NationStates Jolt Archive

You know the type. In the General Forum they seem to be proliferating. The most common type is the Democrats vs Republicans type. There seems to be a rise in partisan borderline trolling (and often outright trolling) not seen since the 2004 US Election. It's getting rather tiring reading too much of "liberals/Republicans are evil/must be banned/are traitors/etc" as a substitute for rational debate.

Isn't there some way of explaining to these people that there is not much difference between the Democrats and Republicans, and whatever side they are on, the other side is not the enemy?

If I may single out certain posters, Stinky Head (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9522370&postcount=513) Cheese (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9518205&postcount=103), Lyric (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=439767), and to a lesser extent, Domici, Eutrusca and Corneliu.

You know the type. In the General Forum they seem to be proliferating. The most common type is the Democrats vs Republicans type. There seems to be a rise in partisan borderline trolling (and often outright trolling) not seen since the 2004 US Election. It's getting rather tiring reading too much of "liberals/Republicans are evil/must be banned/are traitors/etc" as a substitute for rational debate.

Isn't there some way of explaining to these people that there is not much difference between the Democrats and Republicans, and whatever side they are on, the other side is not the enemy?
The problem is that so far, there really isn't a good solution. In real life here in the US, we have hordes of people who think that $PARTY is pure evil/should be shot/terrorists/whackjobs/etc, and moronic punditry rules the airwaves. I think that's some of where we are getting the recent influx of idiocy.

But if we haven't solved it in real life, how can we solve it here?

When it comes down to it, the only thing we can do is look over posts that are reported. We cannot censor other peoples' beliefs, no matter how wacky they are, but if those people begin trolling, that is when the Generalites need to act and report them here, not because they disagree with them, but because the posts are clearly against the rules, as defined by The One-Stop Rules Shop.

Your request is really a political manner, and there's no way that the moderators would get involved, and order people to realize that those two are similar (not saying they are, or they aren't, just proving a point). People will continue to believe what they want, as they're entitled to it. It's all a political matter, and we can't do anything to change that. Again, if you feel as if someone's posts are trolling, report them here. That's the extent of our aid.

But if we haven't solved it in real life, how can we solve it here?
If we can't solve it here, then how can we solve it in reality?

Swimming, you can always just not go into those threads. They will debate this issue to kingdom come, and you have the choice to not view them. There are plenty of other threads in General for you to view and comment in. Don't worry about the D vs R debates, just worry about other's feelings in said debates.