I don't see why you couldn't have a political discussion in the comm forum here.

Drop dead, capitalist swine.

Well, if someone starts one, no one will force you to click on it

Yes, you are.

I'm sure we have Repubicans & people with comparable leanings here; odds favor it. Admittedly, people like me, Cei-U!, Prince Hal & plenty of others (apologies for those I'm leaving out; even less awake than usual in the a.m., having been up for an hour or so in the middle of the night to take meds, etc., after conking out too early to do last at the usual time last night) make no secret of our leftist orientations, so those with contrary viewpoints might well feel reluctant to express them ...

... but they shouldn't, of course. We need their names for when the revolu- ... uh, I mean, civil discourse on such matters would be welcome, I like to think, as shax indicates above.

Besides, some of my best friends, IRL & online both, are jackbooted fas- ... uh, that, is, staunch conservatives.

Possible appearances to the contrary, like shax I don't exactly toe the doctrinaire leftist line. Most obvious example of that is abortion, the hot-buttonest of hot-button issues. I'll leave it at that for now -- not, again, awake enough to even aspire to the level of articulation the subject demands.

I've engaged in online discussions dealing with both politics and religion, and my general take-away from it is that it's extremely difficult (though not impossible) to have thoughtful discussions on those topics. As Shax mentioned, a lot of such discussion these days tend to be more preaching to the choir and "Amen"-shouting than anything else, and it just causes people to dig their heels in rather than intelligently engage opposing views. Or if you have opposing views, you may feel unwelcome in expressing them. It doesn't help that electronic mediums such as chat, e-mail, and social media make it even harder to parse people's emotions and tone, and therefore easily can cause us to read harshness or ill intent into messages when none was intended. My experience has been that keeping the conversation elevated often requires one to bend over backwards to be more civil than one would ordinarily be, simply to offset the inherent limitations of the electronic medium.

Then again, a lot of it may simply be us mirroring the people we vote into office, who don't seem to be any more capable of having respectful debate in real life than we do online.

I may stop by a political thread from time-to-time if everyone can play nice. Then again, I live in the Washington D.C. area where people talk about politics all the time, so it's not like I have a tremendous lack of political talk.

Please alert me whenever someone's actual position is changed by the idealogical posturing and repiticious talking points that usually populate these threads. After growing up as a left-wing hippie McGovern volunteer and later adopting some mid-1980s conservative viewpoints, I've only come to the conclusion that both American political parties suck and all politicians should be one term and then dismissed with a thank you note