I can see you're not going to change your views, Tom, but I'm genuinely concerned that you're vulnerable to manipulation precisely because you don't think you can be manipulated.

Advertising and other manipulation are targeted to their audiences. It pitches smart people differently than dumb people, but it still pitches. Would advertisers give up on one of the most lucrative demographic and stop trying to get through the defenses of the smartest people? I think not. (Why do I have to argue the relentless power of the marketplace? If there's a profit to be made, somewhere, somehow, business people are duty-bound to try and grab it.)

One school of thought is that intelligent people have as many levers as dumb people, if not more. More complexity to exploit, a tendency to gravitate toward complicated ideas over simple ideas, a tendency to concede grey areas and give the benefit of the doubt, and of course there's the timeless flattery angle. When an ad tells you how smart you'd be to buy a product, beware.

I don't claim to be immune to advertising, I only claim to be aware of it, and to be aware of making hundreds of decisions each day not to fall for it. I dare not assume that I'm 100% successful, because so much advertising is designed to fly below the radar. I buy things, and it's not always clear why I choose one brand over another. When the ingredients on the label are the same, when the computed price/per unit is the same, why do I choose one over another? Brighter colors on the box? Some sly phrase on the front that my eye picked up but my conscious mind didn't notice? If I'd mentally flipped a coin, then why do I go back to the same generic multiple times?

If you're immune to manipulation, why is it possible to bring your head to a boil in a political discussion? The flip side to the way I'm trying to avoid setting you off lately is that I've been able to wind you up in the past, and I'm not the only one. Perhaps the reason I'm being such a bulldog on this subject is that I know from firsthand experience that you can be influenced. On a craven level it would be in my best interests to not challenge your claim to invulnerability to manipulation, but knowing otherwise, I feel obligated to warn you that there's a crack in your armor. The more you tell me it's not there, the more frantically I'm going to try to warn you. You're at risk, Tom, you really are.