I appreciate your attempt at slander, but please allow me to offer my assurance that I have no political purposes, here or anywhere else. The politics of the Un

I appreciate your attempt at slander, but please allow me to offer my assurance that I have no political purposes, here or anywhere else. The politics of the United States are degenerate in the extreme, in the technical sense of 'degenerate' meaning roughly 'disordered beyond the point of self-regulatory mechanisms to repair'; having found in the past that my participation in them redounds to no benefit for anyone including myself, I no longer involve myself. I still like a good argument, though. In fact, that's no small motivation for my disengagement from politics -- in that realm, you can't have a good argument! Everyone takes everything so personally -- it was when I lost a second friend to political differences that I started to suspect a problem with the entire enterprise. In any case, a good argument is all I'm here for; if you've got some sort of political point you'd like to make on the topic, please, by all means, don't let me get in your way.