Letters to the Editor
Hermit
Published Letters: 29
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Times How Many?
[Read the article: No climate for old men]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Every time we have cut emissions, consumptions or destructions we have increased our population enough to overwhelm the savings. Pro-natalism trumps environmentalism. Nothing, not windmills, recycling or hitchhiking can counter the constant growth demanded by our economy.
This greedy stupidity is not only profound but lethal.
Hermit
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Here we go again.
[Read the article: America closes the book on intelligence]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For all the pain and suffering fundamentalists have caused over the millenia, nothing compares with the profound effect they have had on population increase over the last half century. We feel like we live in a social, political and psychological world of civilizations but we ignore biology and it trumps everything else. This ignorance is pretty universal and cuts across money, class and even educational lines.
While we make noise about problems from pollution to crowding, the numbers of us keep rising. So every attempt to alleviate the problems ends up being washed away by increased numbers. President Ford made an interesting observation: "Quantity has a quality of it's own." The quantity of us is making quality of life more and more difficult to maintain.
Until we embrace biological facts we are doomed to keep increasing ourselves until nature forces a great die-off or our complete extinction. Our short term solutions are long term disasters and failing to educate our young as critically thinking problem solvers will make them unable to deal with what's coming.
Hermit
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Proto War On Terrorism
[Read the article: The fun and excitement of civilization wars (fought from afar)]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I understand and agree with your critical comments about the personality types seeking Enemies to punish but think you are wrong that they have just been harmlessly indulging their personal paranoid fantasies before 9/11:
"Over the past couple decades, prior to the Bush Era, the people who needed the sort of psychological fulfillment that comes from prancing around as Hofstadterian faux-warriors waging Civilization Wars obtained their fulfillment from playing board and video games or, at worst, dressing up on the weekend in camouflage costumes and -- rather than playing golf or going fishing -- marched around in militia formations, primed to defend the nation from Janet Reno and her squadrons of hovering U.N. black helicopters. It was equally pathetic, but at least the damage was minimal."
I think they have been around in great force as warriors for the Religious Right's Culture Wars and have done great harm with the prohibitionist War on Drugs, for example. We've had a 35 year movement in this direction and the parallels between what you described and what has already happened once, albeit on a smaller scale, are remarkable but I usually see them ignored in Salon. Is it because Democrats have been supporters of this assault on our own citizens or are they afraid to appear weak on "drugs" (and on dominating people different than "us?") The only other answers I can think of is fear of reprisals from government or employers or some kind of prejudice.
I don't read you these ways so I'm left confused but something is terribly wrong when this glaring omission is made so consistently, even by people who seem very savvy otherwise. I think it is proof the Religious Right won the War on Drugs, making "good vs. evil" a bases for problem solving, planning or evaluating in American government, culture and journalism.
Hermit