Can someone explain why a mod keeps locking threads invoking philosophical questions or sentiment raised in an attempt to decipher and solve the current American political quagmire?
Sure. We are not interested in stream-of-consciousness, College 101 Class, anxiety diary threads. I get that people have nervous energy that they need to expel, but we don't want to be the outlet for that. We welcome threads built around considered, interesting research on the actual causes of the election, or calls to action that mention specific, organized efforts, but we are not really interested in "You Can Fix This By Registering To Vote" or "What If Identity Politics Did/Didn't Make Trump Win" or "Is Reaching Out To The Other Side Worth It Or Not" or "I Think I Am Going To Start A Revolution". As it relates to the threads you have started that got locked, one was a freshman "The Oxford Dictionary Definition of fascism is" take with tons of random bolding and Voxisms like "This Is Not Normal". The other was long ramble about trying to find common ground by saying meaningless platitudes (also included random bolding) to start a viral campaign. We are literally never interested in any threads of someone trying to start a viral campaign ever in any circumstance ever.
My understanding is you are not American nor living in America. This does not mean you cannot have an opinion about US politics. I live in the US but can't vote because I'm not a citizen. I spoke at great length about US politics when I didn't live here, and I will again after I leave here. But it does mean that your project to Solve America is extremely low credibility. Taking part in conversations and sharing news makes total sense, but trying to be a nexus for organizing Americans doesn't. And frankly it's a little patronizing, just as the reverse would be.
But also my question is who do you think are reaching? America's problems aren't that a bunch of college educated video game fans haven't thought about basic civics (and to the extent they are, they won't be solved by someone bolding Wikipedia quotations for them). They are deep and structural. Actual experts who dedicate their lives to making progress on these challenges find them sisyphean, so we don't need hype threads for someone who started watching the news and wants to make a difference. I'm sorry if that sounds rude. Glad you are interested in thinking about these problems, maybe listen for a little while before you jump in to the doing and saying part.
Why is more dumb news about Steve fucking Bannon any more important than people here coming together in trying to fully understand the core of the problem in an attempt to solve it?
This says a lot about how your approach to fixing America is a non-starter: it matters a great deal about what the President's policy advisors think, and report in public. Part of renewing American Democracy will be having a strong media and a civic consensus behind a strong media. The conversation about trust in media, media bubbles, polarization, and fake news is extremely important. A lot more important than saying "Aww shucks, sometimes we talk past each other, we should really break out of our bubbles" No shit.
I was just about to post this in the latest one:
But of course, the thread got locked within 5 posts.
I don't know which thread you mean. If it's the 150th "Wow, What Happened When Trump Got Elected Was Bad" thread, then it got locked because it's useless anxiety spam and already being discussed in literally every thread. If it's the guy who posted the Reddit Atheist / Gamergator video talking about how some other Reddit Atheist wants to create a pressure group to primary the Democratic party, complete with a list of 10 "facts", none of which are substantiated, expressed in what amounts to a Deal With It meme, then we locked it because that is absolutely not the basis for good discussion. I can't think of any other dumb threads we locked in the last hour, but I'm sure I'm missing 40 or 50.
If this isn't enough to understand what we are looking for in a thread, well, I just recommend not posting threads at all. This is not an invitation to continue a derail about how you don't like our moderation and I don't have any further followup to offer besides this.