👋 Howdy y'all.   I wanted to tell you that I've decided to: Revoke all existing moderators. Ask all committed right-wing members of the forum to leave. I realize this may seem extreme and come as a shock to many. I'll do my best to explain where I'm coming from, what this means for the forum moving forward and I'll also request help.     > WTF?   Pas de replâtrage, la structure est pourrie. No replastering, the structure is rotten.   I made a fundamental mistake in the foundational ethos for this forum: believing that "no insults, be nice" is a powerful enough core virtue to sustain a diverse, healthy community.   The problem with "just be nice" is that it's impotent in the face of organized malice.   In a society where marginalized people often suffer invisibly, taking a clear, assertive stance against the creeping normalization of bigotry and even outright fascism whenever possible is far more important than being "nice" merely to avoid rattling an oppressive status quo.   I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." — Martin Luther King, Jr.   > This is about Trump, isn't it?   Donald Trump is a menacing buffoon but also mostly a disgusting symptom of a very sick society.   He's also a kind of litmus test for how deranged I find someone's morality. Being anti-Trump is not "partisan" (if being nonpartisan is even possible or noble). One of the lowest ethical bars I can imagine is finding Trump repugnant.   I'm not even going to waste time enumerating Trump's voluminous flaws and demonic policy positions. If you're pro-Trump you almost certainly already know and don't care.   This isn't a debate. We have deeply incompatible values, and I'm drawing a line in the sand.   > What should pro-Trump and other far-right members of the forum do now?   You should leave.   If you're pro-Trump, I'm asking you to leave this forum. You're not welcome here anymore.   If you're right-wing, please leave.   We might need a bullet list. Here we go: If you're pro-Trump, please leave. If you're right-wing, please leave. If you're pro-border wall, pro-ICE, racist, homophobic, transphobic or misogynist, please fuck off and leave. The web is awash with other far-right friendly dumpsters you can crawl into.   If you think it's unacceptable that I'm booting members with dangerous, disgusting, antisocial politics, you should probably leave too.   (Sidenote: If you're some strange brew of anti-fascist, social anarchist, left-libertarian, or anti-authoritarian, democratic Marxist, socialist or communist infidel, please stay and help me raise hell! ✊ Are there any other leftists here? 👀)   > This is an outrage!! ** shits entire diaper ** You're the real fascist, watch this 4-hour Youtube video, something something ...   I'm unfortunately acutely aware that if you're being asked to leave that you're not going to understand this decision.   I trust that you're going to settle on a self-serving narrative in which I'm a cartoon, totalitarian-communist, "cultural Marxist" suppressor of your patriotic free speech. I'm a hysterical, intolerant "snowflake" that can't stand proximity to your brilliant, hard-truths, lest I be destroyed by sheer "facts and logic".   I don't care. I've made peace with your ignorance.   Allow me to repeat for those in the back: This isn't a debate. We have deeply incompatible values. So much so that I'm asking you to leave my forum without further discussion.   > Did the moderators do anything wrong?   I sincerely appreciate the time and energy the previous team put into tending to the forum. If they made mistakes in terms of moderating, I'd hedge they were mostly a result of inheriting the laissez-faire, lazy-white-guy ethos that I unfortunately fostered and encouraged.   If you were a part of the previous team and are not being asked to leave and you still want to help out, please PM me.   > But this is a spiritual forum!   Spirituality without material roots is a dead tree, my friend.   The notion that spiritual cultivation, of all things, should somehow be categorically divorced from moral maturation and praxis is a "bad take".   This forum has always strived to be a big tent for all manner of weirdos from diverse spiritual and sociopolitical backgrounds.   But there have also been times when new boundaries needed to be set. This is one of them.   > But what about the terrible things that Obama, Hillary, etc. have done?   As I said, I'm not going to debate, and this isn't a political 101 education forum.   For what it's worth, here are some of my recent thoughts on the center-right led Democratic party and the rise of Trumpism: The Democratic Party is not inculpable for Trumpism Trump is not a unique Republican If the grotesque insincerity of center-right Democrats (e.g. Clinton and Obama) are the reason that anyone reading this has hitched to the neoreactionary Trump dump-truck, please find a local shaman to unbind this rotten hex. There's a better and much more magical way forward. ✨   > I'm not right or left, I'm a truth-seeker, you're being unreasonable.   I've found that people who claim they're "neither right nor left," especially U.S. citizens, are usually center-right at best. (And often worse, e.g., right-wing libertarians or crypto-antisemitic conspiracy-theorists.)   The political terms "left" and "right" have ideological meaning. Likewise "centrism" is not defined via an attempt to locate a compromised middle ground somewhere between right-wing Republican monsters and diet-right-wing corporatist Democrats.   I've written more about this here: This is what passes for "reasonable" politics.   > What about free speech?   There's a popular notion that the only civilized approach to social disagreement is to always hear out "all sides" in the "free marketplace of ideas", an imaginary immaterial abstraction. That opinions, no matter how brain-dead stupid or toxic, should always be honored and meticulously ironed out via public "intellectual" debate.   But this kind of free speech absolutism is often a pretentious stance weaponized to platform memetic bigotry and silence already marginalized views.   By extreme analogy, imagine if there were pro-slavery members on this forum. My stance is that it's a complete waste of time to argue with these people. It would pollute our space with the delusion that both sides of this "debate" are legitimate.   I think most of us would agree that bans of racist and violent speech are appropriate. I'm drawing a new, firmer line in the sand.   No racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, climate change denial, fascism, crypto-fascism, antisocial bigotry, or far-right bullshit in general (including QAnon and Pizzagate lunacy).   There are plenty of other reactionary ashcans on the Internet for these "very fine folks" to brigade.   Speech is not harmless. Speech has real, immediate, direct, material consequences on other human beings. Implicitly allowing socially toxic rhetoric to continue platforming itself unchecked in a space, poisons that space, and disproportionately harms the least powerful.   > This is a slippery slope, where will it end?   Fully automated luxury gay space communism, obviously. You should probably leave now before the communism and gay-stuff starts happening. 🍆💦   > This seems exclusionary and mean.   It's exclusionary and not nice, but I don't think it's mean, at least not senselessly.   Ask yourself, how many thoughtful, gracious members of this forum have quietly left after seeing relatively uncontested right-wing bullshit plastered across the forums here? I'm aware of several personally.   And I don't think the bullshit here is undisputed because of implicit support. I think it's merely sidestepped for the same reason most reasonable people avoid challenging someone screaming evangelical diatribes on the subway. It's literally just not worth the effort. i.e., "the amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."   There's plenty of other subways on the internet to scream inside. This one is no longer tolerating right-wing bullshit.   > Are we abandoning confused people who maybe need this forum the most?   Meh. I think this question comes from a decent place. But this isn't a political education forum. My stance is that we need to reestablish a bare minimum baseline of shared values.   > Are you still with me?   If so, that must mean: You weren't asked to leave. You think it's okay and even very good that I've gone full heruka. Welcome! I'm delighted to have you here. I hope you'll stay. ❤️   And I hope you'll stand in solidarity with me as I perch precariously on this fraught limb I've now climbed out on. It's my sincere hope that we can reclaim and reenchant The Dao Bums as a weird-left-friendly space again.   > Will you help me?   I do need your help. In fact I won't be able to do this without you. Please PM me if you're interested in helping our community. There will be free snacks. 🙃   With Love, Sean