"... it's the genl. membership that show this lack of civility, as if we're allowing the malcontents to take over"

Amen Miss N.  It seems that any thread you venture into these days is likely to degenerate into a pissing match before you get halfway down the page. It's like people are itching for a fight and ready to take any comment and make the most negative interpretation. Usually, it's not even a controversial topic. I don't know if it's the economy or the way that corrosive politics seem to have seeped into everything, especially on teh internets, but it's weird. Creeping senility may have me viewing the past through rose colored bifocals but I don't remember this place being so volatile in the past - at least not over petty BS.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken