I have been experimenting with higher tolerances, both in geoprocessing operations used to create data and in topology checks, it helps. I have not tried integrate, and will try that as well. The validate "not doing anything" is really strange, almost as if I did not really click on the button. Once in an edit mode I'll opt to validate, and the validating "status" (?) bar never shows. When I open the errors table and search, none are found. At first I thought this happened because there were no errors, but that is not the case. Getting validate to "work" ranges anywhere from removing/re-adding the topology toolbar, to stopping/restarting the edit session, to stopping/restarting ArcMap, to recreating the topology rules, to rebooting, to waiting and hoping that tomorrow is a better day. The extent of the data sets I am working with:
Top 2781031.158307 m , Right -1079966.152815 m, Bottom 2208890.238787 m, Left -1715664.866530 m