It's a free world (allegedly) so stop trying to silence MyLot members who don't agree with you.

Tweet

There are a minority of members on MyLot who seem to think they’re entitled to dictate who can and who can’t have an opinion on certain types of posts. MyLot is a very international site with members from all over the world. No post is likely to make sense (or to appeal) to every member but some members do seem to want to restrict WHO can respond to certain types of posts and to be exceedingly rude to those who don’t meet their qualifying criteria. Let’s take the issue of the US presidential elections and the current jockeying for position of the various candidates. Another issue we non Americans aren’t supposed to have an opinion on is gun control. Apparently anyone who doesn’t live in the USA should keep their stupid mouths shut because they don’t know anything about what’s going on. OK, I’m paraphrasing but that’s the gist of the message. What some in the US may not be aware of is that the rest of us all over the world – whether we like it or not, and most of us don’t like it much – are dragged into the issue of your elections. Firstly our media coverage is pretty much non-stop. We don’t get a vote but believe me, we’ve been bored silly for a long time with the childish behaviour of some of the candidates. We are not commenting in a vacuum because the world’s media are obsessed with your elections. The other thing to keep in mind is that US citizens have a vote – the rest of us don’t, but we still know that we’ll suffer the fall-out of any bad choices taken by the US electorate. The old expression ‘America sneezes and the world gets a cold’ has never been more true than it is today. Some of us – many of us – have seen our countries dragged into wars we wanted no part of in order to back up one Bush or another. Most of us have seen our economies dragged down by financial crises that started in the USA and had a tsunami-like impact around the world. The American president is not just the guy (or gal) who runs America – they’re the person whose actions can impact the lives of people all over the world. It stands to reason that person should not be out-spokenly racist or moronically stupid. So next time you want to have a go at non Americans for having an opinion on big ‘American’ issues like elections and gun control, remember this is an international site and not your own private club with heavily armed guards on the door to keep the riff-raff out. We may not know as much as you do on the topics, but our opinions are our opinions and you’re not entitled to decide if they are right or wrong.