Not very good at all, I have to admit The Escapist is going down hill and it should put more effort into actual content related to geekdom rather than leftist political statements (not even always connected to geekdom directly, with geekdom just being a lead in) and philosophy. I remember the days when Bob was a lot more laid back with it than he is now and he was really the only one leaning in that direction, at least so openly. "There Will Be Brawl", "ENN", "Doomsday Arcade", and others. I'm not sure what's up with The Escapist, but yes, they need to start looking towards getting some better content, and this is coming from a Pub Club member. In my case it's not just because I disagree with a lot of the political stuff, it's because the site just isn't catering to escapism anymore, which is what "The Escapist" is supposed to be. Let's be honest, I get involved in games, comics, etc... to get away from politics, my own views depress even me, and I think the world generally sucks, the same is true of other people with radically different political and social perspectives. If I want to hear rants about feminism or racial injustice or whatever else there are other places for that, I don't really care that some people are trying to bring that into gaming and geek culture, I want to hear about the gaming and geek culture itself and not the rest of this nonsense that seems to infect everything.
That said I think the answer is that Haters as a general rule are those trying to bring change, you really can't accomplish anything on your own, especially in today's world. Even in the days of Diogenes he didn't accomplish much except to be remembered as a huge oddball. Today if you did the same thing you'd just be another crazy homeless person, cutting yourself off from technology in particular would almost surely doom you to obscurity as well. Trust me the days when it was odd enough for a guy to say live in a jar are long gone, the king of the land isn't going to come down to investigate, rather mental health officials are likely to just cart you off (or you'll likely be ignored).
That said I'll also point out that most discourse is negative because there is only so much people can say that's positive when they don't know each other. Basically you can only say "gee I love this [insert something here]" once in a conversation and then if everyone agrees with you there isn't usually a lot to talk about. As a general rule the so called "haters" are the ones that actually generate conversation and bring perspective, and even when you disagree with them they can oftentimes give you a different perspective on things. Face to face with someone you know it's pretty easy to have a conversation about mutual love of something, but over something like an internet forum, or in casual discourse it's somewhat more difficult, as fast as the internet is there is still a turn around time on message boards and such.
EDIT: I've been busy recently and missed some of the stuff about The Escapist trying to become more apolitical and other recent events, and the controversy about having a writer (even if not an employee) who has been connected to some right wing points of view (while I might be more incline to agree with him on certain matters, I still think politics shouldn't be a big topic here, something which the general manager seems to be agreeing with). That said I am not impressed with "8 Bit Philosophy" which wasn't really political in any direct sense, but had little to do with geek culture.
That said I stand by my basic point that we need to see more in the way of original, non-political content. People doing skits/ultra low budget shows and such was part of what attracted me to the site. IMO the most "political" The Escapist should get is in criticizing the game industry and it's business practices (when such is appropriate).