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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
There are some thoughtful posts in threads like this one, as well as some that are not only thoughtless and dumb, but hateful as well.
After having read almost all of them in all the "national" political threads, I've concluded that not one single person is going to change their mind on which candidate they intend to vote for in November as the result of these exchanges. That's notwithstanding many carefully researched and well-written messages. We all "read into" the facts what we wish. We all seem to have convinced ourselves of our choice and are abominably inept in changing even one other person's mind. Whether that's the fault of the antagonist of the debate or the protagonist, who knows?
All we're doing is wasting time and bandwidth with these arguments as well as aggravating (at best, at worst maybe enraging) our neighbors. Think about it--would we enter into these debates if we went out to dinner with friends or neighbors or people we met on the town square? Or are we simply empowered to say this stuff because of the security and disguise provided by screen names and the internet?
Why are we bothering? Why are we wasting our time?
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If the goal is to aggravate, insult, belittle or gloat, then it is indeed a waste of bandwidth.
If the goal is an intellectual exchange of opinions, with the realization that we are not all perfect, often wrong, but willing to try to understand the other person, what makes them think and tick, and what is important to someone other than ourselves, then the boards serve an invaluable purpose.
All of the above have happened, and whether the board goes from back-biting to brain-expanding depends on the intent of the writers.
We should be entering these boards agreeing that we may disagree more often than not, but that not agreeing does not mean negative feelings.
Personally, I'd like to sit down and split a good bottle of wine (or the spirit of choice) with just about everyone on this board, because for the most part they seem like a fun bunch. One thing is for sure - it wouldn't be boring....
A toast to all, and
laissez les bon temps rouler!