I feel like things on Lemmy were pretty chill several months ago, and that’s started to change.
People used to talk each other like they would talk to a neighbor. Now I get the sense that people have become quick to be negative, attack, and not be constructive.
Am I crazy in feeling like the vibe has changed?
Tolerance always has a limit. And the one thing any tolerant society can never tolerate are intolerant people - because they will destroy that society. Trump and his followers are the very definition of intolerant.
Thus the “if you are tolerant, you have to tolerate me” argument is often used by aforementioned nutbags or internet trolls, and I very much hope you fall into the latter category.
And regarding stupidity - sadly there is no mechanism to ensure that it is fairly distributed. A less than ideal public school system paired with the propaganda of media conglomerates can easily result in a society with half the population considered “dumb” (not really stupid, but brainwashed / uneducated with a lack of critical thinking and/or a lack of basic scientific knowledge …) - but I would not judge the US population that quickly. Trump is probably also a symptom of the broken US democracy.
I certainly didn’t write “if you are tolerant then you have to tolerate me”. However what I wrote I can’t recall. Something about not being so nasty to dumb people. I stand by that statement. I don’t speak ill of dumb people or Trump supporters as a whole. The only reason to do such a thing is to incite anger from a group.