White Mail

I just checked my mail and got some more of that damn junk mail.  You know, the kind with all kinds of pizza and furniture ads that you always just throw away.  And so I walked over to the paper recycling dumpster to discard it, and saw several more of the same damn things.  

And for a moment, I had a twinge of guilt.  Looking at all that wasted paper, and thinking that maybe I should buy something from these advertisers; as a way to justify the expense and make it such a waste.  But that lasted only a moment, and then I thought, “Duh, they’re the ones being wasters, and if I bought something based upon those ads, I’d only be encouraging them and eventually leading to more waste.”  

And then it occurred to me that this is the exact scenario we’re seeing played out with Iraq.  That war supporters insist that we deny reality by blindly supporting the war; under the idea that we’re being wasteful if we suggest that the war is without merit.  And that it’s exactly the opposite: By blindly supporting the war, we’re only encouraging them to do this again.  By making things easier for them politically, we’re just asking for them to invade again.  And so, not only is it wrong to support the war in order to justify it; it’s wrong to support this war at all.  Now if I could only find a proper recycling dumpster for it…