I object to your tone

Your editorial of Jan. 10, “Drill, baby, drill,” shocks for several reasons. First, I hope you realize whom you are quoting and whom she was paraphrasing. If you do, you may see yourselves in an unwholesome lineage of hooliganism encouraging violence, if not mayhem. Besides, the urgency toward reckless exploitation is, by itself, shocking.

Second, I am shocked to find a prized part of my identity reduced insultingly to “alarum and blubbering from the usual suspects out to save the world from mankind” and to “panicky CNN types.” The better angels of mankind willing, humanity and the editors of the Democrat-Gazette may one day thank such types. By the way, MSNBC is my first preference, which may suggest to you the inexactness of stereotypes and intended slanders, and I admire Jimmy Carter, so “sticks and stones,” as they say.

My greatest shock, however, is one I endure perpetually from the discourses of business, industry, the GOP and, well, just about every quarter of modern American public policy: the debasement and reduction of all values to that of commodity (see also your Jan. 12 “Medical care is a commodity”; so, it is not care first of all?). Arctic National Wildlife Reserve? Oil, you say. No doubt you concur about Bears Ears and many other tracts of the great American West you might not tell apart. Cape Cod and Nantucket? Wind, you say, wind for sale to consumers of power. Relentless reduction of all values to the commercial is all around us, all but inescapable.

It is also ugly in the great extreme. Much of humanity hopes for more from mortal life in this world we must share with you and that, like it or not, you share with us “alarmists.” SHEARLE FURNISH

Little Rock