18,562 views in about 20 days.
This whole topic has become very extraordinary.
Even by the Mboards standards.
Now there is a centralized marker of evidence of just how much personal, cultural and social effect one person, any person, can have just through building personal relationships. Dean wasn't a member of a political party, social club, professional organization, religious interest group, or really any other cadre involved in organized human activity. He made his own party and we all came (in more ways than one).
I guess one lesson is, for so many here on these boards who are far outside any kind of mainstream identity, that one does not ever have to accept being condemned to being a kind of social outcast. By making meaningful interpersonal relationships built on the strengths of all one's eccentricities, uniquenesses, rabid appetites and excess good cheer, among other undervalued traits, everyone is lifted from outright exclusion and affirmed.