At Oberlin, it started in December, when the temperatures ran high, although the weeping willows and the yellow poplars that had flared in the fall were bare already. Problems had a tendency to escalate. There was, to name one thing, the food fight: students had noted the inauthenticity of food at the school’s Afrikan Heritage House, and followed up with an on-site protest. (Some international students, meanwhile, complained that cafeteria dishes such as sushi and bánh mě were prepared with the wrong ingredients, making a mockery of cultural cuisine.) There was scrutiny of the curriculum: a student wanted trigger warnings on “Antigone.” ...
Weeks passed. Finals came and went. The media turned its attention to the approaching Iowa caucus, while on campus an unease spread like a cold front coming off the lake. In mid-December, a group of black students wrote a fourteen-page letter to the school’s board and president outlining fifty nonnegotiable demands for changes in Oberlin’s admissions and personnel policies, academic offerings, and the like. “You include Black and other students of color in the institution and mark them with the words ‘equity, inclusion and diversity,’ ” it said, “when in fact this institution functions on the premises of imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, and a cissexist heteropatriarchy.” |
I haven't been off campus for that long, just four years from grad school and thirteen from undergrad, but as an undergrad I at least understood the basic vocabulary, even if I lampooned it. This seems to have reached a level of insularity and esoterica that makes it inscrutable to any but the initiates, and recent initiates at that.
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I know that some argue that free speech extends beyond the government/prior restraint angle. That is simply not how I think of it. Yes, you can suppress speech through purely private means. To me that doesnt invoke a free speech problem.
The market place of ideas is a battle ground. Society is not a debating society with fair rules. So you may bemoan Person X shouting over Person Y's lecture as "suppressing speech". Sure, it is. As is the employee who gets fired for publicly criticizing his employer. As is the campaign ad that takes words out of context. Such is the unfairness of it all.
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Is your belief in free speech selective?
To answer this question for real: I take a narrow view of free speech. I think it is a right vis a vis the government.
If you give a speech and I shout you down, your free speech right hasnt been infringed on, in my opinion. The battle place of ideas is nasty and unregulated. Some speakers shout over others. Some trade primarily/exclusively in lies. It is an unregulated sphere, by necessity. The hope is that the listener can cut through the garbage. E.g. Im more convinced by the person who decimates the original speaker with facts and argument, and less convinced by the one who just shouts louder. I dont condone showing up to events and shouting down speakers; but given the amount of hateful rhetoric coming from speakers/candidates I see on TV, nor do I condemn it.
I'll wait for your reaction the first time a LBGT advocate is shouted down on campus. Problem is I'll we waiting for a long, long time. Maybe I better add the first time a supporter of the recent guidelines for sexual assault is shouted down. There may be voices of disagreement with respect to that, but no proponent has been denied the right to speak unharassed.
Why can't a student do both? Do you just work, or are you also a parent, friend, husband and assorted other self-selected roles (e.g., volunteer)?
We had a big debate over whether or not to bring Ann Coulter to campus, who was a celebrity at that time but didn't have anywhere near the level of notoriety she does now. Thankfully we resolved that in the negative, though we did invite Dinesh D'Souza.
Of note is that in my college days the provocateurs were Dinesh D'Souza, Laura Ingraham - I went to Dartmouth with both - etc. who used mostly satire and trolling behavior (but also the occasional dirty tricks) to subvert their perceived adversaries on campus.
I see primarily a class struggle where those who have been 'disadvantaged', traditionally through race, gender, sexual identity etc. but now including an even broader group of 'allies' who have found methods to push back at institutions and cultural norms which they blame for their disadvantages and a general sense of systemic unfairness.
The problem arises when valid claims for change turn into axioms and tactics which create the same sorts of problems against which they struggle so that the injustice is no longer the main target but rather the perceived perpetrators themselves. It's the old story of our hero in his struggle to overcome his tyrannical master, becomes the new master himself. Late the hate flow through you indeed.
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on campuses about the diversification of curricula, the need for more representative faculty hiring, amendment of sexual harassment procedures, the pros and cons of graduate student unionization. None of these things, especially the civil and legal ways many students pursue these changes, is explosive enough to warrant exposure. The most absurd protests are since a) they make for more exciting news; b) are the most readily usable material for those already uncomfortable with change.
