It’s worth noting that the prevailing wisdom on comments sections everywhere is to avoid them, they are toxic, don’t feed the trolls. Guess that’s going to be elections now, too?

Plain as day, right here, you make valid arguments, and infuse a bit of humor and some exacerbated sarcasm in doing so. Maybe you labeled ignorant some things that don’t need gentler descriptions. I didn’t see any mean spirited disparagement.

Yet there is an abundance of reactions in this small sampling of ‘discourse’ that doesn’t even attempt civility, or any parity as far as making leveled, reasonable counter arguments. It’s just anger. Hate. Dismissal. And I’m critiquing them baselessly all on my own. A comment 15 people might read, because 14 of those people want to start a fight.

My memory of election 2020 right now is my 6 year old daughter reading the word “feelings” from a flag mounted to the back of a pickup truck (note: I drive an F150) within an 8-mile Trump train.

“Fuck Your Feelings” was obviously the full text.

I don’t know you, Derek, seems you served (happy belated Veterans Day), and know something about site reliability. You make a genuine, reasoned effort to approach a meaningful topic that concerns you. Yet in the first dozen comments, “what about pedofiles” comes up. Standard issue equivocation nowadays.

I feel like at this point, if Trump did shoot somebody on 5th Avenue, all the blame would fall on 5th Avenue itself, which is totally liberal, and gravity, which is unproven (but also the culprit).

I don’t know how to engage that. I don’t know how to walk away. I think if you’re in a camp that has settled on “Fuck Your Feelings” as a rallying cry, expect all responses to sound exactly like that eventually.

Apologies on the lengthy comment.