My town is full of idiots.. Attempting to remove fluoride from the water.

Sigh..

Link.


Yay, my stupid small town might go down in history as one of the first in the country to succeed in a angry pitchfork toting mob hanging of fluoride.


I wrote a letter on the issue to the local paper, link, fourth one down.


There's actually been more than one VERY HEATED town board meeting on the issue lately.


My town is full of idiots...

Nah, San Antonio is worse, if only because it's a bigger city.

[mod boots ON]

[modhat:2ges74gj]This has a good beat and I could dance to it. Therefore, it's going to the Thunderdome.[/modhat:2ges74gj]

[mod boots OFF]

I grew up in Europe, where the water is not fluoridated but we received fluoride treatments in school to make up for it.

I think your letter was good, but could have been improved by linking to this chart to show how correlation and causality work.

OH LOCAL GOVERNMENT WHAT CAN'T YOU FIX

Seriously, we have a county in Virginia that has spent far and above its budget to bring such wonderful innovation such as IPv6 Integration which they paid for and never received, land and tax breaks for a datacenter that is now useless because the city right next door built a better one years earlier, a reliance on corruption for which their sheriff is in jail, and a faith in ignorance as demonstrated by their entire supervisors/city council. So now they can close schools or they can raise taxes 70%.

Why can't small local governments be required to treat some of the elected positions as employee positions. You know, in which one man or woman serves in that position as their JOB for as long as they can. I imagine that way at least there'd be somebody there chewing on their pencil reminding the rest that the plan is profoundly stupid.

Also, two hobos are eating a clown and one turns to the other and asks, "Does this taste funny to you?"

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Originally posted by XJETGIRLX

I think your letter was good, but could have been improved by linking to this chart to show how correlation and causality work.

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Well that is unsettling indeed.

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Originally posted by XJETGIRLX

I grew up in Europe, where the water is not fluoridated but we received fluoride treatments in school to make up for it.

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Which everybody hated from the depths of their little hearts. I say put it in our drinking water and put the poor fluoride lady out of her misery.

The county health department was just bitching that they had to spend too much money on fluoride treatments for the children in municipalities that didn't have fluoride in the water. They didn't know where to get the money for the needed treatments.

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Originally posted by hatesfreedom

OH LOCAL GOVERNMENT WHAT CAN'T YOU FIX

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Exactly.

The smart, capable people are only in local government for a few years on their way to higher office.

I wonder, clayton, if your town council is aware that their municipal drinking water is also heavily contaminated with dihydrogen monoxide. :roll:

That article just reminds me of something I would see debunked on Snopes...are people really that dumb?

Well, at least one idiot, anyway:

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"Fluoride also has other things like lead in it", said Connett supporter Bill Provost. "It has other heavy metals too, so it's a bad substance. It's a carcinogen, and we don't need it in our water."

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Bwuuuh? Lead? Fluoride has lead in it? Really?

Moron.

*sigh*

That guy actually has a lot of support around here for all sorts of things. And in every single issue he's a fucking moron.

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Originally posted by Clayton_e

*sigh*

That guy actually has a lot of support around here for all sorts of things. And in every single issue he's a fucking moron.

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Don't tell me, let me guess: He's loud, persistent, and never in doubt.

My father is a councilman in a small town government. He often comes home from board meetings frustrated to the point of insanity. If it wouldn't be such a slap in the face to the people that supported him and elected him he would step down.

What you see in the papers is the tip of the iceberg. It's absolutely horrifying.

Anti-fluoridation paranoia in this day and age? That's actually sort of charming in a way. It's nice to hear that small-town America hasn't completely disappeared, and the rural folk still stand vigil against Communist brainwashing, Satanic cults, and Bigfoot.

Judging from his letter to the editor, Kevin Bruno of Morrissonville seems to have a good handle on such goings-on in the Plattsburgh area. How DOES a person mistake a man for a deer, anyway? At what point did wood begin producing this destructive by-product known as 'fire' when burned? Such things never happened in my day. I'm guessing that he and Charles Edward Burke are letter column regulars.

We have no stinkin' fluoride here, and we have the teeth to prove it! Specifically, Oregon ranks 48th nationally in fluoridation, with only 25% of residents receiving fluoridated water, and almost none of the big (sic) cities treating their water.* However, I have observed a man standing by a creek feeding colloidal silver to ducks because, "Y'know, it's, like, good for the ducks."