It's not just about being uncomfortable with change, it's about parents who fund education and alumni who have their own stake in the matter (the value of their degrees, their own role in funding education) asserting their views as stakeholders. Both have an interest in maintaining and increasing the value of a degree, and the parents who fund their children's education have an interest in seeing their children emerge with marketable job skills.
Then let's dump the idea of a university and a liberal arts education altogether. If the university is valuable only insofar as it produces employable adults, then let's simply build high-end vocational skills and be done with it.
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always insisting on where other people go to the bathroom and protecting the religious liberties of corporations over the medical needs of actual people. Oh, wait. Well at least we can comfort ourselves that minorities and LGBT people are making up the repression. It's not like a big swath of the white majority is currently, opening in the "we need to take back our country" camp. Oh, wait.
[and for the record, I've been critical here of some of what is going on at campuses. Trigger warnings, the Emory "pain" etc.]
I thought we were talking about university campuses, not all of society.
That was my point. The complaining about oversensitive college kids needs to be put in context. College kids demanding that they be taught X, be forwarned about Y in the coursework, and not wanting to live in a residence hall named after some dead racist may be over sensitive, it may not be. But also be sure to put it in the context of a pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions because of their religious liberty. Corporations refusing to buy insurance coverage because of their religious liberty. Or the inarguable we-hate-trannies bathroom segregation laws being promulgated and passed in some states/municipalities (being justified on the most trumped up of grounds).
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In comment 12972254 njm said:
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Is your belief in free speech selective?
To answer this question for real: I take a narrow view of free speech. I think it is a right vis a vis the government.
If you give a speech and I shout you down, your free speech right hasnt been infringed on, in my opinion. The battle place of ideas is nasty and unregulated. Some speakers shout over others. Some trade primarily/exclusively in lies. It is an unregulated sphere, by necessity. The hope is that the listener can cut through the garbage. E.g. Im more convinced by the person who decimates the original speaker with facts and argument, and less convinced by the one who just shouts louder. I dont condone showing up to events and shouting down speakers; but given the amount of hateful rhetoric coming from speakers/candidates I see on TV, nor do I condemn it.
I'll wait for your reaction the first time a LBGT advocate is shouted down on campus. Problem is I'll we waiting for a long, long time. Maybe I better add the first time a supporter of the recent guidelines for sexual assault is shouted down. There may be voices of disagreement with respect to that, but no proponent has been denied the right to speak unharassed.
My pity is for the trans kids being prohibited from going to the bathroom of their sex, rather than adults whose speeches got interrupted. where is the recurring BBI thread on that?
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In comment 12972284 Ash_3 said:
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on campuses about the diversification of curricula, the need for more representative faculty hiring, amendment of sexual harassment procedures, the pros and cons of graduate student unionization. None of these things, especially the civil and legal ways many students pursue these changes, is explosive enough to warrant exposure. The most absurd protests are since a) they make for more exciting news; b) are the most readily usable material for those already uncomfortable with change.
It's not just about being uncomfortable with change, it's about parents who fund education and alumni who have their own stake in the matter (the value of their degrees, their own role in funding education) asserting their views as stakeholders. Both have an interest in maintaining and increasing the value of a degree, and the parents who fund their children's education have an interest in seeing their children emerge with marketable job skills.
Then let's dump the idea of a university and a liberal arts education altogether. If the university is valuable only insofar as it produces employable adults, then let's simply build high-end vocational skills and be done with it.
If what you're saying is that a major part of a university education is learning to think rather than be trained at a skill then I wholeheartedly agree. But it's being trained to think and NOT being indoctrinated.
As for Moondwg's point about teachers, both from the left and right, having trouble under some of these new insurgencies - sure. But I've TA'd for and taught my own courses at a largely liberal university and haven't had issues. I've taught classes with entirely European thinkers, explained my thinking, and gave the class options to write on relevant, non-syllabus thinkers for a final paper too. Some of these students have no idea what they're doing, but I've also found that most juniors and seniors (surprise, surprise) are refreshingly sensible and fair-minded and are more than willing to respect your choices as a professor or instructor if you're willing to respect them as adults.
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In comment 12972283 Deej said:
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In comment 12972254 njm said:
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Is your belief in free speech selective?
