I got into trouble "defending" Darren Wilson, unfortunately. And all that I ever said was that, by law, he was innocent until proven guilty and that he was entitled to the rights afforded him through the judicial system.
I never indicated whether I (personally) thought he was innocent. But I certainly believe that everyone, including Darren Wilson, is entitled to their rights under the law. Because I dared even broach the subject rather than going along with the prevalent angry mentality on DU at that moment, I got slammed. Posters were not reading what I wrote with comprehension, but were only seeing the name "Darren Wilson" and the word "innocent" in the same paragraph, and getting mad over that.
It was the first time in ten years on DU that I'd been followed around and had other posters say that they thought I was a racist. It hurt a lot, particularly, since I was at one time married to someone outside of my own race. I considered leaving DU over it, too, because I felt the discussion group had reached a new low and was going in the wrong direction.
Then I realized that this particular group was just a bunch of mean-spirited people who were not allowing discussion on a DISCUSSION board. They were trying to make it "their way or the highway" and if someone didn't subscribe to their hate mongering to the degree THEY deemed appropriate, that they were trying to squelch discussion. They were obviously either not taking the time to comprehend postings, or were too ignorant to comprehend what had been written. I noticed that these posters were getting very high post counts in short periods of time. For me, I don't post just to increase my post count.
At that point, I put the most volatile of them on ignore, and I haven't missed a thing.
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