Dear Bass Thumper,
I provided examples of other scammers - the scale is different but the premise is the same.
With all your flag waving, progress or be damned worship of folk who've made significant strides in many fields, (yet at significant cost to others, through nefarious means or who are in other ways very compromised people), you are, in essence, echoing "The American Way" which has always been propaganda for the very rich.
Ronny & Elon are two clear & obvious examples of empowered liars who manipulate huge numbers of people into believing they were/are possessors of the keys to a better future, (have a look at how Musk is fudging figures for the Space X share release). Reagan did it because his strings were manipulated by his masters and Musk for the money. Edison the infamous "borrower": a patent clerk who raided patent applications, misfiled them and submitted is own copies. Bell the Scottish Canadian adopted American who had a patented submitted on the same day as Gray but through the favour & influence of his financial backers was processed earlier and therefore has the fame. Ford who in the Battle of the Overpass had his striking workers shot & killed, the famous antiSemite: "...convicted Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach who, in his role as Gauleiter of Vienna, deported 65,000 Jews to camps in Poland, stated:"The decisive anti-Semitic book I was reading and the book that influenced my comrades was ... that book by Henry Ford, The International Jew. I read it and became anti-Semitic. The book made a great influence on me and my friends because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success and also the representative of a progressive social policy", Morse obtained a patent on the electric telegraph in the USA AFTER two British fellows had done so in the UK. He was, like so many famous Americans, someone who obtained the fame because of where was lived and the financial power of his backers.
You see, Bass Thumper, like so many people in the world I know quite a bit about American history because it has had an huge influence on the rest of the world. Those seen as charlatans in the wider world are often seen as revolutionary industrialists etc. in the United States. Your current president is the perfect example. It's your education system that causes this disparity...most nations favour their own and America takes that to the nth degree...of course.
There is an axiom we in education often use: "open your eyes and ask questions". Naturally I made that up. How about "You're either with us or against us!|" or "Shut up, worm!"? Similar in meaning & intention to your engineering aphorism .

Last edited by rayc; 3 hours ago.
Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe