Letters to the Editor
Sandy Yago
Published Letters: 92 Editor's Choice: 3
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Ignorance and activism
[Read the article: Is Briana Waters a terrorist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Prosecutors used scare-mongering to get the jury to convict an innocent person"?
GASP! Well, I never!
I'm sorry if an innocent person was convicted and inasmuch this article is about that topic, I am as outraged as anyone should be.
But there is another issue in the article and it is the issue of activism itself.
An activist is a person who wants to change something very specific in MY world whether I want it or not. That alone makes activists sort of unlikeable people, in whom arrogance and selfishness is combined with a single issue zealotry.
I am not against opening eyes, but eye-openers (iconoclasts, rebels, etc) want to change something in my world while persuading me to join in and want the change together with them.
For an activist, the narrowness in focus is in mutual feedback with a serious level of ignorance about some fundamental aspect of the topic at hand.
In case of the ELF people, it is summed up in the following sentence:
" genetically engineering trees for the benefit of the timber industry. They said his research would "unleash mutant genes into the environment" and "cause irreversible harm to forest ecosystems."
This shows a shocking (but not surprising) degree of ignorance of biological science and the fundamentals of logic. Mutant genes are unleashed into the environment - where else by the way? - every second by good old Mother Nature. In fact the activists themselves are the beneficiaries of mutant genes that had the fortune to assemble into the genome of a homo sapiens by a few billion years of evolution.
This type of ignorance is akin to the one underlying the activism against "genetically modified foods" which is widespread in Europe and for some miraculous reason has not gained foothold in the US. All of the cultivated food crops are genetically different from their wild antecedents, how else could they look bigger or juicier? They are all genetically modified after thousands of years of selective breeding and hybridization.
Such levels of pervasive structural ignorance of the topic at hand is crucial to the development of activism. Experts in their topic know all too well that nothing is as simple as it sounds. The typical activist has oversimplifications, misunderstandings and the total lack of awareness of alternative explanations in his/her head regarding the mechanics of the issue they are ready to sacrifice themselves and even others for.
It is sad to contemplate that institutes of higher education, such as apparently Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., turn out fanatic ignoramuses like the ones the article talks about, and what's more they prosper as well known magnets for people interested in such type of activism. It being a state college, in this case the fostering of stupidity and violence was done with governmental assistance, to boot! So it is not only educational malpractice but misuse of taxpayer dollars as well, just to add insult to injury.
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Let's revisit the past
[Read the article: Hillary Clinton's tough week]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Whitewater
the cattle futures
the travel office
Vince Foster
Ron Brown
the Rose Law Firm
Peter Paul
the FBI documents
the Madison Guarantee S&L scandal
Jorge Cabrera
the Lincoln Bedroom
Charlie Tree
etc
do yourself a favor, check out Progressive Review's nice summary of the Clintons.
handle is linked
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Obama will be a "wonderful president", Roxanne enthused
[Read the article: Barack Obama, working-class hero?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just what we need...
... another wonderful president, another line before the kneepad
should women really vote?
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Estrogen city
[Read the article: The album that made me a feminist]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Peeking into these female only gabfests usually makes me quietly count my blessings for being born a man.
Then I hear snippets from Dr Laura's show and I'm almost ecstatic. Phew! That was a 50% chance!
No wonder that polygamist cultures where men are forced to live with large groups of women, men are also misogynists.
Now, I'm sorry but I gotta go and drink out of the bottle and scratch.
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Feminist and Humanist
[Read the article: Real female heroes: Ingrid Betancourt]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Very good!
Of course one can't be a humanist and a feminist at the same time - feminity is only 50% humanity.
As for the topic of the story - Hugo Chavez could have arranged the release of I.B. any time. Chavez, himself a marxist, has been supporting FARC not just with money but also with international politicking, for instance recently he has been pressuring the EU to remove FARC from the list of terrorist organizations.
I wonder why this angle was not presented in the article?
OK, now back to discussing is it sexual harassment to make remarks about the color of a woman's skirt at the workplace..
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Professorial democracy
[Read the article: Why Hillary Clinton should be winning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wish to thank Salon from the bottom of my heart for publishing this piece. I have never read so many funny and clever remarks in response to a publication.
It is these responses that have contributed to restoring some of the respect felt by this lurking libertarian towards the liberals who, I presume, make up the majority of posters here. It seems that most of them are pretty reasonable people after all. Underneath the mush of political correctness, quota counting, redistributophilia, pathological Bush hatred, geopolitical pink daydreams, there is a rational core.
Not surprisingly it is the professorial talking head (typing finger?) who comes across as a total ass. When was the last time this guy faced not a classroomful of intimidated indoctrinees but a bunch of rational adults who did not have to be afraid of voicing their opinion? Probably many decades ago.
How childishly transparent was the spurious, demagogic contrast made between "rules" and "popular vote"! Was he really as much without any awareness of the deeply fallacious AND preposterous nature of his arguments as it seemed, or he is really just this big of a shameless shrill?
Well, it seems that he could be hung by his own petard if Salon, following the informal but clearly popular vote of the posters, would remove his pathetic screed and ban him forever from Salon.
Taking bets.
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You can get very very rich
[Read the article: Cashing in on the Clinton campaign]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]by helping the little people.
It is all for them, remember?