posted on Nov, 5 2009 @ 11:26 AM
I came here for a mix of things, politics being one of them. Mostly because ATS fosters a conspiratorial bent to political discussion, which in my
opinion is necessary for honest discourse.
I initially had high hopes, and for a time was satisfied of those hopes. However, around election time last year ATS took a drastic turn for the
worse. I don't know if it's simply because of the election (I wasn't around in 2004), but it seems to still be going on even a year later. ATS
seems like more and more of a mainstream political bicker-site every day I log on. 3/4 of the threads I see are about mainstream topics, often without
any alternative views presented. Instead, they are usually either "right" or "left", and people engage in the mindless political rhetoric that
accompanies such discussions.
I will admit, it seems to be limited to the American-centered threads, and I'm pretty sure we all know what the issue is. People in this country
have, for the most part, foregone independent thought in favor of political partisanship. We don't care to look through the bs anymore, we get mired
in it and it bleeds out into multiple posts, which become multiple threads, which in turn ruins this site.
I think the introduction of the political madness forum is a step in the right direction, so the rest of us can weed out those kinds of threads, but I
think the problem is bigger. The folks who are attracted to those threads spill out into other areas of the site and spread their political idiocy
like a plague. I don't know if there is truly a way to avoid it, but I don't like the direction the forums are heading in. ATS is really one of the
few good places out there to discuss alternative topics, and currently those topics are overshadowed by the mindless masses who care more about their
tax dollars than whether or not we are being visited, or if the US government is killing its own citizens for political gains, or if information, and
by extension, intelligence is being actively suppressed in an effort to control the populace.
Actually, now that I think about it, has no one considered that maybe the "disinfo agents", presuming they exist, have come here to start all of
these politically-charged threads to distract people from discussing more important things? It kind of ties into that last one...