re: #184 ozbloke

Maybe the issue was that your first post re patriotism posed the question without qualifiers or rhetorical softeners (e.g. “I don’t mean that as a criticism”, “not that that’s necessarily a bad thing”, etc).

The question hanging by itself like that made it possible for people to project all kinds of less-than-positive interpretations upon it (and it doesn’t help matters that we frequently get trolled with vague or passive-aggressive “hint-hint” one-liner posts deliberately meant to cause discord and start fights)