An update to my "I fully expect to get hides...for annoying Sanders supporters" OP

[tblue37]

50. Steve, FYI--and also for others here in the Hillary group, I used to frequently refuse

jury service because to do it properly I feel I must read all posts in the thread or subthread leading up to the post that was alerted on. I am busy, so I often do not have that kind of time to easily spare.

But after serving on a number of ridiculous alerts on posts for certain high-profile DU members who are also frequently subjected to undisguised bullying that does *not* end up getting hidden, I realized that while the admins are probably correct to claim that alert stalking and jury bias are generally not a problem on DU, the fact that such things do not affect most members or most posts or most alerts and juries doesn't mean that they don't affect certain specific members or certain specific topics.

I realized after several truly absurd alerts that alert stalking does happen, but since it is quite "localized," it won't show up in a general analysis of all alerts on the whole site for a limited amount of time.

After realizing that some DUers were being bullied and some topics were being slyly censored by such means, I realized that I owe it to the DU community and especially to those who are being bullied to agree to jury duty every time I am asked, unless it really is impossible to spare the time.

My inclination is toward free-wheeling discussion, not suppression of ideas one disagrees with, so I enter jury duty with a bias against hiding. If the post clearly violates the TOS, I vote to hide, and if it is a personal attack on someone I also vote to hide.

But if it just expresses an opinion the alerter dislikes, no hide.

Your hidden post in this thread was clearly not hide worthy, and the hide and some of the excuses for hiding are ridiculous.

BTW, I am a Bernie supporter. If Hillary is nominated, I will support her wholeheartedly, but I hope Bernie wins the primary (though I honestly doubt that he will).

The nastiness you see from Bernie supporters is coming from a small group of aggressive people, not from most of us, so I wish you would not assume we are generally like that--or that Bernie himself is to blame for the fact that some of his supporters are jackasses.

A small number of Hillary's supporters act nasty to Bernie's supporters, too, but I know perfectly well that they do not represent the general group or Hillary herself.

These nasty, aggressive people on both sides are the sort of people who always use their "cause" as a weapon against others and as a justification for their anger and bullying. Every good cause has obnoxious (or even vicious) supporters whom reasonable advocates are embarrassed to be associated with.

I also believe that at least some of the worst behavior is actually a manifestation not of genuine support but rather of Rove style ratf***ing or Limbaugh stle Operation Chaos. Even worse, I suspect that the "deep state," including a certain element in the intelligence community, that serves the wealthiest and most powerful people and institutions (especially the MIC) could easily be doing everything they can to sow discord to divide any movement trying to put into office individuals who might act to curb their power.

We who genuinely support Bernie or Hillary need to keep in mind that despite our disagreements, we are ultimately on the same side, so we must not try to destroy the other candidate or alienate her/his supporters, because we will all need to work together to prevent a wholly owned GOP puppet candidate from becoming POTUS.