The reference to Dante's alchemist is intentional, as I am a chemical and metallurgical engineer. The relative position in The Inferno reflects how one feels working for business and industry. Being strangled by regulation, forced into endless valueless contortions by environmental and anti-business actifists, dealing with a public blissfully unaware of how much their daily existence benefits from industry (and how much our national security depends on it), and continually pilloried by a media who never met a businessman they couldn't hate produces a curmudgeonly outlook on current events.
In short, EPA uses bureaucratic definitions of toxicity (BuTox for short) built around a web of PGC's (Paranoia Generating Compounds - like asbestos, dioxins, transformer fluids) and PGR's (Paranoia Generating Regulations), with vociferous support of PGM's (Paranoia Generating Media) to fight, you guessed it, Paranoia Wars. And these paranoia wars have casualties. They are called stockholders, employees, pensioners, national security, and the financial well being of our country.
My writing on political subjects resulted in two self-published collections, "Letters from an Engineer". These were an unabashed takeoff on Richard Henry Lee's "Letters from a Federal Farmer" (he was not Light Horse Harry), which argued for restrictions on the power of a central government.
My first 40 letters, relating primarily to the "corruption, deprivation and deception" of WJC, were sent to a number of Congressmen just before the impeachment vote. Perhaps they made a difference.
The second set of 91 were sent out in March 2001 a couple of months after Bush finally prevailed over eGore in the election. Many of these present examples of liberal bias which the media uses to influence current events. Most of the letters began life as faxes sent to congressmen, magazines, newspapers and President Bush.
Since then, besides the FR postings, the letters have related to the race riots in Cincinnati of April 2001 and their aftermath. A number have also been sent again to Bush and congressmen in the hopes of removing the "doormat image" so prevalent during this first term. Not much changed yet.