When I was a child, I posted comments as a child, I flamed as a child, I trolled as a child. But in the last few years I have largely avoided posting in public forums. I keep my controversies and my participation separate. I subscribe - and post - to the odd mailing list, each of them studiously apolitical. On the other hand I read some explicitly political blogs, but avoid posting there. This is not because of a lack of political opinion on my part. But rather, I no longer take any joy in the flamewars that used to give me such pleasure.
Partly, this is because almost 20 years of use of bulletin boards and the web has left me jaded. It sometimes seems that everybody comes to the web to be heard, and very few to converse. I am aware that the listeners, the passive, the quietly persuaded do not, by their nature, post. But if one never knows that they are there, then they might as well simply not be in this context. If you don't know someone exists, then struggling for their good opinions is an unrewarding joust.
Another problem is that, with time, one begins to remind oneself that these are people, not AIs populating a large, textual gameworld for your pleasure. At that point, it becomes less joyful to expose their ignorance, simply to score a point.
A third reason is that the internet is no longer the preserve of geeks and academics that once it was. I'm not complaining: I can do and discover things through the web today that were undreamt-of back in the early 90's. But when AOL opened up web access to its account holders back in 94 or so, the nature of one's correspondents changed profoundly. I will be elitist and say that as the barriers to entry fell, so did the average IQ. As the Allies discovered in 1944, there is nothing more hideously pointless than winning when the other person doesn't know they're beaten.
But the final reason for my relative silence in political forums is the most recent: the vitriol of the American political struggle spills over into every single one. Every discussion of left vs right becomes translated into "liberal vs conservative" or "democrat vs republican" or, most recently "anti-Bush vs pro-Bush". Here, there is no discussion. No dialogue. Just a hideous dialectic with thesis and antithesis but no synthesis. I am socially liberal, economically conservative, and legally and philosophically soft-libertarian. That is not a viable set of opinions to hold these days: one ends up shouted at by all sides.
One thing I have loved about the internet is that it has allowed me greater contact with America. I am an unashamed Americophile. I go there for pleasure, and I enjoy areas of American life and existence that even Americans don't appreciate. Anyone can like Memphis or New Orleans or Chicago, but I loved Duluth and Gary, Indiana. I have drunk in bars from the deepest south to the furthest north of the mainland, been relaxed and found good company in each. I see no moral difference between the anti-Americanism of the European left and the historic anti-semitism of the European right, and I am equally provoked by both.
But the Americans are so deeply at war with each other right now that their struggles infect every area they touch. One of the most liberal democracies in the world has, for almost 16 years now, seen attempts at judicial revolution from both sides in order to reject the outcome of each election, through courts or through congress. And until they learn to talk to each other again, public comment on matters political will continue to be a case of exposing oneself to crossfire.