Lash wrote:I never did a count, but I'd be surprised if there weren't less conservatives. We certainly lose most that show up. I think the board will likely be politically homogenous in the near future.
Not likely. Most liberals and leftists who were posting, say, two years ago have left too, either in disappointment or just cause they moved on. Only the hardened usual suspects stay, on either side - and every once in a while, one of them drops out too, and some other incidental poster evolves into a usual suspect. Either way, there's always new ones again too. I'd be surprised if the proportion changes much.
Personally I had the feeling that though there werent probably any
more conservatives, they made up a larger proportion of posts for a long time after the US elections. And the more scornful, attack-mode liberals did too. Probably because many of the milder-mannered moderates on the board moved on to other topics and pre-occupations once the immediacy of the elections disappeared.
I'd expected things to get milder after the elections myself, but Craven explained perfectly why it was only logical that the opposite happened. Cant find his post back, but basically his point was that when, after the subject-intense, wide-audience campaign period, the discourse shrinks back to the limited audience of only the more hardened political geeks and partisans focusing on a more narrow scope of subjects of the day, debate is likely to become more, not less unpleasant.
In any case, on the count of the board becoming "politically homogenous in the near future", one must wonder at the world view that would consider, say, the views of Squinney and Blatham, Soz and me, and Thomas and Panzade, for example, to constitute homogenity. None of them would vote Bush, thats true, but otherwise there's not all that much common ground between the lot, I'd say.
