And it still is! But once you decide to stop lurking and start posting, you better have a thick skin - even if you post something you think is totally innocuous and that no reasonable conservative could disagree with.
Expect to be misunderstood and abused. Then if you aren't, you can be pleasantly surprised! :-)
This is true of all internet forums I've ever known - going back to my first days on Usenet back in 1982 - especially in the politically oriented forums. (Anybody else out there remember misc.politics.* and talk.politics.misc and talk.politics.mideast and all the rest ???)
You are right, of course. It just disapointing sometimes..