Has anyone seen the list of hosts for this group? Thoughts?

[OnTheOtherHand]

33. mmmm

You seem to have a sense of humor, so I'll go with that. But it isn't so obvious to me why it's "of course" that "anyone who believes the OC story put out by government" are fairly construed as "foxes" and someone who disagrees with it is a "hen."

(I'm not sure what you mean by the "OC story," but presumably something like this: 19 men hijacked planes and flew three of them into buildings, two of which collapsed from direct and indirect damage rather than controlled demolition, and no one in the U.S. government actively planned the attacks or deliberately acted to permit them. It seems to me that every element of that story, and then some, should be subject to discussion.)

I don't think the politics here are all that complicated. People tend to have a prevailing opinion orientation (fox/hen?!). Separately, people tend to vary in their propensity for open discussion versus tribalism. For instance, see greyl's post above. I think Bolo's response to greyl makes a lot of sense, but I also think all three of us agree that it's important to discuss issues on the merits -- not just to take sides based on our team membership. People who seem interested in discussing issues on the merits tend to be more widely respected than people who seem mostly interested in fanning flames, flinging poo, keeping score, or whatever, regardless of which side they are on.

spooked911 is a great example. He disagrees so utterly with many, many of the posters here -- even many whom you might construe as on the same side -- that he and his critics, including me, sometimes speculated out loud about what the disagreements were 'really' about. Nevertheless, it's always apparent that spooked takes the issues seriously, is willing to talk seriously about them, and isn't predisposed to attack people simply for disagreeing. That's why he had (still has, I think) so much support as a host.

As for what it takes to get banned around here, that might be complicated; in general, it isn't all that easy, but do read the terms of service (and the comments by Bolo and Joe). DU is not intended to be a bastion of "free speech" in the abstract, but neither does it enforce mindless conformity or subservience to the admins.