- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
The term "thought police" is shorthand for an entire, fairly nuanced concept. It's not an insult -- like, say, "doodyhead". The point of it, and of my entire post, was that what I've seen so far is a fantastic intolerance among other posters. This apparently extends to colors, which is unbelievable. The entire debate has become, already, focused on -- obsessed with -- ideology and symbolism. This is the classic methodology for using form instead of content to transform what could have been an exploration of some interesting concepts into a power struggle. Ideas with which you do not agree are labelled "offensive" and from that moment on cease to exist.
"Offensive" is a wonderful word. What it basically means is that the entire community has to respond to, and help enforce, your personal emotional reaction to someone else's statement. It becomes everyone duty to defend your emotional state, which is kind of similar to a household in which the parents are afraid of their own children. "Now, Morgan, please stop hitting the dog with that hammer, sweetheart."
And your post has thoughtfully proven my point. Rather than encouraging a diversity of voices, perspectives and opinions, your response, like many others, is to call for supression of dissent. And this blog is only two days old. Your first reaction is to call for community standards -- i.e., right out of the gate, as a first resort, you're already seeking to forcibly silence someone else.
Admittedly, if someone repeatedly posts abusive, off-topic or threatening comments, some form of monitoring may be necessary. But this entire forum is allegedly about discussion and ideally, disagreement. That's how ideas are tested, and refined. But it seems to me that the open exchange of ideas, again, is something a lot of posters here don't actually want, although they pay it lip service. That's frightening.