To answer this question for real: I take a narrow view of free speech. I think it is a right vis a vis the government.
If you give a speech and I shout you down, your free speech right hasnt been infringed on, in my opinion. The battle place of ideas is nasty and unregulated. Some speakers shout over others. Some trade primarily/exclusively in lies. It is an unregulated sphere, by necessity. The hope is that the listener can cut through the garbage. E.g. Im more convinced by the person who decimates the original speaker with facts and argument, and less convinced by the one who just shouts louder. I dont condone showing up to events and shouting down speakers; but given the amount of hateful rhetoric coming from speakers/candidates I see on TV, nor do I condemn it.
I'll wait for your reaction the first time a LBGT advocate is shouted down on campus. Problem is I'll we waiting for a long, long time. Maybe I better add the first time a supporter of the recent guidelines for sexual assault is shouted down. There may be voices of disagreement with respect to that, but no proponent has been denied the right to speak unharassed.
My pity is for the trans kids being prohibited from going to the bathroom of their sex, rather than adults whose speeches got interrupted. where is the recurring BBI thread on that?
As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the board's general political alignments correspond to the sorts of outrage expressed here. The political spectrum on the board has also narrowed significantly, as younger, previously more involved posters have left en masse or restricted most of their activity to sports or tv threads.
Students learn, and learn quickly, that my syllabus is fixed; alternative assignments are not given and not tolerated. There is latitude in topics for papers that they can write, but they are heavily scrutinized by me before they go even past the category of something more than a dream.
I wasn't around in the early days (I've only been registered 9 or 10 years) and even if I was I never spent time on political threads.
are you saying it's taking a more right wing view?
I still don't spend a lot of times on political threads, but when I do it seems pretty split to me.
Was it at one time more left leaning?
No, they’ll moderate a lot. Just like the hippies did. College is an extreme atmosphere – both good and bad – which engenders a concomitant extreme outlook. Take women: in college there are absurdly attractive, in their prime single women everywhere and getting laid takes little more than saying hi, a few beers, and finding an empty dorm room. As we age, do we encounter and get used to a similar dynamic? Of course not. Our outlook and expectations and so consequently our behavior change with our atmosphere.
Which is not to excuse these little monsters. They’re insufferable, though their ubiquity is overstated. Bloomberg’s recent speech to Wolverines garnered far more cheers than boos (anecdotal, I grant). For every Yale safe-spacer aghast at “offensive” Halloween costumes, there were 10 who merely wanted to dress up, pound some Natty Ice, and if they played their cards right go balls deep at 2am behind a dumpster (it was 1 time!)
But the vast majority will moderate as they age and need to earn a paycheck and pay the rent. Not all will and that’s fine because there is plenty of room for fiery inked up baristas hey hey and ho ho-ing. Now get me my coffee.
Frankly I’m more concerned with the degree to which young people are comfortable with out & out Socialism (as opposed to the tolerable hybrid version which has been at the fore for many decades in America). If the coddling endures, the egomaniacal safe-spacism may not moderate. For that I don’t necessarily find blame with them, but rather with those who have knowingly fostered an exclusionary oligarchy (ahem…) But that’s a different discussion.
I wasn't around in the early days (I've only been registered 9 or 10 years) and even if I was I never spent time on political threads.
are you saying it's taking a more right wing view?
I still don't spend a lot of times on political threads, but when I do it seems pretty split to me.
Was it at one time more left leaning?
pjcas - no worries, it's a good q.
The board has lost many extreme voices both right and left, for the better probably, but the majority of the board also clusters center-right. Those voices you could call center-left or left are not as prominent and a minority.
Moreover, the few de facto political threads that do go up - see the one on political correctness run amok - come from folks who could be called center right.
The NHL/NBA threads are still pretty good, especially the former. The NBA threads are good but miss MoM and Osi.
As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the board's general political alignments correspond to the sorts of outrage expressed here. The political spectrum on the board has also narrowed significantly, as younger, previously more involved posters have left en masse or restricted most of their activity to sports or tv threads.
Why? There's a lot of back and forth, but outside of trolls like dust bin and his conservative equivalents I've never seen shouts for someone to be banned because of their beliefs or the positions they take.
