African American
In reply to the discussion: After 10 years, I've never seen DU as crazy as it is right now. [View all]scarletwoman
(31,893 posts)It just so happened that I stayed offline all day on Saturday. I wasn't feeling well, and all I wanted to do was stay in bed and read a book. I don't have a TV, and I left the radio off (which is permanently tuned to MN Public Radio), and so I had no idea what was happening out in the world - no idea about Sanders in Seattle, no idea about the BLM protest - just peace and quiet and listening to the birds, and to the breeze blowing through the tree branches outside my window.
I didn't log in to DU until late Sunday afternoon - and the first thread I saw was about Bravenak getting 4 hides in quick succession and being put on a timeout. Oh no! So I looked at her hidden posts - ridiculous, egregious hides! - and then started to work my through the threads they had been posted in. OMG! So much filthy nasty stuff in post after post! It was absolutely nauseating! I couldn't make my through it all. Like you, it made me sick to my stomach. I had to just log off again so I could calm down.
Yesterday was even worse. I came home from work late, logged in, and there on the Home Page "Greatest" list was a post with well over 200 recs, promoting one of the most outlandish, disgusting, absurd conspiracy theories about the Seattle BLM protestors, with DUer afte DUer breathlessly posting their full support for that bullshit. It was more than sickening, it was frightening - all these DUers I've been reading for years and years (I've been here since 2001) falling all over themselves to endorse that utterly reeking pile of paranoid garbage.
I'm really kind of heartbroken - there are so many DUers whom I've come to be familiar with over the years, DUers who I thought were smart and funny, and above all rational, whose opinions and analysis of various issues I'd come to respect, who appear now to have gone completely around the bend.
Because a young black woman challenged them to take a look at their own latent racism, at their own unconscious acceptance of white supremacy.
As far as I'm concerned, the reactions I've been reading here on DU have proven her absolutely right.
I just want to say to all these people who have been freaking out about the Seattle BLM protestors, when someone pushes your button like that, it's time to take a good hard look at why you have that button in the first place.