OT but, it is a related topic.

A certain anti-environmentalist AGW denier has made a post I wish to quote for you. I want you to see how this dovetails with the stupid of the topic of this thread.

I remember my first Earth Day at Junior High. They really went all out, and shut the normal teaching down for the day. They cancelled all classes. The morning was spent in assemblies. Three hours of nothing but assemblies on what “pollution” was, and how bad we humans were, and last but not least, how we could be part of the solution instead of part of the problem™.

I was paying more attention to the other students than to the propaganda. I watched as normally bad boys were transformed into glassy-eyed zombies. At lunch, they were all jabbering about how bad the pollution was, and yadda.

In the afternoon, they pushed a little harder, and told all the students that they were going to show their devotion to the cause by going out into the school yard, and spending the afternoon picking up litter. Yippee!!!

I went out with everyone else, and did it for about ten minutes. Then I stood up and looked all around me. Snotty girls. Bad boys. People you’d never dream of doing this kind of thing on their own just mindlessly doing what they’ve been told. It hit me like a ton of bricks. We’ve all been had!!!

Realizing this, I made my way to the edge of the property, and when no one was looking (even with 500 kids and a couple dozen teachers present, they were so bent over picking up somebody else’s schmutz that there were long periods when nobody could see me) I crossed the street, and ducked behind a house.

…

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s something pernicious in a totalitarian way about the entire environmental movement, and it’s been that way for a long time. Maybe this true anecdote can help illustrate why they can’t be trusted.

Notice the scare quotes around pollution. in the first line. Perhaps this individual sees no evidence that there is such a thing as pollution? Of course not. This individual would not drink a cup of water from NY harbor . He knows that would be a bad idea, yet he needs the scare quotes.

If you present him with the real world in his face he will acknowledge what anyone would. But the disconnect happens if it is something that he can call someone else’s problem over there. Love canal was not polluted because other people live in Love Canal. AGW isn’t real because he personally has not yet felt it in a way that he would be forced to acknowledge and pictures of glaciers retreating or ice caps shrinking are over there. It gets put into a different box in his mind. Once it is in that box, he is able to do double think.

This person is also a birther. And it is the same thing. If he were hiring someone for a job, and he needed to know that someone was born in this nation to give him the job, then of course official state paperwork from any given state would do the job for him. I don’t know abut raised watermarks etc… But I do know that all the states do these things differently, and so does he. He would accept the official paperwork from any of the given states without a question, if he did a background check and verified that it was the official forms issued by that state or even county.

But if it a president he hates! Well that is a different matter!

He explains why further on. All sorts of bad boys - you know rebels like he imagines himself to be - people who somehow stand out from the herd - were brainwashed into picking up other people’s trash. Damn it. He will not be told to clean up his mess - that is totalitarian so sure as hell he won’t help pick up a mess made by someone else!

Yes he is a bad boy! A very bad little boy throwing a temper tantrum.
No liberal is going to tell him about his social responsibilities! So that is how we get scare quotes around pollution.