(07-13-2016, 08:34 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: I have often wondered if one of the reason that the old forum was shut down was because so many people had begun to use it for personal attack.
That often happens.
There was one creep, a vile antisemite (Holocaust denier) who accused me at a tough point in my life of being a homosexual child molester. Because I had no problem with homosexuality I let the accusation of homosexuality slide by. But child molestation?
I had recently been a substitute teacher and wanted to go back to that line of work after I had ceased being a caretaker for my recently-deceased mother who had died of Parkinsonism (she was in a nursing home and she needed either my father or me to be there so that she could be fed at he meals. I was scared that an accusation of child sexual abuse of any kind would ruin my potential for a career that I actually enjoyed.
I told that creep that I had gone to church. In a session in which people were talking about their concerns mostly of health and finances I noticed that the youth minister was getting little attention. My concern was very different from cancer, heart disease, and other often-terminal illnesses. The youth minister heard my concern, and we decided to pray... for the troll who was tormenting me. I am not a homosexual and I can imagine far worse, let alone a child abuser. The problem wasn't with me. After all, it seemed like something that one of my heroes, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., did about his enemies. Pray for the segregationist or the Klansman, the person who needs the most help from God.
I posted such on the Forum and he mocked me. "You, f@g! Praying for me! What a hypocrite!"
Maybe the power of prayer is over-rated. Some people just don't get the message.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.