Frank didn't translate Tom's cryptic email word for word from the cyphertext. He interpreted it in the context of a long series of Tom's post complaining about his lack of success at winning political arguments. Posts which were always phrased as complaints about a bunch of mental midgets unable to appreciate the grandeur of his intellect. Or flies unwilling to be swatted, to riff on Frank's colorful interpretation. (And hey, I think I deserve partial credit for not riffing the obvious to evoke the "flies on [excrement]" cliche.)

The subtext of this thread is that there's a problem that needs to be addressed. But I'll be damned if I can see how to accommodate Tom's uncompromising attitude. Should we institute some form of intellectual affirmative action program by which all Zoners are obligated to agree 50% of the time with TB? I don't think so.

Yeti thought my post sounded angry. What he was detecting is frustration that Tom's created an impossible bind by taking his ball and going home. We miss him, but what are we supposed to do to induce him to return?

I don't appreciate emotional blackmail, and that's surely a part of what's going on here.

As close as I've seen to a proffered solution was "just ignore TB", but how is that a solution? How can somebody participate at the Zone if they're going to be universally ignored? Or if not universally ignored, then being ignored along partisan lines will lead to two factions who don't speak to each other but hold intertwined conversations within the faction. Neither solution strikes me as any healthier than the present situation.

All this focus on Tom sounds personal, but we can't overlook another factor in this situation: Celebrity. TB's the star of the Conservative show, and as the avatar of Conservatism--"EveryWinger" as I've called the avatar in previous attempts to discuss the phenomenon--a disproportionate amount of attention is focused on him, for good and ill. As a result, Tom's sometimes unfairly taken the heat for Republican/Conservative actions and policies he doesn't necessarily agree with (though he almost always gamely tries to defend them anyway).

Over the last few years, the Conservative contingent of active posters has shrunk to be pretty much just Tom. Another interpretation of his complaint using a Jonathon Swift metaphor, of Tom Gulliver being tied down by an army of intellectual Lilliputians, might bring us closer to his true motivation: He's tired of being the sole Defender of the Faith, but too proud to admit it.

So I want to point a finger at culprits a little less obvious than those who disagree with Tom: Those who agree with him but have left him to fight all their battles for them.

A constructive response to Tom's absence would be for the other Conservatives here to emerge from Tom's shadow and take up the battle again for themselves. I've lamented before that we don't hear often enough from people like RNE and Frank, who hang around but seem to have been content to be eclipsed by Tom. Well, without Tom to carry the load for you, now it's time for you to take your place in the sun.

I think that in the long run, a reinvigorated and diverse Conservative contingent here will make the Zone a more welcoming place for Tom. His decision then won't be whether to take up arms again and bear all the burden himself, but to rejoin the battle with comrades at his side.