It's not just small town stupidity, either. Apparently the city of Calgary (with over a million people here) wants to re-open the fluoridated water debate again, too. Look, you bunch of idiots, I grew up in small town Saskatchewan where we got our water from the town well, and I have the teeth made of chalk to show for it (my parents didn't know nuthin' bout no extra fluoride treatments). They showed one of our illustrious city aldermen on camera (Rick "Blinky" McIver) explaining to us why fluoride in the water is bad because it says right on the tube of toothpaste not to swallow it. I give up. Ignorance is too strong and doesn't fight fair.

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Originally posted by XJETGIRLX

I grew up in Europe, where the water is not fluoridated but we received fluoride treatments in school to make up for it.

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I had those too (in the US, though). Nasty green hate-flavored "swish." The word "swish" makes me gag now.

On the plus side, I've had numerous compliments on my nice teeth, including one from a dentist.

The dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

ETA: Here's a better version for yanking some chains.

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Originally posted by susan

Here's a better version for yanking some chains.

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I love that site. :D

I especially like the linked MSDS--having had to read and sign off on hundreds of product pages while working as a therapist on a medical unit.

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Originally posted by susan

The dangers of dihydrogen monoxide.

ETA: Here's a better version for yanking some chains.

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That would actually be hydrogen oxide.

Is uninformed opposition to flouridation one of those things that just keep popping up every few years in small towns, like trying to ban Judy Blume books from the school library?

Don't feel all alone - a San Francisco Supervisor (read: city council member) actually seriously proposed this about 10 years ago. She shut up once told that that position had been staked out by right-wing morons 40 years earlier.
SF had district elections at the time. She represented the old, rich, white folks who have never gotten used to no longer runnig the place. Same district as Dan White, for those who remember.

Stop harshing on small towns, guys. It's not that there are more dumbshits in small towns than in cities. It's just that there aren't enough people who are with it to drown out the dumbshits.

Also, the crazy people are more likely to be your friends and family, so you can't slap 'em upside the head unless you want to end up with spite fence ten feet from your front porch or having Cousin Billy try to pick a fight with you at Christmas.

Like I said earlier, it's not just small towns. The margins in the vote to fluoridate Calgary's water were something like 52% in favour. I think that city councils want to do right by their citizens, but unfortunately they take the junk science route and don't seem to do their homework.

"Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous Communist plot we have ever had to face." -- Gen. Jack D. Ripper

Stranger

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Originally posted by MsPurlMcKnittington

Also, the crazy people are more likely to be your friends and family, so you can't slap 'em upside the head unless you want to end up with spite fence ten feet from your front porch or having Cousin Billy try to pick a fight with you at Christmas.

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What's a spite fence?

I'm not so sure that it's the crazy people as it's the ones who were peer promoted through grade school to middle school to high school and out because, "We can't fail them! It'll make them feel bad about themselves!" and who are therefore (often proudly) ignorant of critical thinking, the scientific method, or even basic logic. They Know What They Know, and all the nonexistent gods help you if you ever try to teach them something new or against what they already know.

At least by the time I got out of high school, they still hadn't found that middle ground between "publicly humiliate them when they don't perform as well as the teacher thinks they ought and beat them for the slightest infraction" and "coddle them so they never, ever lose a game or fail a test or flunk a grade or develop a poor self image". There's a reason colleges have to offer so many remedial courses.

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Originally posted by Morgyn

I'm not so sure that it's the crazy people as it's the ones who were peer promoted through grade school to middle school to high school and out because, "We can't fail them! It'll make them feel bad about themselves!" and who are therefore (often proudly) ignorant of critical thinking, the scientific method, or even basic logic. They Know What They Know, and all the nonexistent gods help you if you ever try to teach them something new or against what they already know.

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I think you'd find that this mentality long predates the educational system's self-esteem fixation.


ETA: Yes, I could correct this post to use the word "antedate" instead of "predate." But that would make me feel bad about myself.

Yeah, I think I'm with terrifel. Hostility to book larnin' is as American as guns and apple pie. No one really likes being wrong, for that matter. People will cling to all sorts of crazy shit to avoid admitting they're wrong.

