Letters to the Editor

• Because I'm not voting for Al Gore, that's why

  [Read the article: America is not Bush]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Politicalreality, appreciate the compliments and your concern for the damage to my reputation by making a reference to Al Gore. Quite a compliment, really. He definitely gets better press than I do.

  I'm sure that many of Al Gore's claims are exaggerated, and I genuinely want him to *not* run for President because I think as a presidential candidate he would quickly become as tiresome as every other presidential candidate on the scene. But I don't think he will. I actually think his motivations run opposite to the way you've described him. I think he's coy about running for President because it gives him a certain power and mystique that he can then parlay into his current line of work. If he ever ruled out definitively the notion of running for President, he'd lose that. Or, maybe it's just some personal/psychological issue for him. Could you really blame the guy for occasionally fantasizing about running for President?

  I'm more focused on the message than the messenger when it comes to "an Inconvenient Truth." The message I take away from that movie is not "Wow, isn't Al Gore the greatest guy ever, I'm going to believe everything else he says and let him solve all my problems" but rather, "Oh, man, we are in a world of shit right now, and for the love of God, unplug the cell phone charger when you're not using it." How much does it really matter whether Al Gore is exaggerating? Does it matter whether we have 30 years or 50 to deal with this problem? I have a good friend who is a global warming expert at NASA. I trust what he says. He says we're in a world of shit (I would have cited him instead of Al Gore, but you all don't know my friend). And anyway, how much does it matter whether we should stop using carbon-based energy products is causing global warming, if we all know we're going to run out of carbon-based energy products within the next few decades anyway?

  Yeah, getting back to Mr. Empire Builder, tell me this: Why does it make sense for us to sacrifice the amount of wealth and human lives it would take to crush anyone in our path who interferes with our access to petroleum, when we all know we're going to run out of petroleum anyway? Aside from the morality of it, why does this make practical sense to anyone who isn't working in the oil industry?

  No, I don't take away from An Inconvenient Truth the notion that "Al Gore is my leader." I take away from it the reality that we have no real leaders and we're going to have to figure out how to lead ourselves before all is said and done. Plant a tree. Walk to work. Unplug the damned cell phone charger.

  Permalink Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:09 PM

• Actually, I would like to take a cheap shot at Europe

  [Read the article: America is not Bush]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Politicalreality, with you about 90% of the way in your response to Anonymous European.

  Here's my question for Anonymous European: At what point do you and yours start taking responsibility for the mess we're in?

  I had a boss once, who was rather heavily involved in the lead-up to the Iraq war, who said to me, "You know what Canada is? Canada is what we would be if we didn't have responsibility for maintaining a military." I think much the same could be said of most of Europe these days.

  I understand you don't like the brutal excesses you've seen from our armed forces these past several years. I don't like them either. But where are your armed forces? (Oh, I forgot, you have, what, 200 troops in Afghanistan? So sorry to have overlooked this contribution). Have you ever contemplated the extent to which your prosperity is the result of having lived under our security umbrella for half a century? (Wow, universal health care--must be nice.) And what exactly are you going to do if our empire collapses? You know our empire is just an extension of your past empire, right? When our lights go out, yours are going to go out, too, rest assure. Not overnight, but definitely within a half-century or so. The standard of living achieved in the last years of the Roman Empire was not achieved again until the Victorian Age.

  Yeah, I get that you're already used to $5/gallon gas, and you're probably better able than us to walk to the store and to work because your cities were designed very differently than ours; pretty short-sighted on our part. Love your train system, too; I did the whole Eurorail thing when I was in college. However, I would still hazard a guess that you're going to miss all that petroleum when it's gone.

  So, feel free to criticize, but understand that I'm really not as interested in hearing your criticism as much as I am your plan and your country's plan for getting out of this mess. You don't want to be led by us anymore, fine. Lead yourselves. You don't want what we have to offer, unplug from the grid.

  Seriously, you have any ideas about how to get us out of Iraq? I'd love to hear them. I don't have any good ones, myself. If you do have any ideas, do they involve any of your citizens putting themselves in harm's way, or just ours? Just curious.

  Permalink Thursday, May 31, 2007 01:47 PM