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As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the board's general political alignments correspond to the sorts of outrage expressed here. The political spectrum on the board has also narrowed significantly, as younger, previously more involved posters have left en masse or restricted most of their activity to sports or tv threads.
Why? There's a lot of back and forth, but outside of trolls like dust bin and his conservative equivalents I've never seen shouts for someone to be banned because of their beliefs or the positions they take.
There has been no need to ban.
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In comment 12972283 Deej said:
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In comment 12972254 njm said:
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Is your belief in free speech selective?
To answer this question for real: I take a narrow view of free speech. I think it is a right vis a vis the government.
If you give a speech and I shout you down, your free speech right hasnt been infringed on, in my opinion. The battle place of ideas is nasty and unregulated. Some speakers shout over others. Some trade primarily/exclusively in lies. It is an unregulated sphere, by necessity. The hope is that the listener can cut through the garbage. E.g. Im more convinced by the person who decimates the original speaker with facts and argument, and less convinced by the one who just shouts louder. I dont condone showing up to events and shouting down speakers; but given the amount of hateful rhetoric coming from speakers/candidates I see on TV, nor do I condemn it.
I'll wait for your reaction the first time a LBGT advocate is shouted down on campus. Problem is I'll we waiting for a long, long time. Maybe I better add the first time a supporter of the recent guidelines for sexual assault is shouted down. There may be voices of disagreement with respect to that, but no proponent has been denied the right to speak unharassed.
My pity is for the trans kids being prohibited from going to the bathroom of their sex, rather than adults whose speeches got interrupted. where is the recurring BBI thread on that?
Yale safe-spacer aghast at “offensive” Halloween costumes, there were 10 who merely wanted to dress up, pound some Natty Ice
Natty Ice? Well, it IS Yale.
As far as change after graduation, I didn't/don't see it so much on social issues. I DID/DO see it in economics once they start paying taxes.
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In comment 12972375 Ash_3 said:
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As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the board's general political alignments correspond to the sorts of outrage expressed here. The political spectrum on the board has also narrowed significantly, as younger, previously more involved posters have left en masse or restricted most of their activity to sports or tv threads.
Why? There's a lot of back and forth, but outside of trolls like dust bin and his conservative equivalents I've never seen shouts for someone to be banned because of their beliefs or the positions they take.
There has been no need to ban.
Agreed, but that brings me back to my lead question. Why?
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As I mentioned earlier on this thread, the board's general political alignments correspond to the sorts of outrage expressed here. The political spectrum on the board has also narrowed significantly, as younger, previously more involved posters have left en masse or restricted most of their activity to sports or tv threads.
Why? There's a lot of back and forth, but outside of trolls like dust bin and his conservative equivalents I've never seen shouts for someone to be banned because of their beliefs or the positions they take.
i have.
Who? And remember, I'm not talking about trolls of any stripe.
My pity is for the trans kids being prohibited from going to the bathroom of their sex, rather than adults whose speeches got interrupted. where is the recurring BBI thread on that?
Seen threads on both with both sides of the argument stated. Most people can have concerns about more than one thing at a time or have different concerns than yours. I find your kind off thought a subtle way of trying to shut up those you don't agree with (possibly a mini aggression).
You've seen threads on the trans bathroom issue with the frequency of this recurring "look at what is happening on campuses" thread we get every few months. My apologies if I missed them, but I havent seen that.
As for whether Im telling someone else to shut up, I was responding to a snotty post with a snotty post.
And of course hockey threads remain the best.
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i have.
Who? And remember, I'm not talking about trolls of any stripe.
You're welcome.
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My pity is for the trans kids being prohibited from going to the bathroom of their sex, rather than adults whose speeches got interrupted. where is the recurring BBI thread on that?
Seen threads on both with both sides of the argument stated. Most people can have concerns about more than one thing at a time or have different concerns than yours. I find your kind off thought a subtle way of trying to shut up those you don't agree with (possibly a mini aggression).
You've seen threads on the trans bathroom issue with the frequency of this recurring "look at what is happening on campuses" thread we get every few months. My apologies if I missed them, but I havent seen that.
As for whether Im telling someone else to shut up, I was responding to a snotty post with a snotty post.
Anyway, I walked away with my tail between my legs pretty quickly. He knew his stuff, and was like a dog on a bone if you questioned him.
