Reply #83: She's tried to have me banned, too, as have other Clark supporters [View All]

[PurityOfEssence]

As you can imagine, the number of posts I've made that have been deleted is pretty large, too.

I'm an old-timer here, having been posting since the spring of '01.

Personally, I feel the attempt to quash contrary opinions is against the spirit of pluralism, and I've had to defend myself to moderators on quite a few occasions; opinionated though I am, I've never had a serious attack from any other group than Clark supporters. That's quite telling, considering how I've tussled with Deanies and some other groups. The vehemence of certain partisans is tiresome. I've never tried to have a Clark supporter banned, and have only appealed to the moderators to kill posts after mine have been cleansed in the same threads. I like free speech; I'm a liberal.

I have yet to see any group on this board rage so vigorously to destroy their opponents. Even the most strident Deanies from the summer of '03 through the primary season weren't as unprincipled and energetic as the extremists within the Clark camp.

Once again, there are many who like Clark and are civil, but there is a core group who make any pro-Edwards post an infuriation and who constantly post endless laudatory Clark threads. Mercifully the groundswell of reaction is disgust for these tactics, as the posts of many newbies and old-timers show.

(Edited: at first, the title read "at least 5 other Clark supporters", but upon reflection I'm not sure how many, and of course, I'll probably never know the true number. I do know that this poster has tried to flush me, and has been very successful in deleting many of my posts, and that a few other Clark supporters have tried to get me banned and have been successful in deleting my posts and locking my threads. It's a common tactic.)

You are not alone in having been assailed by attempts to ban you. Doing such a thing for a difference of opinion is scurrilous; this should only be done for obvious trolls who are trying to disrupt.

It's a form of hypocrisy, which is an expression of privilege: the core message is that the speaker believes him/herself to be superior and shouldn't be held to the same standards as inferiors; this is conservatism and it's what pluralists disdain.