One of the things that I really liked about Steemit in it's first few months was that there was very little of the typical internet trolling in political discussion.

The reputation and reward system kept things on a mostly courteous basis. Obviously, we are people, and some on the extremes wouldn't bother themselves with that...those people had very little success here!

And even though no one had much success in convincing others of our own positions...we are, after all, people who have a human tendency to believe what we believe and an aversion to rationality ;>...we had interesting and polite discussions.

This was very hard for me. Even though a minor theme in my discussion of critical thinking is the nature of stupidity, and how common it really is, few things set me into greater and irrational bouts of anger than stupidity does. By nature I tend to be sarcastic and judemental, and it takes effort not to wiseass folks who make, IMO, "stupid" comments

So I had my episodes of playing Steve the Asshole. It happened. I usually recognized and apologized for the behavior. In fact, I sometimes have to make a note when I am commenting that what I say is not intended to be offensive...just on a read before posting I notice that it does sound that way.

A specific change to this

I have seen this twice now since Charlottesville...the throwing out of a platitude in regards to the situation in which the commenter makes no effort to find out what happened, but to tell the Right to be civil...

...after a year of riot and assault and two years of political assassination carried out by the Left, these commenters have said nothing about that violence and political oppression.

So for those of you that throw willfully ignorant platitudes on my page, you will get the full dose of Steve the Asshole

And I am good at it ;>