I saw him get frustrated quite a bit. What was the final straw? His Cam Newton thread?
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This is certainly in your area of expertise, not mine, but it certainly seems that man truly is generally hardwired to religious thought. When they reject the concept of deities, they substitute something else - Marxism, Gaia worship-style environmentalism, identity politics, etc. They have their own dogma, their own commandments and sins, their own ethics and morality, all based on their chosen religion. They root our heresy with all the zeal of a 14th century inquisitor.
This strikes me as true. We are "metaphysical animals." I think I just made that up. But by nature we strive for an ultimate good that we think of as grounding morality, and maybe even reality itself.
This is why thinkers like Eric Vogelin spoke of Marx and others as neo-Gnostics. They had the same religious impulse, but directed it toward historical enlightenment (in a horizontal direction through time) and not religious enlightenment (in a vertical escape from time.) But both sets saw themselves as the anointed, and uniquely capable of sorting out the elect from the damned. Lenin did this, of course, with the kinds of brutality that is the final product of such hubris.
I'm not anti-ultimate goal, but human beings are sure confident in themselves when they are posessed of it.
Everybody should read John Locke's discussion of fanaticism in his Essay, the part "On Enthusiasm." Linked below.
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Thanks for the link to the Locke piece -- an excellent, if wordy, response to what the New Yorker portrays as the state of affairs at Oberlin.
Those students, too, strive for what they see as an ultimate good, but each only in his or her own way, within a diminishing clutch of people who see things in that particular way, and unashamed of their show of intolerance toward those who do not. Fortunately, most of them will get over it sooner or later.
Was it this way on campus in the '60s? Actually, it was, even if for somewhat differently articulated reasons. Nothing really new here.
I laughed as soon as I saw the thread posted because I knew what would happen. it was like an avalanche coming down on him. He stood his ground for a while.
I don't take any of this seriously or I try not to but a lot of people do.
I disagreed with him a ton and found him prone to exaggeration, but he was a quality poster.
Far better than pj, at least.
Anyway, I walked away with my tail between my legs pretty quickly. He knew his stuff, and was like a dog on a bone if you questioned him.
I saw him get frustrated quite a bit. What was the final straw? His Cam Newton thread?
Last I've seen of him was protecting the Kevin Love trade and insisting that Wiggins is a well below average NBA player and hasn't shown anything of value. Haven't seen him on threads like these in an even longer time.
I disagreed with him a ton and found him prone to exaggeration, but he was a quality poster.
Far better than pj, at least.
That's a pretty low bar. wait, what?
And, of course, a brave and lonely libertarian championing individual liberty and monarchism. God bless that intrepid young man!
So people leave not because they are being trolled or banned or denied the right to present their viewpoint but because the overall tone changed? I'm trying to understand this.
As for Moondwg's point about teachers, both from the left and right, having trouble under some of these new insurgencies - sure. But I've TA'd for and taught my own courses at a largely liberal university and haven't had issues. I've taught classes with entirely European thinkers, explained my thinking, and gave the class options to write on relevant, non-syllabus thinkers for a final paper too. Some of these students have no idea what they're doing, but I've also found that most juniors and seniors (surprise, surprise) are refreshingly sensible and fair-minded and are more than willing to respect your choices as a professor or instructor if you're willing to respect them as adults.
You teach at an Ivy though, do you not? Wouldn't you accept as a possibility that there might be a significant difference between your typical student, even your typical activist, and the sort of student activist you see at Oberlin, or at Mizzou? Isn't it possible that you're drawing generalizations out of a situation that does not lend itself well to them?
As to your wider point, the alumni and the parents are stakeholders. It does not mean that their views are the only ones that matter or even that their influence should be dispositive. But an institution that needs money to function should - indeed must - at least consider the impact of its decisions on its sources of funding.
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But this stuff is on a different level. It's one thing to protest, it's another thing to aggressively suppress speech.
Identity politics has always contained within it the seeds of this sort of outrage (PCU was about as prescient as Idiocracy). And in some ways it is extremely funny. But in others it is terrifying, because like it or these activists will eventually aspire to leadership roles in party politics, in interest groups and elsewhere. They'll moderate somewhat, but the idea that some of these ideas would really take root elsewhere is frightening.
