Seriously.
Just stop with the ranting and the defending and the hiderating and the uprating and the complaining.
Why?
I'll tell you why.
Because the total sum of your efforts here has not changed anything in a positive way.
Tally up all the time you've spent pounding out comments, engaging in flamewars, hiderating comments, or arguing about hiderated/uprated comments.
Just produce an average day's time (10 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours) etc.
Then multiply it by 365 days.
That's a lot of time, isn't it? Even five minutes a day is 30 hours per year.
Guess what? It was all wasted. If you're an ardent defender/critic of you-know-who, you didn't convince a damn person of anything in all of your efforts. You did 'succeed' in getting a lot of people pissed off, including yourself. Bravo.
Then ask yourself: "did I have anything better to do?" Would this 180 hours have been more productively spent reading an interesting book, making love to your spouse/intimate partner, gardening, housecleaning, volunteering locally, learning a new craft/skill, cuddling with a pootie, or learning a new recipe? Could I have updated my resume and looked for a better job?" Etc etc.
If you can't think of anything better to do with your time, then you aren't trying very hard. Figure out what makes you happy and do more of it.
Reading the good, intelligent commentary here in diaries is of course still worth the time spent. How to find it? First step is to avoid anything on the Rec List or discussing you-know-who.
This goes for generalized rants as well as flame-wars. Whining in blog comments sections, no matter how 'righteous,' at the end of the day is still whining. It's even worse for people engaged in flamewars. That's like two flies fighting over a prime spot on a pile of dog feces. To the winner, um, congratulations.
So, if you have something intelligent to share that will genuinely educate other people, share it either in diary or comment form. But, if you're ranting or counter-ranting, find something more productive to do with your time. There is much more of the latter than the former that goes on (few people here acknowledge that reasonable minds can disagree on subjects, a sine qua non of intelligent discussion) and this place is all too often deeply, deeply stupid as a result. More Yankees-Red Sox than policy discussion.
As someone who has contributed to unhelpful dynamics, all I can say is don't make the mistakes I made by pissing away time on people and arguments that don't matter to your life. Participation here should be about enhancing your own existence. If you want to serve a cause, talk to a human being.
Anyhoo, TTFN, and apologies in advance, because I will not be commenting in this, or any other diaries. If someone wants to raise serious objections to this diary, I'll let someone else waste their time arguing over it.