And yet the other commenter was, in the same breath, telling me to “get over it” – literally to forgive, to abandon pursuing the debt he had created with his words.

Interesting that you would not allow me the same freedom of choice: to not forgive when that other commenter is verbally abusive toward me personally.

Uh... I never said you had to get over it. That was the other guy.

I also don't agree that "getting over it" and "forgiving" are the same thing-- to me, getting over it means to move past obsessing over a wrong, while forgiving means to... well, forgive the "debt" it has incurred, ie. treat the person as if they had not committed the wrong.

I realize now (due to another commenter in the thread) that you may be using slightly different definitions of "forgive", "get over it", "move past", "reconcile", etc. than I am. I am not purposely being disingenuous by thinking of these words differently.

I do disagree that it is unreasonable for me to assume that by "forgive" you meant to encourage reconciliation. Your original comment used language like (bolded):

As Abraham Lincoln famously said, there is more than one way to destroy an enemy. If you make him your friend, you have also destroyed your enemy.

For myself, I will gladly welcome anyone who has seen the error of their ways. It has been a BRUTAL fucking ten years and while the left is fine, I want ALL my American homies back.

These are all statements that indicate you intend to reconcile and renew relationships with the people you are telling the commenter to forgive. You don't necessarily say that they should do the same, but to someone like myself or (I presume) OP, who thinks of forgiveness as creating a state where there is no reason not to reconcile, it seems to be a suggestion.

So, to skip any further ambiguity, let me ask you: What exactly do you suggest when you say OP should forgive those who harmed them? To stop obsessing over the wrongs? To not pursue accountability or remediation for them if given the opportunity? To treat their relationships with those people as if those wrongs were not important, or to forget/ignore the wrongs entirely? To reconcile?

As a separate issue, it's pretty crazy imo to equate real social, financial, and oftentimes physical (not to the OP, but it happens to many lgbtq people in the south) harm done against one due to their identity, and someone getting mad at you on the internet for trying to get them to forgive those harms. This is basically the tolerance of intolerance "paradox", or the "I want to kill you"/"I disagree"/"I see no difference between you two" meme. If your meaning of forgiveness includes accepting the wrongs or exposing yourself to future wrongs, then:

1. People harmed OP (wrong)
2. You perpetuate that harm by telling OP to accept it and/or allow themselves to be harmed in the future (also wrong)
3. OP responded to you perpetuating that harm by defending themself (right!)

Of course, this depends on if you intended to tell OP to let themself be harmed, or if you just wanted to tell them to stop obsessing over past harm; if it's the latter, then you did not do anything wrong and so OP attacking you was not justified. My point here is that attacking you is right if it's justified, and wrong if it's not; it's not always wrong to attack someone, so you can't assume OP and the people who hurt him are equally wrong simply because they were both hostile. The reason for that hostility is the sole determiner of its morality.