The reason I spend so much time analyzing peripheral things is because I'm not selling anything. I have no interest in convincing anybody to change their mind. I have opinions, but no agenda. I like to argue and I like to win, but I don't NEED to do either, it's just a sport for me. If I were really interested in changing the world do you really think I would do it here?

Do you know why I never do research to back up my points? It's because that's work. I'm lazy and it isn't worth my while to look something up unless I already have a good idea where it is, all wrapped up and ready for me. Spending time and effort tracking down statistical data just to win an argument with you is a waste of my time, especially since I come here for recreation. I expect to get paid when I research something, like when I research an article, or when I mapped thematic data for a living; but I don't do it for free unless it is something that I derive pleasure from learning. That's why I have so much useless clutter in my head. It's not that I can't, I just won't. So I let you win. But apparently, that still doesn't make you feel any better. It's never enough, you demand total submission.

It just isn't essential to my self-worth that anyone else believes what I do, otherwise, I'd be off waging war on some Creationist website, or some UFO blog, with the same chance of success you've had here. I don't really think that convincing anyone on the Zone of anything is going to make my life better; certainly not a stranger I will never meet and who doesn't even know my name or what I look like and who has no power over my life. People who don't think the way I do may be mistaken, they may even be crazy, but I don't find them threatening. I don't even find them infuriating. I only get mad when I'm insulted, and you do that quite frequently.

You don't deal in facts TB. You spout advertising copy, junk mail. You're a walking, talking, writing spam generator, and you really think everyone else feels as obsessed over things they have no control over as you do. Read your last post, TB, it's embarrassing, not the politics (that's irrelevant, you'd carry this bitterness in you even if you were 180 on the other side). It is precisely the tone, speech pattern, and attitude that you really communicate, not your meticulously documented irrelevancies. We know a lot more about you than we do about your ideology. You give yourself away, and it isn't pretty to watch.

Read your post. You are actually angry with me. Can you imagine how utterly ridiculous that is? You're pissed off at me because I think your politics are stupid. It's pathetic because you're so desperate to prove you're right, it's so important, so necessary. You have to do this. Even if you ARE right, I can't help you. Even if you CONVINCE me you're right, there's still nothing I can do for you. You're not going to defeat the socialist conspiracy or make the world safe for libertarianism here. You're just going to make an ass of yourself.

And no, the ball is not in anyone's court. No one is playing. Like you say, it goes in one ear and out the other, and you can't figure out why. Nobody pays any attention to poor Tommy.