Us Oldtimer FReepers remember when most posters added value, often direct information, to a thread. I don’t know how it slipped into a supposed FreeRepublic “tradition” of not reading the article. It’s still a great place, especially for live threads during big events .
What hurts me are people posting bad statistics that make America look bad and China look good. I also dislike our small expat community who have gone native until things go south in their euroweenie world. Or China, Vietnam, Mexico,Panama world.
The damned vanities outnumber the news threads, there are crazy conspiracy theorists posting all kinds of really uneducated, very stupid things...even to factual threads, and posters opining on topics they either know very little to nothing about and don't understand it or even what they post. And many of those posters attack the ones who actually KNOW the facts/what they are talking about and run them off threads.
Way back when, we DID read the articles first; I still do!