All of the mad threads seemed to have this in common. Instead of specific posters we suddenly 'That person who represents this evil thing, and therefore...'

This is spot on, from what I can glean.  

Moreover, people have not just been treated as personifications of arguments and beliefs, but somewhat confined to roles.  X is the new age person, X is the anarchist, X is the intolerant atheist, X is the nationalist, X is the Atlanticist, X is the troublemaker, X is the clown, X is the curmudgeon, X is the diva...   It's probably quite natural and not meant to be malicious.  But this is real life, not a novel or play, and no one consistently represents one idea or fills one role.   Especially here at ET where people are constantly having their horizons expanded and being asked to prove the credibility of their assertions and to step out of their comfort zones.

Many of the recent tiffs make no sense to many of us; the responses seems so unnecessarily disproportionate or overly sensitive and feel distracting.  Perhaps, rather than taking comments in their immediate and logical context, we may be interpreting them according to our preconceived ideas about the person(s) making them or our expectations of their ulterior motivations.  

This is a pet peeve of mine because 1) fault is just as likely to lie with the person's preconceived ideas as with the person whose comments are being judged, 2) no one acts consistently over time: our personal mood, new information, or comfort with our situation can determine our motives just as much as any ideology or personality trait and 3) even if the preconceived ideas are correct, the comments may still have a good point, which will be missed because our focus was elsewhere, looking for the fault.

And if your are looking for something, you might think you've found it when it isn't even there.  It's called a bias.  We notice it when journalists write about France or Russia and it drives us berserk.  We notice it when fundamentalists explain events which have quite logical causes as conspiracies or divine plans and it makes us exasperated.  But ... are we willing to acknowledge that we too sometimes fall into this intellectual laziness?  I mean, we're a pretty freaking intelligent group here.  We'll admit to all kinds of vices and lurid activities and shortcomings.  But not bias.  Not intellectual shortcuts!  That's ET's version of the Holy Grail.  Which may be why we seem to be dancing around a problem while not solving it or communicating past each other.  Maybe that's the elephant in the room.  Even we are capable of bias - even against one another.  Even we are susceptible to allowing our emotions and agendas trump our critical reasoning abilities.  Even we might invent a narrative about ET to counter the annoying phenomenon of stuff not always making sense in a way that conforms to our worldview.  Can it be possible?  And can we graciously acknowledge its possibility without taking a sever hit to our pride?

Look, we might be exceptional, but we are not THAT exceptional.  Of course we do these things.  This is a blog, a medium that hardly encourages reflection and patience and with-holding of judgement!  We are not robots.  We are not omniscient.  We are humans with infinite demands on our lives.  We are not Dostoevsky characters who are good ideas or bad ideas walking about on 2 legs.  And let me remind you, that those Dostoevsky characters were like masters of the flame war.  

...

OMG maybe this IS a Dostoevsky novel!!!  Think about it.  You have the believers and the non-believers.  The hedonists and the stoics.  The progressive reformers and the commie anarchists.  The nobility and the riff-raff.  The ruined women and the unrequited love.  The hysterics and the philosophical debates.  The plots, the plans, the people who show up outta nowhere and ruffle things up.  The manifestos.  No murders so far.  But how many of us belong to that "people with names no one can spell" fb group?  And wasn't Twank just suggesting a fancy-dress ball?  Uh huh...

Well, either this 1) is a Dostoevsky novel, which means we're all not real people and someone is going to get killed and there's nothing any of us can do about it or 2) is not a Dostoevsky novel, which means we're each more than characters who personify an idea or archetype and so it would behoove us to keep that in mind was we do this blogging thing.  And also no one has to get killed.  

Which is good.

Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.