> The level of discourse was raised

Uh, I would beg to differ. It's stayed about the same, but there's more a lot more hate motivating everything. Back in 1989, there was still such a thing as civil discourse. Now disingenuously veiled hate speech is the norm, with the noise being louder the more important the issue is to society.

If discourse is the lifeblood of our body politic, our body politic is an undead zombie.

Sorry. It's just depressing out there.

(It used to be that Micro$oft was just a joke. It wasn't until well after HN that it somehow became "offensive.")