People blame Lowtax because he was entirely to blame. It was always Lowtax wanting jannies who would curate his forums for him like a full time job while paying them below minimum wage (starting with Fistgrrl). This eliminated everyone from the pool of potential moderators except for people entirely dependent on leftist social programs like welfare and disability payments, as well as exceptional college students. When they started to act on their political sensibilities and slowly purge anything right of center and then right of left, Lowtax did nothing. Once political opinions were quashed, the next step was humor that offended their politics. This took several years of sniffing out people and purging, but gradually not just the moderator team but the entire user base was culled to people who showed sufficient groupthink. Lowtax was warned this was happening, but out of laziness chose to do nothing over anything for over a decade, and eventually they succeeded in purging him as well.
Good riddance.
Quite specifically, and I'm sure I'm leaving things out so anyone feel free to add/correct:
--In like 2000-2001, the earliest main mods/admins, a cabal consisting of people like Al, jre, and Rainbow Blight, were lording it up and soaking up the power and cult of personality while Lowtax fucked off. They were overthrown by a new group led by Michelle Fistgrrl Trayne and Zach Elpintogrande Parsons
--Fragmaster ran things for awhile, he was chill, but Fistgrrl and Zach were huge powers throughout and appointed left leaning mods like Ozma(fat) and Greg Cugino (Tiny Fistpump). Zach was the one who banned "nigger" and started the exiles who formed SASS
--Ozma and Greg became admins and appointed people like Senior Woodchuck and the Catlady Crew. Zach and Michelle grew up (and grew rounder. Because they are fatties) and faded away. The newer mods became more leftist and shrill. The SJW and woke movement which infects the world had a major incubator in SA. The mods were actively encouraging mob activity like LF raids into GBS
--more "moderately" leftist mods and admins like The Finn, Ozma, Woodchuck, etc were pretty much in horror at what they had wrought as their golem got out of control and they quit the site or retreated to tiny corners like the soccer thread
--then at SS we doxxed all the major players and lol they all left
--as each successive generation of mods/admins left, the new ones were more thin-skinned, woke, shrill, and less powerful, ruling over a weakened user base. The trannys took over, going from being mocked, to tolerated, to running enemies off, to being lauded and handed the keys. Purity spirals over the years forced off more reasonable and moderate people, or they retreated to subforms or a few threads.