Reply #17: Don't tease! What's the book your students are fascinated with? [View All]

[vickitulsa]

And thanks for the straight skinny on Scholastic. I'd never heard of them and didn't notice they were included in boycott suggestions re tpt911. But it's always wise as well as morally imperative for people who boycott for whatever reasons to pick their targets accurately.

As many times as bad actors (in the generic, not specific, sense) on the other side have been suspect for and even caught trying to mislabel, misdirect, manipulate, criticize, deceive in subtle ways and outright lie about persons, organizations, and commercial interests in order to hurt these targets with boycotting efforts, we should remember to be very careful when placing blame and directing criticism at specific entities.

Which brings to mind a very important and broader point about how Dems and others who are "on our side" or leaning our way perform in our efforts to expose and punish any people or operations of the opposition.

Because a lot of people who are new to considering voting for Dems and just to be ethical and responsible in our behavior anyway, I think we should keep in mind that our people are going to be under some unusually intense scrutiny from now on. I believe we should take special care in all our efforts to promote our causes and people and defeat the opposition to avoid any libelous or slanderous results, intentional or not.

"Smear" might be too strong a word to use in many cases where the intentions and cursory research efforts are good and honest but just don't go far enough or in some cases go too far. So, considering how much smearing goes on under this administration in their campaign and image-shaping work, we ought to be extremely diligent to avoid any activities that could smack of smear tactics.

It's simply our duty to do this! Any other approach could lead us to morph into hypocrites like those we despise.

(And yes, I know I'm sort of preaching to the choir here, but felt it should be said. :))