Monker wrote:
"Back when Dean was here..." Keeps being brought up. Well, it's not that time. When you have hundreds of people coming to a forum it can be endured when some leave because of how they are treated. When you have tens of people on a forum and hardly anybody new shows up, if the same five people or so push them off by making personal attacks because they are on the "other side" of the debate, then the forum turns into what Andrew sees this thread being right now.
I wasn't here much at all for the last several years so I'm asking sincerely, who ran who away, and how? The last people I remember being literally run away by other posters were the Perry fans on the Journey board. Who ran people out of this thread?
This isn't about "me"....................That is not what it has EVER been about for me. He could be "king", you can be "king". I don't care. I *LIKE* being in the min Ignore me, that's fine!
Then who is it about?
For me, it's about writing down my ideas and opinions. It's not about trolling for replies and attention. It's about expression. If I had unlimited time, I could write post after post after post, doing nothing but expressing my political views, or my opinion of Donald Judas Trump...and not care one bit if anybody replied. I used to do that with Journey ALL THE TIME - you know that.
Yes, at times it was like that and at times I respected what you had to say even when I disagreed. I have even defended you. But at times you were also mean and nasty as hell.
Again, I've been rarely on here for any length of time for several years. I haven't seen any of those deep philosophical posts by you in this thread. What I've seen the most of is you inviting acrimony in the things you say in your posts by by taking shots at a President who most of us here like, then if anybody bites at your bait you take out your hate for Trump on than person.
As far as Dean goes, by the end he saw I was right about a lot of what I was saying. He even apologized several times for how he acted towards me. That's all fine, I don't hold on to that crap, I brush it off and move on. He even sent me some respectful IM's about the old political threads back when Hillary ran against Obama.
So, bringing up Dean is really irrelevant to me...in the end, we got along just fine.
Dean and I started out rough but also ended up friends. I guess the reason I brought him up is that the talk about people who were here and are no more made me realize how much I missed him.
Back on the Journey board there were more people of a liberal point of view than I remember there being on any strictly political threads on the "Off Topic" board, but I participated very little if at all in the Obama presidency thread so I can't say what happened to the liberals who posted there.
Dean didn't change my attitude, Journey did. The things that happened after Generations, the treatment of Augeri, JSS hired/fired, and then Arnel being a Perry clone with an accent. The hypocrisy of moving on from the Perry era, and then going for the retro sound, and then trying to move on again. I just don't give a damn any longer...and haven't for a long time.
Oh, BTW, "PerryLoon" "Trump Zombie"...kinda interesting how one was accepted and the other is an insult. Maybe it should be "Perry Zombie" and "Trump Loon"...it's all desxcribing the same behavior of "he can do no wrong" and following his lead and doing what you think he would approve of.
Why should anybody stand meekly by and allow you to call them names? Is that one of your
opinion pieces that you don't think should be offensive?
What you don't understand, and I think Andrew does, is without other views being expressed then this ceases to be a "discussion" thread and is just a place to post alt-right views and for a handful of people to cheerlead each other. Or, to put it another way, "To be surrounded by yes-men is a dangerous thing."
Yet again I ask, what happened to all of the liberals? Who chased who away and how? I think a lot of people left because, like you said, Journey jumped the shark and they weren't here for the politics. It just wasn't enough to keep them.
Back when it TNC, 7Wishes, Deano, you and I against everybody else nobody could have run us off. I left because my job didn't allow for this kind of entertainment during work hours and at home I had a home and family to take care of. We know what happened to Dean. TNC is here and like me has broken formation to vote his conscience. I don't know what happened to 7Wishes.
Would you and Andrew like us to leave too because we no longer agree with you politically? I haven't seen anybody personally attacking you until you attack them first. Do you consider any disagreement to be a personal attack? Are we supposed to follow debate team rules? You can't have it both ways Monker, if you rub somebody the wrong way they are going to rasp back until it become progressively more abrasive. Are you asking Andrew to close this board because you don't have anybody on your side?