People seem to be pushing the fringes on the opposite side to the extremes nowadays.
Individual liberty and monarchism?
Whatever was described in the OP doesn't seem like it takes up 100% of your time when you live on a campus. People can multi-task, you know. No matter what capacity you heard of the activities in the OP, you'd say the same exact thing you just mentioned about "school first".
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go to class, take the tests, etc. Activism, or anything else, comes second. Their priorities are backwards. Where are the parents? If this was my kid I would stop paying for this crap.
This is the worst comment in the thread. this is the same as how people were saying "what about the economic issues?" in the Redskins thread.
Whatever was described in the OP doesn't seem like it takes up 100% of your time when you live on a campus. People can multi-task, you know. No matter what capacity you heard of the activities in the OP, you'd say the same exact thing you just mentioned about "school first".
If you read the article, it suggests that some activists cannot.
In addition to Moons point about Marx offering one type of codified way of thinking, an orthodoxy, (in Marxism), to replace another (in Eastern Orthodoxy?? maybe), for his accolytes,
I would add that maybe early attempts to exchange a (perceived anyway) power imbalance with a more broad based open or pluralistic society (maybe an example would be early feminism) sometimes ends up being replaced with a simpler desire, the desire to build a new power imbalance, only now with new a different 'identity group' in the leadership role (late feminism?) due to perceptions of innate character defects of the perceived former leaders (men in that case, but it could be any perceived group) based on said identity concepts that they had formerly claimed that they were trying to escape from.
So, from being a border crosser and explorer on 'the inside' formerly, there, for example is, a hidden, yet deep hatred for: (in one example, against white protestants, you could list almost any 'identity' here as the wheel turns so to speak) that underlies some of this, such that pretend to be calls for plurality but may just be attempts to replace perceived top dogs with new top dogs,
So, that would be in addition to attempts to take advantage of said rhetorical orthodoxy, which I think Moon mentioned, and the opportunities to feed oneself via chatter that those can represent.
A gig, per se, in both cases, or a ticket, for others. As someone mentioned above-
Some would use said rhetoric (either 'side', left/right) to advance ones self, or relations, or, conversely, use people to advance ones 'cause' in ways that may have formerly been seen as outside of civic decency, and that could be on any perceived 'side.'
On some issues undoubtedly, but it is still predominately made up of northeasterners so someone arguing a conservative position on most social issues would be outnumbered very quickly.
"gender is just a construct AND MEN ARE EVIL"
or
"we demand equality and total personal safety ...but just LOOK at those ignorant rednecks, they must be genetically defective, lets fix that, eliminate them! "
How frequently do you see a call for limitations on new posters or waiting periods after registration. Eric rightly rejects these as they would grind new participation down even further. If a new person emerges, they either speak solely about football (which is fine) or have views which fall into the Overton window of BBI - Dissenting voices are usually called trolls or dupes and never seem to last long. This is unfortunate because the lifeblood keeping people here has always been the NFTs, and they've been in steep decline since the hey day.
I know there's a few posters here who think I have a hardon for hating my dad? or something when I get frustrated at their intransigence on many things and attribute it to their age and world view. I think in general people become more conservative and sure of their perspective as they age, naturally, I also think its a human condition to think your generation does things superior to parents and to your children in many ways. These are hardly relevatory or novel conclusions. It does manifest frustratingly in that you can click a thread here and know who's going to say what, and what the general tenor of the thread will be.
Thread about anything military? well to be sure we'll get contributions from BBI's sizeable veterans community, complete with jargon and high-handed 'I was there I know better' opinions dominating the thread. Something related to cops? well here's 10 pages of cop hate/cop defense. Thread about rap? Here's a few hip hop heads and some people that think calling it crap is the height of wit. Ensue slapfight. Thread about fat people? Piling on by most, a few tepid defenses and kicker's doctoral pontification about why fat people seek utility over health. Thread about aliens? dumb randy calling people cunts and so on.
I dunno, maybe I've been here too long - sometimes you can visit the forum and the BBI show will seem like a rerun. The only thing I think that prevents that is new cast members. I wished people would do more to ensure they stay.
It has declined, in part, to lack of action (off season) lower quality of sports related posts, and people finding other shit to do than explain political / social shit to newbs.