How I Treat Ditto Heads

Here's a recent reply to a misogynist, Harley-riding, vengeful God fearing, anti-union voting union brother of mine who's mind has been polluted with Lies He Likes to Believe.

You've been listening to Rush again. First of all, there is a lot less forest in the WORLD than there was 200 years ago. As for the US, if you'd bother to actually study the situation, instead of believing Limpass, you'd know that what we've done for the last 200 years is cut down hardwoods and plant super pines. These super pines are hybrid, and now genetically engineered, freaks that don't compare to the hardwoods for habitat, oxygen creation, undergrowth control, etc. These monstrosities are the creation of Timber companies and to suggest that it's better to have more of them than we did Oaks is just dumb.

The state tree of Arkansas, one of the Timber Industries favorite places, is the Pine tree. If you left Arkansas alone for a hundred years, it would revert to its natural state, an Oak-Hickory forest without a pine tree anywhere.

Oil was fine when there were only a billion people on the planet. But when you have fires burning in cars without pollution control all over the world, a billion people in China alone, then you've got a problem. Now you can say God gave us the oil to burn, we should burn it all you want, but that doesn't make it a smart thing to say.

You go on listening to Rush. It's easier than thinking.

But what really gets me going is their bullshit attempts at saying God put us on this planet to use up the resources.

John Stuart Mill was a philosopher who had a thing called the harm principle. If you're not hurting me, I have no right to tell you what you can and can't do. The foundation of libertarianism. When you start drilling everywhere you can and dumping the waste water down the streams, when you keep shipping oil around in single hulled tankers named the Condoleeza, when you change laws (passed by Republicans) that keep the air and water clean, then you are fucking with me and mine and I will seriously fuck back.

Now, when you start saying there's some plan, like you don't have free will, that everything that happens is determined by some God, then I think you're seriously whacked. Without free will, what's the point? If you're not free to destroy the environment, then you're saying God has decided to determine that we will destroy Her creation and that we are not then responsible for what we do.

If you do have choice, and your God is one of love, not war, then how can you and GW Bush have the same God?

Sometimes I wonder why I waste my time with these idiots. It's an awful lot of work to change the mind of one or two voters who may read this and think, gee, good point. Maybe these right wing zealots who get 90% of the drug company contributions, and almost 100% of the plundering and polluting industries contributions, aren't really looking out for the little guy.