Comment by karaterobot
21 days ago
> This issue just doesn’t seem important enough to me to spend any effort arguing either way.
Your comment is well-stated, and in the spirit of a free and liberal society. The problem—not with your argument, but with the world—is that today there seems to be literally no issue unimportant enough not to argue about, or use as the battlefield for an unending ideological proxy war. My guess is that few of the people arguing this issue on HN have strong feelings about flouride qua flouride, but have strong feelings about the kinds of people they believe oppose or support the use of flouride in water, and this notion is what they're really railing against.
This rings true for my gut reaction. The family and acquaintances in my life who have been up in arms against fluoride for years now are actual neo nzs (like “deport all non whites”, “you-know-who controls america”, “superiority of the white race” level).
So my instinct is to really be afraid of this anti-fluoride wave, even tho practically I don’t care one way or another.