| No worries, here are the words/phrases that set off alarms for me: > a profound absence of (historical) awareness > weird, presumptuous, sophomoric sanctimoniousness > strange insistence > [the whole Jonestown (?) bit as a metaphor – at least a little disproportionate, no?] > I hear the same cluelessness in this piece I guess the issue is the number of negative terms and characterizations all crammed into one paragraph. It just seems to lay it on too heavy. The writer is clearly wrestling with something and trying to process it, and the post has tapped into broader sentiment here, given the amount of front page time and discussion, so the dismissal seemed excessively scathing. It may be that you underestimated how strongly your words come across to the reader, which is a common pitfall with online discussion forums; words often don't seem as harsh when we formulate them in our own mind as they do when read by others. |