Well, off topic supports all friendly and peaceful interactions as a topic. Political/religious debate is not supported in any official forum topic. However, political debate is supported here:
http://www.chess.com/groups/view/open-discussion
Enjoy
Why no politics in Off Topic?
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Man... I guess I got on my soapbox for nothing. Well, okay. It still seems to me like chess.com lacks faith in the basic decency of humanity, but I've joined the Open Discussion group for now.
MelanieJungreis wrote:
He won with close to 65 million the 1rst time, the 2nd time with over 75 million votes…. This time if America is awake, and not poisoned by all the propaganda….he should win with over 100 million votes
Wrong place for trump debate
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Putting aside the fact that several current threads all but directly debate politics, the "no politics" rule does not make any sense to me for the Off Topic section of the forum. In fact, I find it extremely discouraging.
I know that politics can pull people apart at times. This polarization of political viewpoints seems especially pronounced these days, at least in the United States. I blame partisan news sources, conservative and progressive alike, that turn the political conversation into a list of overly simplified arguments, into a battleground where you are either in one camp or the other, into a place where any kind of subtlety or nuanced understanding is not tolerated or even understood.
Despite the fact that the internet has a long and storied history of political discussions turning ugly, what better place to calmly and rationally discuss politics than in a chess forum, where we all know we share at least one common interest? Two, if you count being alive and breathing and stuff.
Prohibiting political discussion just seems hopelessly cynical, to me, and, if anything, seems only to reinforce what is problematic in contemporary politics - this kind of fear that if anything relating to current events gets brought up, we'll all bite each others' heads off. We have more faith in ourselves than that, don't we? Can't we trust ourselves to use reason and, at worst, politely disagree?
And let me be the first to admit I have not always been a saint when it comes to debating in these or other forums. I'm human, thus imperfect. I'm working on it.