Does anyone else out there have the feeling that /. is increasingly an anti-American, leftist swamp, of no real importance to anyone?

Slashdot isn't "increasingly anti-US". It is, however, receiving more and more visits from non-USian readers who not only register but also comment on issues. As the US's foreign relations has been going down the crapper in the last decade or so and therefore becoming more and more isolated, it is expectable that the entire world expresses an opinion which doesn't coincide with the opinions of some americans.

And slashdot isn't "increasingly a leftist swamp". If you didn't noticed, there isn't any "left" on the US political scene at all. There is only the extreme far left, embodied by the US's republican party and the not so extreme far left, embodied by the US's democratic party. What elected US official publicly supports programs like housing or public transportation programs? Any republican? Any democrat? What about basic worker's rights like job protection or unemployment subsidy? Heck, the american political scene still believes that free and unencumbered access to healthcare services and treatments, supported by the state through american taxes, is some sort of "communist blasphemy". With a political scene so saturated with the right-wing way of thinking, naturally some americans see issues and opinions which don't toe the far-right line (the US's mainstream way of thinking) as "leftist" or even "communist".

And that jab at the supposed importance of slashdot, the only thing that it demonstrates is your attitude towards the opinions that aren't parallel to yours, along with those who express them. You are claiming that this blog is losing importance because you aren't being served with the mainstream points of view and opinions that you have been accustomed to. You are not being served with a string of homogeneous "OMG ME TOO!" followup comments. Instead, you are seeing an ever increasing amount of replies which defend different opinions. As you aren't being served with what you wish to read, which is your own personal point of view on things, then, instead of keeping an open mind or even trying to debate and expose your ideas based on reasoning, you prefer to simply ridicule those who do not share your personal set of values and views by labelling them with small, baseless offensive tags. And quite frankly, if someone isn't capable of dealing with differences of opinions then I do believe that the best they can do is keep out of activities which are based exactly on the exchanging of different opinions.