had nothing to do with "the warm and fuzzy parts", as you are calling them.  I was talking about the intellectual resources and political assests of hope and change and sustainability that were, ironically, in much greater stock before the place became explicitly a site for dem organizing and fundraising and thus looked started focusing on purveyors of hope/change rhetoric "out there".  There was a lot more of what people now say they are looking for in (and for) the Democratic Party at work here in dKos, before the place turned that into its mission.  Its odd that in the very act of doing that, trying to build on the strength and resources the place had to bring that to Dem Party politics, if you will, it sort of killed it here.  There was a potential this place had before it became what it now is (not unusual, that's the case with everything).  The loss of that saddens me, even as I recognize it is simply part of the process.

While I could go back and forth with you for hours on your assertions about the utilitarian parts (as well as your rather limited vision of what's utilitarian), there's no point to that anymore.   Your assertions illustrate a fait accompli that is, for me, sad. The place isn't "becoming" anymore, and so lots of types of energy are no more.  It now "is" and for me, that's the sadness I was referring to, not a sadness per se of what that "is" actually is (i.e. I'm not referring to being sad about the content of what it is now), but that the possibilities of potential that did once dance across so much else that was also here and that did fuel a resource that's both utilitarian and intangible at the same time, have been harnessed and tamed and thus transformed.  That some of that was never fully recognized and valued, but allowed to slip away is something of a missed opportunity.