Quote:
Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
I say it's against the rules of decorum, because if someone said it to my face I'd never speak to them again. I have that right in a chat room, too.
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Certainly, everyone always has that right. But, in the face of "you happily kill the elderly and the poor", and "you're all traitors", and " you're racist", and "you're communistic thieves", it's going to be a mighty quiet place if we can't find either a way to accept it all as engaged and passionate rhetoric, or mutually tone it down. I complained to you of rhetoric that struck me as being as insulting to me as Club's rhetoric struck you, but I didn't tell you that I would forever avert my eyes from your face were we ever to meet, because, beyond the personal insult that one can quickly take, I knew that you were essentially speaking in the shorthand of modern political debate, and likely didn't actually mean that I was either personally out there killing gramps, or even personally fighting for causes that I knew would result in gramp's death.
Surprisingly, this board has become populated with a number of people who converse intelligently, if passionately, and who deal with the issues more so than with ad hominum attacks on each other. At rare times the discourse goes over the top, but I think it has more to do with strong feelings in the abstract than with any real intent to insult each other. Please keep in mind that one person's Let's Throw Mama From The Train is another's Red Dawn, and let's not be too quick to call mortal insult when we might be doing that ourselves.
It's intention versus perception. Knowing what I know of you, I doubt you were calling me a killer. Knowing what I know of Club, I doubt he was saying you were unaffected by 9/11.
