Try having a civilized debate with a Freeper

[scottcsmith]

I had my Free Republic account fired up and was participating in a non-trolling manner. I came across the following thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1103618/posts?page=36#36

They call it the "Useful Idiot Caption-A-Rama"

Now, if you actually look at the photos you'll find one of a woman holding a sign with photos of two young soldiers (or it may be two photos of the same soldier). The caption on her sign reads "Iraqi Oil Isn't Worth my Son's Blood." The caption for the photo reads, "Ah, our old friend, 'No Blood For Oil,' so well-aged, so evidence free..."

This was my response to the caption:

Posted by scecilsmith to Mr. Silverback
On General Interest (Chat) 03/23/2004 4:39:38 PM PST #36 of 38

"I don't understand the point of insulting family members of troops who have died in Iraq, as you did with the photo of the woman holding the "blood for oil" sign. Suppose the two young men in the photo were her sons and they were killed in Iraq? Do you have any sympathy or do you just dismiss her anguish as liberal posturing?"

And that, my friends, was enough to get BANNED.

[Maat]

1. You're kidding, right?

Alas, I know you are not. These guys always lie about wanting diverse views. All they want is parrots. And this ol' lady (me) says that you were rather polite. I guess polite disagreement doesn't make it with them.

[scottcsmith]

2. Well, what's weird...

Free Republic's mission statement talks about being pro-family and pro-military. Yet the moderator has no problem with someone posting photos of what appear to be grieving family members protesting the war in Iraq with smart-ass captions. The message is clear: liberal family members of troops who have died in Iraq are free game for attack. It's sickening.

[VOX]

3. "Civilized" and "Freeper"...

Never, never, never use these two words in the same sentence!

:evilgrin:

[Dookus]

4. Not surprising

I got banned there after on epost. Soembody had started a thread about the Vaxgen AIDS vaccine trials and made a snide comment about how it protocol worked. I was a volunteer subject in the study, so I posted this:

"Actually, I was a volunteer subject for that study, and would be happy to answer any respectful questions you may have."

The post was deleted and my account banned within 2 minutes.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

5. A running "joke" on fr.com is people pretending they didn't know

Kerry was a Vietnam Vet (sarcasm over how the Kerry campaign uses this). But occasionally people question the legitimacy of Kerry's decorations etc. without any knowledge of his actual service, with some actually requesting information about his service. In response to one such thread I posted the following link:

http://www.boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061603.shtml

without even any commentary text, as I feel this is still the most informative article I've yet seen on the subject. Within a very short time (less than a day I think), my post was deleted and I was banned.

And since then I've seen the same issue hashed over at least a few times "Did Kerry really earn his Silver Star, I heard you could get one for just being a rich kid etc. (then why doesn't SHRUB have one?)". Of course I've completely stopped going to that site.