Understood, and thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to spell everything out for me. I will clarify in the thread that I did not mean to refute what you said.
Regarding what you quoted, that was in response to Aulrick basically stating that I was being stupid. I am not saying I wrote that to retaliate, but if we speak of non-oblique personal attacks, I think it would be disingenuous to say that posting a "crazy" smiley was intended to do anything other than say I was being stupid. The line you quoted was not me trying to return the insult, I was responding by stating that I didn't appreciate him purposely misunderstanding what I was saying so he could call me dumb. That's what I meant by "intentionally obtuse" as in "purposely misunderstanding me" for the sake of insulting me.
While I have no qualms with your moderating style and will gladly tone things further back as you ask, I do feel that overall the tone is singling me out; with no clarification, the timing of your initial post looks like you are backing up Aulrick's claim that he's the only one being attacked.
I understand your position on public refutations. To be clear, I was not addressing that to you, I was addressing that to Aulrick. That's why I was started with an apology; although I did not and do not think I was the aggressor, I apologized to him in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. I am sorry if that was unclear, I suppose it would have been better if I had quoted him there.
Ok, I get the impression now that you are specifically saying that I have been acting as an aggressor here, and like I said in the thread, I honestly did not intend as such, and still don't now see how I am doing that. In the interest of not continuing to infringe, could you lay it out plainly for me what I have done?