Believe me, I've been there myself, and I know the toll it can take. I also have had to suffer a career that was going nowhere, seeing my contributions forgotten and my need to contribute ignored. I also know very well what its like to approach middle age and be forced to evaluate your life, to take stock of what you've accomplished and compare it to what you once thought you were capable of. Every man goes through it, and it ain't easy.

But you're going to have to turn some of that cool, detached engineering gaze on yourself. It's not the Liberals or the statists who aren't hiring you, remember? Its the "job creators" who aren't "creating" a position for you. Aren't Conservatives always telling us "government can't create jobs"? That its up to us to go out and offer something to the world, not wait for it to hand it to us? If you want to argue with someone, go pick on them. Regardless of what is beyond our control, we must also accept responsibility for our own lives and actions. Isn't that what Conservatives like to smugly preach to the unfortunate, or those who have failed? I think the contemporary phrase is "man up".

You have a lot emotionally invested in your political positions, and you find it intolerable to even consider that maybe its your ideological heroes and champions and philosophies that might be at fault for your own personal problems. That someone might have the audacity to even suspect, much less suggest it publicly, absolutely infuriates you. So you have to devise this elaborate Rube Goldberg apparatus of cause and effect in your own mind to find someone to blame for your, and the nation's, distress. Then you come here and expect us to validate it for you, to reassure you that it's not your fault; its theirs.

And when we don't cooperate, when we don't obediently play your game, when we don't rush to reinforce the fantasy that you manufactured, you are outraged and accuse us of failing to use our reason and our logic to assist you in erecting this structure of justifications and excuses. No, Tom, what you really want is for us to wilt away in shame and helplessness when exposed to the blinding force of your reason and the irresistable power of your intellect. Sorry, but I'm not impressed.

Listen up, get this straight, because I'm fed up with putting up with your abuse just because you need a punching bag to take out your problems on. I had nothing to do with your economic or employment situation. In fact, it doesn't really matter who is at fault, or even if anyone is at fault. Whether you're right, or I'm right, or if the truth is somewhere in between, doesn't really matter, does it? Sometimes shit just happens, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The world isn't necessarily out to get you. It doesn't even know you're there.

I am under no obligation to provide you with a sounding board for you to test your theories on. I myself have no need to justify my own opinions to anyone. If I enjoy discussing them at all its because I find them of academic interest, I am curious about how the world works, and I enjoy the use of the English language.. But I don't have anything emotionally invested in it like you do. I don't need to know I am totally 100% right all the time and anyone who doesn't agree with me completely must not only be a fool, villain, or a traitor, but personally responsible for my problems. And I don't need for anyone who does not accept my view of the world to step forward so he can be sternly lectured and instructed on the Truth.

Besides, I have troubles of my own.