Reminds me of Plano, Texas. In the late 1980s, they voted against hosting Foreign Exchange students from the USSR, for fear that they might be spies.

Two notes about this: 1) The potential spies were soccer-playing high-school students; 2) Nobody, in America or Russia, gives a shit about Plano, Texas.

You can add Canada to the list, too. If you want to.

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Originally posted by Excalibre

Yeah, I think I'm with terrifel. Hostility to book larnin' is as American as guns and apple pie. No one really likes being wrong, for that matter. People will cling to all sorts of crazy shit to avoid admitting they're wrong.

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I'd rather find out I'm wrong than remain ignorant, but I'm strange that way.

What I'd like to know, though, is when did this shift in attitude occur, and why, and how widespread is it really? [For the record, it never showed up in my immediate family. My brother and I both knew our parents expected us to study hard, do well, and go to college. I don't think it was even discussed, it was just accepted.]

I'm the first to admit that there's a lot of valuable knowledge that isn't found in books, but there's a lot that is. Why not value both instead of lauding one and denigrating the other? :???:

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Originally posted by Morgyn

What I'd like to know, though, is when did this shift in attitude occur, and why, and how widespread is it really?

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It didn't shift. There is a strain of hostility to high-falutin' knowledge in this country dating back at least to its founding; it's not universal obviously, and those of us who were raised right were instilled with the opposite value. But if you read old literature, you'll see it's an attitude that is depicted very frequently. There's a major opposition in this country to "elitism", and that's not a new thing, and it's always involved, at least in part, opposition to formal education. Good, plain common sense tells you you don't need scientists adding strange chemicals to your water, and that's that. Anti-elitist anti-intellectualism is just a key thing in our society. And everything from political campaigns to commercials plays to it.

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Originally posted by Excalibre

It didn't shift. There is a strain of hostility to high-falutin' knowledge in this country dating back at least to its founding; it's not universal obviously, and those of us who were raised right were instilled with the opposite value. But if you read old literature, you'll see it's an attitude that is depicted very frequently. There's a major opposition in this country to "elitism", and that's not a new thing, and it's always involved, at least in part, opposition to formal education. Good, plain common sense tells you you don't need scientists adding strange chemicals to your water, and that's that. Anti-elitist anti-intellectualism is just a key thing in our society. And everything from political campaigns to commercials plays to it.

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When this sort of attitude rears it's head against fluoride, it leads to a generation of kids with fucked up teeth. When it rears its head against things like vaccines, it kills kids.

Worse, is that it's not just an anti-elitist, anti intellectual sentiment: the very elite,intellectual, organic, hippy types are starting to do it to their kids, too.

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Originally posted by Boozahol Squid, P.I.

Worse, is that it's not just an anti-elitist, anti intellectual sentiment: the very elite,intellectual, organic, hippy types are starting to do it to their kids, too.

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I know, shit like this anti-vaccine stuff makes me think we really need to take a closer look at what decisions we allow parents to make on their kids' behalf.

What is the motivation for the people spreading these crazy lies anyway? Does Jenny McCarthy believe what she's saying? Or did she just decide the best way to cope with her kid's autism was to get revenge on the world by causing other people's kids to die?

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Originally posted by featherlou

Like I said earlier, it's not just small towns. The margins in the vote to fluoridate Calgary's water were something like 52% in favour. I think that city councils want to do right by their citizens, but unfortunately they take the junk science route and don't seem to do their homework.

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I heard this morning on the radio news that the current motion by four of Calgary's aldermen to remove the evil, toxic flouride from the city's drinking water is based on the premise that adding flouride to the water is too expensive. Apparently the bitshit crazy fight against fancy book learnin' wasn't getting the job done.

Fluoride's too expensive, eh? What's going on - do we have a particularly strong dentist lobby here or something? They aren't ass-raping everyone enough yet?

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Originally posted by featherlou

Fluoride's too expensive, eh? What's going on - do we have a particularly strong dentist lobby here or something? They aren't ass-raping everyone enough yet?

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(emphasis mine)

I knew it!! I am never, ever taking the nitrous oxide again. :mad: :eek: :sad:

There's fluoride-bashing hicks here, too. One approached me, with the aim of rewriting 'Another Brick in the Wall' to be about how poisonous flouride is, and how it's a gov't conspiracy etc. My laughter was at him, not with him. Wotcha gonna do. \o/