It's bad enough that they have to distort the historical record in order to slander the US, even suggesting that we gleefully targetted civilians in the Gulf War, and danced in the streets to celebrate the deaths of women and children. I sure as hell don't remember that particular celebration, maybe I was too drunk? It's quite bad enough they have to ignore all the kindness we've shown the world, our aid plans great and small, our rescuing half the world from tyranny, our establishing the democratic republic as a viable form of government.

But to do it now of all times, that's completely beyond the Pale.

Kuro5hin has been virtually taken over and is under occupation by a virulently anti-American crowd. I've always had mixed feelings about that site, but now I'm disgusted beyond words. I don't blame Rusty and his crew. On the contrary, I hold most of what they've done in high regard. They have a good design, better than most in fact, and they've tried to make it better over time. But it was spoiled by substandard participants. At first it was just tedious, self-absorbed, dimwitted teenagers, but now it's blame-America-firsters that dominate. Good programming is ruined by bad users, and the users are getting worse.

To those to run Kuro5hin: your site is begining to lose precious credibility. It was all set to be a major force in the future of Internet discussion. It could have easily shoved aside the wreckage of Usenet, and perhaps even supplanted Slashdot. This future is now in grave jeopardy. This is not the sort of thing you can live down. Ever. It will haunt you.

The Internet has a memory, indeed, the archives of K5 are part of that memory. For the sake of your own future, you need to distance yourselves *now* from your own participants. It's an unhappy dilemna, not unlike that faced by the more decent Muslims who are embarrassed by what their brethren are saying and doing in their name. I'm not without empathy. I've had family members I had to distance myself from in order to escape calumny. But you've got to take responsibility. Make it clear they don't speak for the management. Disavow them early and often.

You were skirting it, but that's all right, even necessary. Diversity of opinion, loyal opposition, due diligence, reality check and all that.

These people aren't just over the line. They're beyond recall. It's almost like a mental illness. There's a guy calling himself ucblockhead who's just barely this side of full blown sociopathy. You can't be a reality check if you're utterly divorced from reality. And there's nothing loyal about this kind of opposition.

It's vastly more prevalent. Here, we've got a couple of nutcases. Nothing we can't handle. There, they practically own the place.