the same treatment, it's like WAIT, but these are MY DEMs. WTF?

This is not a completely safe space because there are trolls here. You might find yourself either interacting with one or be mistaken for one. Either way, it's hard to trust people here unless you know them.

The "other side" seems almost united in their goal of power and control. They do have a few people that are former GOP leaders who have a little courage, but very little, because even when they were in office they too cowered to the extremists.

As Dems we all have similar ideas and principles - some more progressive than others but always the idea is to be better. Even if some of us can't agree on the details or even some of the agendas that does not mean that we are not the better choice.

Very important that after all of the rhetoric we stick together, to unite, with purpose of protecting our Democracy and helping everyone have a better life with the help of our government. Government is not the problem no matter how many times the GOP says it is. The government should represent the people instead of corporate interests, the wealthy, or those that think they are morally superior.

Hang tough, Tigeress - we need you and everyone else in a time when our very Democracy is being attacked at every front. I worry that some of us might not fight hard to have their voices heard because their individual choices are not being acknowledged. That is how Trump won - people did not turn out.

Democracy must win!!

Yeah, as long as I can catch a sane person once in awhile, I will be ok.

Thanks for the kind of inspiration I remember being here on DU.

It is about making our country better and treating each other the best we can.