Mark,
I have been a loyal, and paying customer of the Tucson Comic News, for three (3) whole months! I really enjoy the publication. My main reason for writing pertains to the style of your writing. In the first place, are there good and bad power-addicted greedheads? If there are, this is only further proof that you and your lot are completely off kilter.
People view conspiracy theorists like yourself as pot-smokin' crackpots. If you are familiar with political philosophy then you know who Adam Smith was. He wrote the "invisible hand" theory. This stated that rational, free thinking societies would produce that which society needed. Western capitalism as it evolved in the United States has produced more good than bad. The Anasazi wandered around for 20,000 years and got nothing done. We have the greatest society in the world. We did it in 200 years... You seem to take great pride in attacking conservatives. We as Americans shun the thought of a socialist society. You in your rant, set the stage for government domination. Only by the limitation of governmental intrusion can we truly be free. This is the platform of the Republicans. What liberals advocate is the exact opposite. These are the true power-addicted greedheads.
If you think that America is so "corrupt", go over to Russia and tell 'em to clean up Lake Baikal. If you did your Russian would be fluent by the time you got out of corrective labor.
What you advocate is antiquated and unpopular. People are tired of all the hypocrisy and elitism in organizations like Greenpeace. The last election is the beginning of the end for state sponsored socialism in America. Thats what the message is. Perhaps Canada would be a better country for you. As for the planet, do ya really think that dinosaurs are extinct because they smoked? Volcanoes emit 3,000 times the amount of CFC's in 24 hours than man has ever produced. Is Greenpeace banning volcanoes now? You under estimate man's intrepidity and will to survive. You have absolutely no clue about human nature. Stop blaming others for what you feel are faults with society. Understand that the blood-sucking taxman in all his do-goodness is screwing us. That makes you a power-addicted greedhead. When someone reads your profile online, they can readily see that your favorite subject is yourself and your blossoming business. I like to call that "I,I,me,me" syndrome. I don't dislike delusionary liberals like yourself. I can only pity you...
See ya on election day.
Greg Brown
Tucson, AZ
Member, Republican Nat'l Committee
Dear Greg,
Thanks for pitying me. Maybe with the help of loyal readers like yourself I can stop smoking pot and realize that the free market is the answer to everything.
Seriously, I'm too busy with my capitalist enterprises to tear apart your contradictory and deluded letter line by line. Still, I'm happy you care enough to rant back at me, so I owe you a few thoughts.
1. People use the buzzwords "conspiracy theorist" because they think they magically shut down all arguments. All they have really proven is their intellectual laziness. I assume you were inspired to use this hackneyed phrase by my references to the proven historical crimes of Richard Nixon and the CIA. If you have a better "theory" about these crimes, for instance that the "invisible hand" of the market requires political murders from time to time, by all means elucidate it.
Contrary to your assertion about what "people" think, most Americans know that they're being lied to on a regular basis. For instance, over 75% disbelieve the "coincidence theory" that JFK was killed by a lone nut, who was then killed by another lone nut. Crackpots are in the eye of the beholder.
2. Mindless boosterism of "the greatest society on earth" is akin to rooting for your local sports team just because you happen to live there. True love of country would include examining its faults and criticism thereof, and humbly seeking the best that other cultures have to offer. Derogating Russians, Canadians and Native Americans is not an argument.
3. Anybody who buys the ideological rhetoric of either of our major parties deserves more pity than I am able to muster. No matter what the Republicans say, what they really deliver is socialism for the rich: huge tax breaks and subsidies for their supporters. Mortgage deductions for mansions and second homes, natural resources sold off below market value, public-financed logging roads, subsidized cattle ranches, support for agribusiness, nuclear power, pharmaceutical firms, tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, billions of dollars for the oil depletion allowance, built-in cost overruns for defense industries, ad nauseum.
4. Anyone who has actually read Adam Smith would know of his disdain for welfare for the rich, which was as prevalent then as now. Then as now, "merchants and manufacturers...have been by far the principal architects" of policy and, not surprisingly, their interests have "been most peculiarly attended to," at the expense of consumers and working people. Incidentally, Smith also found the treatment of Native Americans by the greatest society on earth to be a "savage injustice."
5. Getting your environmental arguments from Rush Limbaugh is like using Michael Milken and Ivan Boesky as an argument for pure capitalism. If you really think we can continue to deforest the planet, dump poisons in our air and water, add billions more to our populations, and suffer no consequences (such as massive famine and disease), may the invisible hand dump you into a capitalist paradise like Sao Paolo, Brazil. For the record, volcanoes do not produce CFCs. They do produce chlorine, which, unlike CFCs, is soluble, and can be flushed out of the lower atmosphere. CFCs are inert and insoluble, and consequently rise to the stratosphere to release their chlorine molecules, with well-documented deleterious effects to the planet's protective ozone layer. Your assertion, that volcanoes emit 3000 times more CFCs in 24 hours than man has ever produced, has somehow been inflated to triple what Limbaugh claimed, and in fact, the 24 hours that he was talking about was during the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo. If you track down his source, however, a book by Dixy Lee Ray, you'll find that she, either mistakenly or duplicitously, was citing an article about a massive volcanic eruption that occurred 700,000 years ago.
6. If an AOL profile isn't the place to talk about what you're doing with your life, what is?
Yours truly, Mark Zepezauer
(author/publisher/cartoonist who also loves artsy-fartsy foreign movies, angst-ridden alternative rock bands, hiking and bicycling, my cat Raja, and my lovely fiance)
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