You may have noticed a distinct lack of return2ozma. This is due to their admitting, in a public comment, that their engagement here is in bad faith:
I'm sure there will be questions, let me see if I can address the most obvious ones:
- Can I still post negative stuff about Biden?
Absolutely! We have zero interest in running an echo chamber. However, if ALL you're posting is negative, you may want to re-think your priorities. You get out of the world what you put into it and all that.
- Why now?
Presumption of innocence. It may be my own fault, but I do try to think the best of people, and even though they were posting negative articles, they weren't necessarily WRONG. Biden's poll numbers, particularly in minority demographics ARE in the shitter. They are starting to get better, but he still has a hell of a hill to climb.
- Why a 30 day temp ban and not a permanent ban?
The articles return2ozma shared weren't bad, faked, or from some wing-nut bias site like "beforeitsnews.com", they were legitimate articles from established and respected news agencies, pointing out the valid problems Biden faces.
The problem was ONLY posting the negatives, over and over and then openly admitting that dishonest enagement is their purpose.
Had they all been bullshit articles? It would not have taken anywhere near this much time to lay the ban and it would have been permanent.
30 days seems enough time for them to re-think their strategery and come back to engage honestly.
Brb, I'm gonna look for the most recent "US does something pro-Israel for some fuckin reason" and total up how many of the first few top voted comments got followed up by a variation of "vote blue no matter who" or is heavily downvoted or gets several replies etc etc.
Edit: It's actually kind of tough, because most of the stuff in [email protected] is about domestic things. The first thing I found that was big enough to have lots of replies, and dealt with Israel as pertains to the US's policy, was this. Top comment is critical of Biden, i.e. not too heavily downvoted. Then, the top reply is me, defending Biden saying he has nothing to do with this and explaining why. Lots of discussion about who actually is to blame including people saying it includes Schumer, other people saying no it doesn't that's misinformation, and an official mod opinion that yes it absolutely does, the Democrats at least some of them are definitely to blame here.
So... are you saying that that's an okay conversation? Or would it only be reasonable if my reply didn't exist or was different? Is that all something you would characterize as "vote blue no matter who"?
Thats an ok conversation I guess. But, in order to make your defense, you had to willfully ignore the fact that biden (and both party leaders) have a very pro israel/netanyahu stance and all of them are sponsored by pro israel money which, I believe, is what the comment you replied to was saying, even if this specific issue wasnt directly related to biden Thats what I would call blind/dishonest support for team blue.
Okay cool. That is my point though! People are painting /c/politics as this weird echo chamber of pro-Israel pro-genocide lovefest for Biden's policies when it is the total opposite, and then using that as an excuse to be just as partisan and dishonest in the anti- direction as they are claiming (wrongly) that people are being in the pro- direction.
I absolutely do not do that. I actually probably would have been in the comments as one of the people talking about what a bunch of shit it was that Schumer was pushing this stupid idea, except that I got distracted by the totally weird and bad-faith attempt to link it to Biden.
I do think that it's notable that Biden has nothing to do with this effort. Biden's actually been deliberately snubbing Bibi from this kind of thing for quite some time, refusing to meet with him in the White House and meeting him in some hotel instead when he finally did sit down with him, and courting his political rivals, all of which I'm sure pisses him off.
That doesn't honestly mean all that much to me one way or another for as long as he's providing weapons for the genocide. But if you're gonna get all up in arms about the US government inviting Netanyahu and giving him honors, I think it might potentially be relevant that Biden actually goes out of his way to do the opposite, and definitely is relevant to call out if someone is trying to link Biden to this thing when he has nothing to do with it.
And again, like you said, the conversation seems fine. It's an exchange of views. Some I agree with and some I don't. I don't see where this "oh no without ozma where we will go for the voice in the wilderness that will say anything against Israel or the US government... on LEMMY..." attitude even comes from, which makes me likely to see it as a disingenuous effort to promote a very, very, very slanted viewpoint as a "counter" to the imaginary attitude.
There are certainly users who would prefer that c/politics be what you just described, and enforced as such.