Let me be exacting in my response here.
For a long while now there has been derisiveness towards PoliEra. Our members typically talked less and less on the forum itself, and especially in Etcetera, outside of this thread and now, off-site. The reason for this is simple. If you post a moderate opinion, you get derided. If you post a liberal opinion, you get derided. If you aren't exactly how the wave of posters in Etcetera are, you are labeled awful things. Want Biden to win over Trump when it's clear he's the nominee? You're a rape apologist and you hate victims. Want to ensure that the system doesn't collapse while we try to switch over to a frankly, superior healthcare system? You support the deaths of millions of people a year who could not pay a for-profit healthcare system. Want investigations rather than jumping to conclusions? You're downplaying sexual assault.
And because moderate takes that do not necessarily meet the expectations other posters might have of their peers are in opposition to claiming a presidential candidate has dementia or, despite an absence of evidence (which does NOT imply evidence of absence), calling him a rapist, with moderation seeming light touch if not absent, it's made it extremely difficult to talk about politics anywhere but here or off-site. Literally nobody is downplaying sexual assault when they claim they don't want it to be true, hope it's not, but give enough respect to the victim that they call for an investigation. But in Etcetera, that has happened.
It isn't just overtly negative responses. It also goes into harassment. Harassment of mods, harassment and brigading of posts, snipes instead of discussion, belief over policy wherein discussion is branded as an attack, and so on.
And then, once the discussion stops, because surprise, there's nothing to discuss when the only ones that are left believe, post, and act in the same way with no room for moderation or opposition to those beliefs, the self-same people who claimed dementia and rape-enabling and victim-blaming and downplaying of sexual assault started coming here.
To snipe. To brigade.
And all the while, the line was that there are minorities, they're angry, they're panicking, and it's best to give them space. As if there were no minority voices here (myself, for instance) panicking, angry, terrified, and resolved to do what can be done, and this is the general politics thread, no it's the community thread, no it's the general politics thread!
So when people tried to push back after being baited in bad faith, they were banned. But the ones who argued in bad faith to pull people in? They were still out there, posting.
I am sympathetic to people who are angry, panicked, dejected. Their candidate appears to have lost, they fear a repeat of 2016. I am in the same place. I didn't want Biden, for instance, any more than they do.
But what is not sympathetic is the frankly terrifying response with that anger, dejection, and panic, wherein a closing of ranks let to them forcefully push anything opposing to their views out and then, when it was clear they had won, decide to dash the 'enemy' on the rocks.
So now, feeling bereft of moderation in Etcetera and in our own community, feeling attacked, unwanted, derided, hated, and for some of us -- like myself -- terrified that people for whom we share 99% of beliefs would rather stab us in the back out of some kneejerk response, than swallow their pride to cause the least harm, posters who have been here since before Resetera, who helped build the site as the rest of us fled from the other, are deciding it is no longer worth it to stick around.
Now it feels as if the site has been lost.
It is regrettable, because just like we saw in Etcetera, once the discussion dries up, they force it elsewhere. Now that Etcetera looks like Lord of the Flies, this place, too, shall resemble the same.