If the thread's locked, it'll just pop up in another thread. Some folks' hobby is pot-stirring.
There's a thing about stirrers, or lobbyists or activists or or or - they'll keep hammering on their message out 'til the last dog is hung, and that produces any of three results: the message gets some following and some folks start to follow along and "we got a Movement", or other folks respond with their countering views (and gotta keep responding), or - the guy gets tired.
That's what's playing out here.
Ya know what? I'm betting that most of us here, hammering keys for these hours, have ever written their Congressman on an issue that affects their lives. How many of us can even name their local Congressmen?
- And yet here we are spending our very precious rapidly-counting-down hours, arguing over an "ah- HAH!" moment that oh-my-God shakes the very foundations of seven years' worth of Fun. Lordy ,People, we've been living a lie all this time, our happy sport was all for nothing.
Jeez, listen to me here - ex-Berkeley semi-radical, sounding like freekin' Spiro Agnew.
But it's true. For a vocal minority present here, this argument is more fun than slot racing.
Kinda sad.
And the thing is, while I & probably most of The Silent Majority only glance in here during a break from soldering & then turn back to the task, the message gets in. It works on us, we know this discussion's going on and we keep turning around and peeking in -
- And that's how the Movement works. That's the point of vigilantly hammering your message out, again and again. It gets into folks. - Maybe it don't convert them, noooo...but it infects them. Like a little sickness, slowing them down some. Spoiling the fun.
Some folks, if they can spoil a little, it makes their own lives seem a little less spoiled. That's the gift of the Internet, you can see the results of messing with a community in a way that don't work as well in the real world.
I gotta go to work now. And this afternoon, I'll try & solder something.
Duf
