Letters to the Editor 08/17/2005

To the Editor:

Over the last few months I have become more and more saddened by the hostility and disrespect I have been seeing from articles and comments in The Nugget. Last week there was a entry in the paper titled “Who the Hell do you think you are?” (paid advertisement by Gary Tewalt, The Nugget, August 10, page 9) which I feel I must comment about.

This community has been hit hard recently but I believe that is no excuse to become rude and disrespectful to other people in our community who we disagree with whether they have lived here 12 months or 12 years. Change is inevitable and that is not what is up for debate at the moment. It is the type of change that we as a community must decide upon. It is the future and the quality of that future which will be decided by our actions today.

Mr. Tewalt complained about the anger and arrogance of a few in our community. That (piece) seemed to me to be full of both anger and arrogance and I was astonished to see it in the paper. It would be more productive to ask what people are angry about than to make them feel alienated and unwelcome.

The point was made that some people have just recently become active in the community… well, I applaud those people, whatever their viewpoints may be. The more community participation from new and old, left and right, the better. This is America; “stupid time-consuming political drama” is what democracy is all about.

Most people here have good intentions and if we can all just listen to each other and communicate instead of calling people names, insulting them and their points of view, maybe we can come up with an even better solution to our problems than we would if we stay in our own little groups and point fingers.

Monet Tyler

s s s

To the Editor:

Great letter Gary (paid advertisement by Gary Tewalt, The Nugget, August 10, page 9). You put my feelings into words. Thanks so much.

Pat Vandewater

Black Butte Ranch

To the Editor:

The Bush Administration seems to believe that ignorance is a virtue.

The president has now called for teaching school children the pseudo-scientific fraud of “Intelligent Design” along with Evolution.

Stubbornly refusing to acknowledge Global Warming, the Administration’s resident “expert” altered government scientific reports to create doubt and equivocation that more neatly fit the Administration’s politics. He suddenly resigned when he got caught and went to work for Exxon/Mobil, the number one corporate bankroller of the anti-Global Warming cabal.

The Bush point man on energy in the Senate, Republican James Inofe of Oklahoma calls Global Warming a “hoax,” as does that eminent and all-knowing scientist Rush Limbaugh. And it doesn’t stop there. Two BLM scientists resigned in protest over the alteration of their studies by superiors on the topic of over-grazing in the West. A more politically acceptable, i.e., Republican-slanted science was substituted to the detriment of our public lands.

Of course the United States isn’t the first nation to politicize science and replace it with dogma. During Stalin’s long reign of terror in the Soviet Union his favorite biologist was Trofim Lysenko, who developed the nutty theory that learned behavioral characteristics could be passed down genetically to offspring. Stalin installed this “theory” as dogma because it fit his idiotic notion that the Soviet Union would be able to breed a new superhuman “Soviet Man.” Anybody who challenged Lysenko was brutally oppressed and many were shot. Soviet agriculture has never recovered even today from Lysenko’s and Stalin’s disastrous lunacies.

So far our scientists are still free to complain about the politicizing of science but the Bush Administration’s headlong rush to enshrine ignorance as a virtue spells disaster in the long run.

R.T. Tihista