When Tom is around...
...I find myself defending myself a lot. That is defending who and what I am, as opposed to defending the opinion I hold about something. I find it is hard to draw him into a discussion about policy without it becoming very rapidly a discussion about what is wrong with people who would say a thing like the thing I just said. It is very tedious. I avoid a lot of discussions that go that way. Worse, I avoid a lot of discussions that I think will probably go that way.