KCLK Politics

First off, my bad—I don't hang out in this corner of the forum much, so I totally missed that the rules for starting new threads had changed.

So, I’m curious: why were my posts in the COVID-19 thread hit so hard? Getting labeled as "crackpot nonsense" feels a bit much. Look, we’re seeing these totally useless and damaging "epidemiological" mandates that are absolutely crushing small business owners—people who are basically keeping both the government and its officials afloat.

The way these measures are being handled is causing massive disagreement globally. It’s getting pretty obvious that this is more of a political circus than a health issue. Yet, somehow, a moderator decided they were qualified to slap me down just because my take clashes with their personal views rather than actual forum rules. I wasn't insulting anyone, and I didn't say anything offensive or wild. I just shared an opinion that goes against the official political narrative.

It’s clear that this kind of heavy-handed censorship of free speech is popping up everywhere on public platforms lately, but until recently, this forum felt like one of the few places where you could actually speak your mind.

Suppressing free speech like this—something people used to value above almost everything else as a cornerstone of civilization—is honestly more shameful than any "stupid" opinion a "stupid" person might drop here. This isn't some high-level scientific symposium; it's a forum.

At the end of the day, the "harm" caused by a single dissenting opinion is practically zero.

So, please, can someone above KCLK take a look at those posts? I can't even link them because they've already been wiped. I'd really appreciate it if someone could re-evaluate whether they actually deserved those 500 and 100 point penalties!

Thanks.

My bad. The posts weren't actually deleted. The forum was just lagging so much I didn't realize they were still sitting right there on the thread.

Look, you can push back against mandates, and plenty of people are doing exactly that—truth be told, I’m right there with them...

But claiming "this virus kills 0.2% of the elderly population," or suggesting this whole "deadly pathogen" is just a scheme to crush small businesses and turn everyone into state dependents, while calling anyone who doesn't see through the conspiracy "mindless sheep"... well, that’s a completely different conversation altogether...

lonebadger6 (my bad for misspelling your handle in the title, but I got it right in the body), look, I get it. What you’re saying here definitely earns you a massive penalty—I’d be handing out 100 or 500 points myself if I were in your shoes. But honestly? If we’re actually talking about sticking to intellectual honesty and basic academic integrity, then half the people posting on the COVID-19 threads in the Politics section should probably be banned for saying the exact same stuff I just did. Not even kidding.

So, I asked for someone higher up the food chain than you to weigh in and give these posts a grade.

I know, I know—it’s a huge pain to have to read through all this, and if anyone disagrees, it feels like a direct hit to your authority. But hey, if another supermod jumps in and agrees totally with how strict you're being with this rating, then fine. I'll just back off. I'm not gonna keep pushing for a review.

We don't catch every single message, unfortunately, and I'm sure some things slipped through the cracks, especially since so much of that kind of stuff used to get flagged...

Then again, maybe those other hundred posts are just extra noise, mostly coming from reports, but five hundred is plenty as a total count, and since there’s only a week's difference, I’d say just wipe the record clean, and we can let the supermod decide if anything else actually needs fixing...

Look, I feel like I’ve got a right to some self-defense here, so I'm gonna lay out briefly why I think this penalty is way over the top.

In that post that got slapped with 500 points and labeled as "crackpot conspiracy theories and nonsense," I didn't actually say anything that should be causing a massive outcry or total outrage.

And I wasn't spreading lies either, because according to the data (Dr. Ioannidis)
mortality sits around 0.2% for the global population, and that kind of outcome mostly applies to, well, old people. I don't know when being an "old person" became such a politically incorrect thing to say, but apparently, it is now.
The survival rate for this disease if you're under 70 is 99.95%. That's what Dr. Bhattacharya from Stanford says.

Plus, I didn't say the "goal of the deadly virus is to destroy small business owners," because a virus definitely can't have (that kind of) conscious intent—common sense still works for me, after all—rather, one of the goals of this whole farce is to achieve that through certain measures.

Basically, I think that after all the illogical nonsense, contradictions, excuses, lies, and double standards being shoved down our throats by world leaders—and especially our own leadership here in the US—thinking this way isn't a sign of a broken mind obsessed with conspiracies or lizard people. If this whole situation weren't so tragic, it would actually be funny.
Take churches, for example. They aren't some huge factor in filling up the government budget; if anything, they're draining it. Yet they stay open. And to make the farce and madness even bigger, the most vulnerable group—the elderly and the sick—is being gathered there, while we're supposed to protect them by shutting down restaurants where the least risky people hang out. A hundred facepalms wouldn't even cover how ridiculous this decision is.

Moving on, I don't see anything controversial about saying the state wants people to be economically dependent on them. Economic dependency is a rock-solid way to increase influence, power, control, and manipulation. Those are just historical facts. I didn't make that up.

One last thing—I didn't call "everyone else who doesn't get this big conspiracy theory" sheep. I called sheep the ones who haven't even stopped to think about what economic dependency actually implies.

Hey there,
let me try this one more time...
so, here's the deal: does this post actually merit 500 points?

I’m looking for an answer from someone above the mod level, and I’d really appreciate it. It'll help me figure out if I actually wrote a "scarlet letter" kind of post, or if there's just something weird going on with this forum lately... or maybe a third option—is this just someone's personal vendetta? Like, maybe I've been getting on someone's nerves somewhere down the line and they just saw a chance to come down hard on me. If that's the case, I need to know so I can adjust how I approach my (un)writing here.

I really need some clarity because this penalty for this specific post caught me totally off guard.
Thanks.

A colleague mentioned they removed your $100 voucher; your ban duration should be reduced to 7 days. If you aren't automatically unbanned, please post here so someone can manually lift it.

Are you expecting a $500 payout after this intro?

One objective of this whole farce—hiding behind the guise of a "deadly" virus—is to crush small businesses and force more people into state dependency.

I barely had to read much further. I agree with my colleague regarding that voucher. You can phrase things a dozen different ways, and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but the delivery and the context matter just as much as the message itself.

Charles Fox10 said:So, a buddy of mine asked if he could take that $100 card off your hands. If he does, your ban should get cut down to just 7 days. If you don't see the ban lift automatically after that, just jump back in this thread and let us know—someone will go in and manually clear it for you.

What are you even doing, asking for 500 after an intro like that? Honestly, I almost stopped reading right there. And yeah, I’m with the other guy on this—that card is total garbage. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Look, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, sure. But honestly? It’s not just about *what* you say—it’s about how you actually lay it out on the page and the whole vibe of the context you're dropping it in. That makes all the difference.

I'm totally with boldan on this one.
I could’ve phrased this differently, but man, I gotta admit—that article ball posted really set me off. It was about that small business owner who just had his fine slashed by... $10000It’s such a mess, honestly. The tragedy gets even worse when you realize that the actual fines for not wearing a mask aren't even legally active yet. Instead, they somehow found this shady loophole to penalize them under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact... Look, I know enough about the law to know you can't just pull stunts like that, but whatever. Anyway, I already replied to that post from ball.

Thanks to both of you for helping me get that second card off and for all the info.

Following a discussion with my colleague, your ban has been lifted.