That "we only shoot black people" thing isn't so bad - it's an immature and frankly retarded joke meant to calm down that woman who seemed to be fearing for her life. It wasn't hateful, it was a sarcastic quip the cop didn't think through snarking about the portrayal of the police in media - seemingly correctly.
But.... IT WORKED. The woman accepted that rational and began cooperating, or at least that's the impression I got from the video.
Think about the implications of that.
Politics on Bay12 stopped being anything resembling an open, friendly environment a long time ago.
Maybe you have a point on this thread. I think it's because the evidence regarding police behavior is so overwhelming that anyone who chooses to disagree opens the floodgates to people sharing that evidence. So I don't know if I'd call it wrong, but I'd be willing to call you technically correct, on this specific thread.
But... elsewhere? Ameripol Thread? Other specific issue political threads? We've had extensive debate about feminist issues that wasn't one-sided. Ameripol has been broiling for weeks with debate equating behaviors of "the left" as a vaguely defined but unified group to the behaviors of actual nazis, and it wasn't one-sided. Neonivek and Playergamer led the charge, but plenty of others have chimed in to their support. After that, I don't think the claim that Bay12 is wholly dominated by leftism to be valid anymore.
And while debate gets heated in some fashions, I wouldn't say it's not open or unfriendly. I don't see many personal attacks. What I do see is quite tame. Someone might get dogpiled once in a while, but presenting an unpopular idea to a large group of people and then having a large number of people from that group respond negatively to it isn't by itself an unfriendly thing. It just means a lot of people coincidentally read that post and felt like responding with a counter. It's not like there's some secret organization behind the scenes coordinating to make people feel overwhelmed.
Seriously, Bay12 is still BY FAR the most civil place for discussions like this on the internet. If you know of any other that's better, I'd be interested in seeing that.
As for Neonivek - I'm not exactly happy that he got banned the way he did. I was frustrated with him, but I didn't report him and didn't intend for that discussion to end that way. We had just started taking it to PM when it happened. Regardless, that didn't happen to him because of his political views. It's because his style of engagement in discussion was really close to serious trolling. I would have labeled him an actual troll long, long ago, except it didn't seem like it was intentional on his part. It seemed more like he was just a really confused person. Like he legitimately couldn't keep his thoughts straight enough to coherently back up his outrageous statements, or maintain any consistency to his narrative. Based on benefit of the doubt, I feel sorry for the guy. On the other hand, I can't help but wonder if he actually was a troll who built up that character to get away with it. People do shit like that. Either way, I can't disagree with Toady that his effect on serious forum discussions was horribly disruptive and negativity-inducing. So whether it sits right with me or not, I can't exactly fault him for the ban decision.
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Topic: The Abusive Policing Thread: Beyond Brown, No Justice (Read 367717 times)