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What is deeply disturbing is our (their, many Americans') attitude about what is worthy of sacrifice, what is expendible and what is not: a stubborn unwillingness to give up our right to live however irresponsibly we like and consume as much as we want to and our begrudging, almost powerless willingness to give up the lives of our children to go fight idiot wars.  Like, you have no right to take away my SUV, but my son, here, take him.  

We must work hard to educate everyone about the fact that the invisible hand of democracy, which supposedly calls our children to fight in Iraq, etc, and which supposedly materializes in objects like cars, is not the hand of democracy but of corrupt profiteers who are exploiting many Americans' faith in the goodness of people and in democracy for their own personal gain.  

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

by p------- on Sun Jul 30th, 2006 at 12:59:54 PM EST
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My friends and relations are of liberal persuasion and tend to vote straight Democratic.  They are socialistic in outlook, as am I.

But people are in general divorced from the consequences of their actions.  It's very hard for anyone to think that his or her particular air conditioning unit is causing massive carbon emissions and threatening the environment as we know it.

And if there is a problem--blame big corporations, greed, shortsighted politicians, and other blameworthy targets.  But that's not the whole story.  Every American household is using more electricity than 20 years ago, whereas industry has actually been able to cut back on consumption.

I do not see any of the people I know driving less, consuming less energy, or practicing conservation apart from some longstanding, obligatory recycling of glass, newspapers, and plastics.   Even though gasoline costs more at the pump, you can pay with a credit card, so there's not pain associated with the moment of purchase--more like a shrugging regret at the cost and the idea of thinking about the problem later, when the bill comes.  But you only have to pay a small percentage of your credit card debt in order to keep floating.

by Plan9 on Wed Aug 2nd, 2006 at 02:09:52 PM EST
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tend to vote straight Democratic

I thought the Democrats were gay.

Homophobic joke of the month by Commander Alex in Toulouse (sorry jandsm, but I've been practicing these past few days as my gay cousin is in town and we've been rivalling to see who can come up with the worst jokes)

by Alex in Toulouse on Wed Aug 2nd, 2006 at 02:13:51 PM EST
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Of course voting straight Republican ticket elects covert gays.
by Plan9 on Wed Aug 2nd, 2006 at 02:30:03 PM EST
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Which is why some sort of externality taxation system is the only way to go ...
by Colman (colman at eurotrib.com) on Wed Aug 2nd, 2006 at 02:14:43 PM EST
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