I posted this a couple of days ago under the title A History of Violence and My Tender Sensibilities. I'm posting it today to support the position taken by buhdydharma and his co-signatories in the diary regarding new posting standards at Daily Kos. Also, I wish to make the point that you don't have to be a wimp to crave civility and courtesy.
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I have a history of violence. By the time I was five I had witnessed my parents come close to killing each other several times. Before I was thirty I had done time, been maced, billy-clubbed and shot at. I was once held at gun-point for hours while my captors debated whether or not to shoot me. I have hunted dangerous persons and been hunted by them. Also, I was from a blue-collar family and was myself a blue-collar guy for years before I went white-collar and got paid more for doing less.
Given this background you might be surprised at my aversion to some of the ad hominem invective that trips so easily off the keyboards of some folks at this site. But you would be quite wrong. Among truly dangerous people, as well as in polite society, one simply doesn’t talk this kind of shit. In the first instance it can get you seriously hurt or even killed, in the latter it gets you shunned. Personal insults, usually in the form of friendly banter, are reserved for friends and family members.
The doctrine of fighting words along with libel and slander are recognized legal restraints on speech. Uttering fighting words, words meant to incite a violent reaction, can be cause for criminal and civil action.
I’m having a hard enough time wrapping my head around the big issues of the day, without the invective-laced internecine word wars. There appear to be some real political and ideological differences among participants at this site that I would like to better understand. But instead of discussing them directly they manifest as sub-textual knife fights over financial reform or the health insurance legislation for instance.
It’s hard to pay attention to the subject at hand or to or to muster the courage to betray ones ignorance in the hopes of learning something new when there’s a brawl going on among the apparent cognoscenti. Hey, I’m a certified tough guy and I find you word warriors, if not particularly frightening, frightfully off-putting.