You'd think people on /. would be smarter than mainstream-fed USians and actually think more than 1/2 move ahead, but to do so risks "talking like a fag", as a certain Mike Judge movie once labeled it, so it's not done.

How's the weather in Herzliya?

The act of deflection is on the part of those who are posting this ZOMG RUSSIA propaganda in the MSM. But without victim blaming, it is impossible to have American Exceptionalism, a not-too-distant offshoot of Protestantism, as the secular religion, so what then? I for one will happily pee on the grave of American Exceptionalism once it is buried.

You forgot the entire Republican Party. If you really believe the trappings of intellectualism or anti-intellectualism are not just the designated irreconcilable tribal grunts, you are probably too naïve to understand politics.

You pathetic, whimpering, pietous, arrogant, Exceptional tool. People like you who are willing to die for some gorram BEDTIME STORY ought to do so posthaste.

The Militia Acts of the 1790s are fair examples. Think of the larger pattern this way: when has the US not been bipolar and schizophrenic in its social order? When has it not had some Other into which to schizophrenically split off its less Exceptional parts?

On high-value matters, building up that sort of record is an extremely valuable bolster to one's credibility. e.g. bipolarbear0's well-documented editorial prerogative ensuring blue-team hegemony over at Reddit. Captured or willing is a worthy question, though.

when a corporate talent search firm owns the thing? You must not have noticed the shift over the past decade or so, in the slavish adherence to conventional wisdom and mainstream narratives.

For that matter, most conspiracy theory can be explained by good old high-school conformism and a shared culture among those whom we are allowed to endorse to run the place.

I mean, if you were more interested in delivering a just society rather than blunting the corners of the one from which you profit just enough to keep your position (and that of the downtrodden) secure within the correct order, your actions would be effective toward that end instead of the other, wouldn't it?

I'm grateful for what Firefox accomplished, but that doesn't mean we need it any more

And maybe we don't really need "progress" anymore, yet for some reason we seem to pursue it for its own sake. Some people seem to just live to put a coinbox between every itch and its scratch, and those people are tiresome.

In the aftermath of dotcom bust 1.0 I seem to remember Sun was buying UE2s back and grinding them just to keep them off the aftermarket and to keep from competing with themselves. Pretty much everything in their Ultra PCI range was simply uncompetitive with Linux PCs.

I note that shortly after Eich's departure, EME got waved through. If you think it's more important to respond to bourgeois dog-whistles and genuflect toward Values than to protect the ability of people to governed and not managed or ruled, you might want to re-evaluate your entire value system and see if you're not just a jackal yourself.

No, it's not distinct. That Sun is still alive is the sort of denialism I might have expected from the Nicean Council, not supposed rationalists -- well, rationalists being nothing more than non-practicing Judeo-Christians with a smug bourgeois paint-job, maybe I shouldn't be surprised!

Because, of course, any agent is entitled to have the label which one places on oneself accepted as incontrovertible reality, regardless of any facts to the contrary.

Gee, sounds like the Eich witch-hunt all over again (and y'all can stop pretending that because you enjoyed it it wasn't a witch-hunt.)

And that has what to do with JavaScript, exactly? Conveniently, whenever these SJWs score a tick in the W column, very shortly thereafter EME goes legit. I can't decide whether SJWs are being wittingly or unwittingly manipulated by corporate interests.