It's tough to address those issues. Portraying my post as ass-kissing is a cool hand wave and step around. I understand.

I'm not here to wound, defend or compensate. No one is completely without ego, certainly not me. I just know where the land lies and am slowly whittling down the urge to compensate for perceived slights. It's not easy avoiding the mudslinging when it feels that a nice, huge and dirty hurl will make everything better. ;-)

Anyone paying attention knows Tom and I are not even on the same chapter on a lot of topics and even those few ones we are on the same page on, we are at different paragraphs.

And your goading post, will not make me lash out at you brother...but just as you are my brother, so is Tom and even Don, Lindy, Eric and others who post to make their siege on a perceived false orthodoxy.

The secret is losing the massively imbalanced payload of biases. Tom needs to lose them as much as anyone here. He's waging his own counter-insurgency against reactionaries - thus risking becoming a mirror reflection of those selfsame activists.

As long as one gives others, and their viewpoints, emotional power over one - one always will be reacting to others actions - a puppet by any other name. In an infinite universe this sort of emotional reactionary-ism is inefficient. Or to translate into programming jargon, it is writing code that is not independent and is constantly dependant upon other code to function properly.

It's not much 'fun' engaging me in debate - I know this. Without the emotional payoff, it's simply pointless for many. My presence in this thread was triggered by your description of the value of emotion. I really don't have much vested interest in the various stalling tactics of an administration trying to appease its vociferous critics and the brainwashed masses. So in a sense I've taken it off topic.

But listening to you go on about Authoritarian Conservatism, tells me you will need to experience first hand authoritarian liberalism to see authoritarianism in balance. When I moved out here I got to see firsthand the downsides of conservatism, particularly religious conservatives in spades. We all seek balance - this post balances your previous post. These threads are like a see-saw of compensation in action.

PS
The primate behavior analogies are also now as long in the tooth as I am longwinded...

..and that's saying a veritable volume.

;-)