We've been following the latest comments over at The Dagger and quite frankly our heads are about to explode. While we enjoy the articles, the comment section has denigrated into name-calling and overall nastiness. At one point the comments were insightful, but now they're just inciteful. One we just read comparing our current president to Hitler, saying he brainwashed the children with his speech yesterday, makes us feel sick.
And it's not just the anonymous commenters that seemed to be filled with bile, it's the anonymous drivers running redlights, cutting us off, and sometimes flipping us off on their way to Wal-Mart, Walgreen's or WaWa.
There was an article yesterday about how in the country of Samoa they went from driving on the left side of the road to the right, because they were importing more cars with the steering wheel on the left so they had to change. At the appointed time, traffic stopped, they all moved to the other side of the road while singing and clapping.
Can you ever imagine that happening here? People would say, "It's my constitutional right to drive on that side of the road! What are you, a communist for making me change? What will it do to the future and to our children making us switch sides? You're anti-American! Hitler made people do things like that!"
But of course, they wouldn't actually say that, they'd fill up message boards around the country with it. Because it's so much easier to practice hate speech on the Internet where there is no accountability, just anonymity.
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4 comments:
I finally threw in the towel a couple years ago as a regular Baltimore Sun online reader. I *had* to stop reading the comments. Difficult people who enjoy anonymity will never ever be moved by any argument made on the Internet, ever. I think the only thing to do is walk away from the keyboard and not engage in discussion/debate/argument at all on these sites that have anonymous comments. I think the political orientations of the more bile-ridden commenters is clear -- no surprise there are swarms of them around a Harford County oriented web site/news outlet.
Obama = Hitler? The advent of America's first black president seems to have caused some of our white citizens to become totally unhinged. But, as Rick Perlstein wrote recently (http://tinyurl.com/ozdcq6) "The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora."
It's obviously rude to refer to the President is such a manner and it invalidates whatever point the speaker is attempting to make.
However, I have to laugh at the situation when I think about the complete and total lack of outrage at these actions in the recent past. As one of the posters on that site pointed out, Bush was called Hitler, Fascist, moron and chimp, many photos were doctored showing him as a chimp, he was accused of being a part of the 9/11 attack, and a movie was even made showing his assassination.
That doesn't make what is happening now right, but the protests seem a little late in coming. A lack of civilty is a lack of civility, no matter who the target is.
It appears that civility is a thing of the past. Rudeness is in nowadays. At least that's the way it appears. I too have been a little more rude. You have my word that I now vow to be more civil at all times. It will be difficult for me when on 95 and at the light at Weis.
I will admit that I was a little wary of the speech; however, it was a wonderful. How anyone that read or saw the speech thought it was about brainwashing is amazing to me. I'm glad that the kids got to see it. Had they not aired it, I was going to have them them read it. I found it inspiring. (I was crying by the end.)
God Bless us all.
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