>Here's my only point (and Thomas, I acknowledge that you are one of the few with a good track record for keeping it real)

thx.
>
>Over the last several years, political views, opinions, positions have come into the IT world. You can see it on Twitter.
>I have noticed the following pattern:
>
>However, if a person posts inflammatory statements that come from another far area, that IT person is more likely to have their overall thought process challenged. I stopped talking to someone years ago because the person started associating 'general cognitive dissonance' with supporting one candidate (our now former President), and that it was probably a reflection of their skills.
>
Such a pattern does exist. My take on it is to keep head up, act to my own beliefs where a sanity check once in a while is warranted, but not constant self-reflection and and flip-flop. I was and am drawn to this watering hole by the thread drift - vfp/programming knowledge probably is/was not distributed that uneven. Here are regulars with wide differences in their "bedrock principles" and with enough smarts to be taken seriously giving other POV and sanity checks. As I think free speech is important and see the trend to give every stream it own separate echo chamber disturbing usually I argue for keeping discussion and membership alive - here for me was a special case.

Trying for finer points like perhaps labeling "Trumpists" Faschist instead of Nazi in discussion with Tamar for instance would be at least bad taste due to her family history and the country I was borne in, as there certainly is large overlap. And since "Jewish Space Lasers" were discussed years ago by current House member I had not seen all details before, so I might be the one not looking hard enough. To close the circle - IMO

https://forward.com/opinion/463295/the-jewish-space-laser-agency-responds-we-didnt-start-the-fire/

was (for me) one of the smartest ways to handle such utterings, which comes back to Naoto.Post.Irony

regards
thomas