Yeah, Tom. Ive been watching it too, but I don't see it. All I see is a Republican party deftly using every parliamentary maneuver and technicality, as well as evey propaganda method available, so they can create obstacles and gum up the works to force their opposition to make concessions. And they don't stop when they get what they want, or trade and dicker for a better position, they just get encouraged and push for more, more, more. They are convinced they are so obviously right and their enemies so clearly corrupt, anything is justified in order to frustrate their opponents' plans.

But anyway, I'm tired of arguing about it. It gets us nowhere. No matter how much you deny it, political decisions are not the same as engineering decisions, any more than religious or philosophical decisions are. You can no more persuade someone to change political philosophies by analysis and logic than you can convert a Muslim to a Hindu by referring meticulously to religious texts and the testimony of saints. It's not knowledge, its emotional preference, and that cannot be negotiated, it cannot be proven, it cannot be logically established. And if you can't see that distinction, then there is something fundamental about reality that you simply cannot grasp, and I can gain nothing by arguing with you.

But I do find your creationist example deliciously ironic, because what I see in you is a UFO freak telling me about WHAT HE SAW WITH HIS OWN EYES and watching his frustration climb because I just don't see how "obvious it is the government is trying to cover it up so we can't see the TRUTH." Sorry, but the mainstream media liberal elite is about as convincing to me as those black helicopter sightings.

Or perhaps an astrology fanatic would be a better example, they simply cannot understand how anyone could possibly reject the patterns and relationships that are so obvious to them in their charts and biographies but that I stubbornly and closemindedly even refuse to consider. (A clear example of my refusal to face facts and evidence!)

Tom you may be an engineer, but I'm a mapmaker. I create models of the world, representations of reality, for a living. I've also used those models to locate and guide myself through hostile environments where my life and those of others depended on my understanding and my awareness of my limitations.

The models I use and create are open to public inspection and constantly veriifed by those who use them for accuracy and precision. Some are positional and cadastral, surveyors, navigators and engineers depend on them for location and relation. Some are thematic, and are used by planners and officials to make decisions which affect budgets, taxes, lives and even emergency decisions. When I put my seal on a piece of work it was evidence in court, and I was legally accountable and potentially responsible for decisions made on the basis of that product, and the specifications and validity of its documented sources.

You don't have to be an engineer to understand the nature of reality, or our limitations in presenting it accurately.

Tom, can't you see that I see and explain your behavior using the same mental paradigms and models that you use to make sense of mine?
How can you claim you have some special access to knowledge that justifies your opinions and invalidate mine. We're both entitled to call each other's politics crazy, but when you claim mine has to be wrong because I refuse to admit the truth that you know to be true, that is a fanatic talking.

You once said that you feared the fanatic more than the criminal, because the criminal, although potentially ruthless and dangerous, was at least rational, he could at least be counted on to act in his own best interest. The fanatic was so convinced of the justice of his cause that it was impossible to predict or deter him. And he was capable of any evil as long as it advanced his noble cause.