While we encourage informed, adversarial, and sometimes heated discussions, dismissing each other is another matter. Yesterday, a long thread on Lambert’s post on RFK, Jr. a speech in which RFK, Jr. he impressed the Democratic party of that time and allowed Trump to often come down to talk and bile.
Several times in the past I have had to close comments completely for a period of time to tell readers that we mean business about maintaining respect in the comments section. We’ve already lost our long-serving president thanks to toxic comments on the Gaza conflict. We’re not even in the expected post-Labor Day campaign, yet temperatures are already sweltering.
I’m not going to let successfully motivated bias in the political arena destroy this comment section. Racism and bigotry are the opposite of critical thinking. Indeed, they are designed to shut down critical thinking.
So if these food wars don’t stop soon, you’re left with three choices:
1. Stopping US election coverage
2. Long-term blocking of comments or otherwise, disallowing them on US political posts
3. Forcing us to measure new behavioral violations, including:
– Endorsing or representing a particular candidate. That includes saying who you plan to vote for and criticizing the students very gently for the other guy (as opposed to pointing out mistakes or sloppy thinking).
– Hitting talking points, like “Harris is a Marxist” or “Trump is weird”
Implementation #3 would include moderating all comments or removing comments (and threads if they develop into threads) by students who are in good standing.
So I ask you to take this message to heart and think carefully before publishing such cheap comments.
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