“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche.

I can tell you that, in most part, the conflict is fueled by a clash of ideologies (East vs. West) and racism. Not sure if you are always on Discord, but you can easily find racist jokes by several witnesses and members of the community against the Chinese and Koreans. Without really mentioning the toxic voice discussions that focus more on "the guy is Chinese" rather than actual facts and sane reasoning.

We really don't need pseudo revolutionaries. We need people who are able to think critically and people that excel at conflict resolution.

An example of that would be some top witnesses asking Tron to remove their votes on witnesses. I find this request utterly retarded, it's like asking Sun to give his weapons so we can fork the shit out of him. Not sure if these people are serious or are just playing dumb.

What guarantee witnesses can give to Sun that they will not freeze or fork him out as soon as he takes down his witnesses? See? The only guarantee that can be given will be based on mutual trust which is also a retarded thing to do. All sides are using their power for survival, this is a natural thing to do in conflicts and people need to take this into consideration instead of blindly supporting one side just because he isn't from China.

One would say that everyone can have the brain for negotiation, but it is not, negotiation is an art, something that people study for years. You need skills for that, and being a nerd that can run a witness node isn't one of them.

I, of course, do not support Sun or the witnesses, they both made poor decisions, both are demagogues, and they both used populism to win the case.

Now that the field is leveled, people with negotiation skills need to start a discussion with each other to find how to alter the chain in a manner that will make it impossible for anyone to take retaliatory actions or to monopolize the governance. This is what should be done.

but that is belied by the fact the exchanges remain powered up and able to instantly assume control of governance again.

I agree with you on this, and this is ok. everyone is playing his tricks; the trust factor is completely destroyed, so everyone is plying the preventive card. There was a talk that witnesses are preparing something to fork Tron out, and they will execute it in the last moment by using SPS to fund an account and other hidden stakes. Everything will just take a minute. Tron knows that hence everyone is taken preventive measures and we shouldn't blame them for that. No one is playing by the rules anymore.

Either Tron and the exchanges execute the code that prevents their accounts from voting on witnesses, or Steem remains the exclusive possession of Tron.

The idea is great and should be only implemented after making the right changes to the chain. But even with that, any big entity can easily and secretly move its liquid Steem to new accounts (supposedly human witness) and use it to affect governance. What guarantee do we have for example that Blocktrade doesn't have accounts that are secretly used affect governance? preventing them to use their vote is useless in the long run. Something needs to be done, we need to solve the issue from its root, people are discussing the effects and forgetting the source of these effects.

Websites are just specific assets, part of the whole.

Also agree, but extremely important assets, if you search Bicton online, you will get Btcoin.com (privately owned) and Bitocoin.org (Originally created by Satoshi Nakamoto) as top results. From a SEO point of view, if we fork out, if new users search for Steem they will for sure use the chain/community that owns/controls the above-mentioned domains. You can say that they are more important than the code itself (open source and ready to use) because building that SEO will cost a tremendous amount of money and an eternity.

The community seems not to realize this fact presently. Since Steem remains usable at this time, we are able to continue to post and discuss here. Either the community forks and institutes mechanisms to prevent stake nominal to exercising governance at it's sole option, or remains on Tron's exclusive possession, Steem.

I again agree with you on the idea that either we fork out and take responsibility, or we let the RIGHT people properly de the negotiations to keep the community together. If the new chains keep the same retarded mechanism for governance, then we are screwed in both of them. You can be sure that if we fork out, old witnesses will become gods.

I need 3 things from these events. A system that will enforce our freedom of speech, and that our content will not be censored, and our property not seized. There are ways to do that directly on the chain, we need to focus on those points, I don’t want to trust witnesses or Sun. I only want to trust the code, Humans are and will always be subject to emotions, and I think we both know from history where that can lead us.