The respectful tone is something I prize here, though I've thrown a flame or two myself (so let me apologize now to whomever that was).

I followed our diarist here from dkos, and have since pretty much stopped reading much there. I cross-post at dkos because that's where my real audience is, though I have no interest in indulging in the dance of groupthink that goes on there. Entirely too predictable. That's my opinion, and I ask no-one else to share it, though I recognize there are some great bloggers there, and at the new subsidiary, Congress Matters.

The trans-Atlantic aspect of ET is the major pull for me here, and the fact that it forces me out of that American-centric mindset, though I write specifically with US policy and issues in mind, and aim it at an American audience (because few on the left here in the US currently advocate in matters of US foreign policy with any credibility).

This trans-Atlanticism means that I'm forced here to examine my assumptions and I feel that, for me, it is needed. For the sake of my own clarity. If I don't post often, it is because, one, I lack the economic or technical expertise to conribute, and, two, is that I'm still studying, on my own, international relations. So I'm still in assmimilation-mode. I'll know when I begin to emerge from that when I read something about, say, Afghanistan, and make an immediate connection to something I knew about Colombia (they've both incredibly corrupt narco-states, btw, and therefore it's going to be enormously difficult to build the institutions of civil society in Afghanistan).

Frankly, I learn alot here, just from hearing other voices and by thinking about it all. I'd never get this at dkos, where everything is viewed through the lens of the American viewpoint (there is only one - the argument is over means, not goals). So, unless the kossacks invade ET en masse, I don't see myself leaving ET anytime soon.

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire