Emails work well as an alternative to private messaging. The things that are on the forum are meant for everyone to see. Sometimes the direction of the thread gets side tracked and the delivery of the post becomes slightly too political, but things like this happen. In times like this, it's probably good practice to only pay attention to those who are making statements, rather than those who defer them.

Seems like the only threads which end up this way are the ones about worldcat. You are welcome to make your own hypothesis as to why that happens.