Debate: Littering

By Jake and Glenn

To many littering is a lifestyle choice, not just an defiant act of laziness.  To others it is an abhorrent sin on the same level as taking the lord’s name in vein.  What would happen if you locked two of these knuckleheads inside an 18’ X 20’ steel cage?  Jake and Glenn attempt to answer this pressing question.

Jake:  Imagine that you’re zipping down the highway in an automobile.  You have your goggles firmly in place around your eyes and your scarf is flapping in the wind.  You are eating a Monster Burger from the local Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr.  You finish it and you’re left with the paper
wrapper.  What do you do?  You do the only thing there is to do: throw the piece of paper out of the window.  Let God deal with it.  You do not want your vehicle smelling of broiled burger and cheese.  You do not want your vegan girlfriend to find out you have been eating red meat.  She will smell it when you pick her up for your date, which you are headed to right now.  They say secrets tear us apart, but I say secrets keep us together.  Secrets and lies are the glue that binds a relationship and keeps it from disintegrating.  Littering is the only thing that can save your otherwise doomed relationship.

Glenn:  It is very hard to find someone to love you as you are - your faults are numerous and you know that no matter how hard you try you will never grow as a person.  The instinct to lie to protect a relationship is as natural as homosexuality in numerous animals.  Just as natural, though, is protecting our planet.  When I wake up in the morning I do not defecate on the floor next to my bed nor do I empty my chamber pot on our family’s kitchen table.  These actions are encompassed in the quote “do not shit where you eat/sleep” but they also describe my opposition to littering.  Trash belongs in a dump or the trunk of your car - not on a highway or in an infant’s outdoor crib.  Treat the Earth as you would your own house and you will be blessed with the riches of heaven.
 
Jake:  “Do not shit where you eat?”  What if you eat shit?  A lot of us Americans eat shit all day long, from our bosses, wives, Sunday school teachers, parents and little league referees who cannot make a fair call to save their lives.  If were eating all of this shit--just having it shoveled into our gullets--then eventually we too are going to have to shit.  Why not occasionally throw some trash out your car window?  It is not going to hurt anybody.  Nature is boring.  You know what is visually exciting?  The Pepsi logo.  Let’s throw some 20 liter bottles of Pepsi into a bog and show nature what top-of-the-line graphic design is all about.  What’s prettier: a maple tree or a billboard for Virginia Slims?  Obviously the billboard.  Nobody besides a tripped out hippie would answer otherwise.  Let us throw our trash wherever we please.  If nature doesn’t like it, well, I guess it can just eat some shit.
 
Glenn:  A billboard is beautiful - whether it is for Olive Garden or Houlihan's, a restaurant owned by surviving members of the Third Reich.  But throwing trash out your window is the moral equivalent of slowing down in your car and using a baseball bat to hurt a young child walking on the side of the road.  She was there because her larger metropolitan area does not include sidewalks.  The municipality that forces children to walk on the side of a major road is partially at fault, but you’re the one with the baseball bat.  Similarly, trash is partially at fault for litter by its mere existence but you’re the one throwing it out your car instead of putting it under the car seat where you hide the rest of your secrets.  The United States in its current form will not last fifty more years and this Earth will not last more than one million years.  Why speed up this process?  Instead, consider speeding up your car and driving right into a concrete wall.  The wreckage will be a form of litter, but not the trash we are discussing here.

 
Jake:  If nobody littered how would criminals pay back their debt to society?  They would just go on to commit an escalating amount of heinous crimes until they hit on the worst of all: regicide.  I would hardly support something that would lead to the death of royalty, and that is why I do support littering.  How easy is it to just toss the wrapper of a Klondike bar on the sidewalk as you walk hand in hand with your metrosexual friends?  Nothing has ever been easier.  Should we not get a break from the weight that is crushing us?  I say yes, and unlike Glenn, I do not want all of my friends crushed, but I do want beautiful women/men to have crushes on them.  Without trash we would not have Doritos.  I have never seen an empty bag of Doritos in a rubbish bin.  They should be blowing down a busy street like an urban tumbleweed.  In the film “American Beauty” one of the protagonists claims that a plastic bag being blown around in the wind is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.  If trash is so beautiful--and popular movies agree--then why not toss our refuse wherever we please?  We can add a little beauty to America.


Glenn:  Why bother?  Again, this country will not last for another 50 years.  I imagine a resurgent Confederate States of America rising again (now with Missouri) and shudder at the littered dystopia awaiting those of us fortunate enough to live in the South.  Every street will be full of discarded Waffle House menus and swastika armbands from a Houlihan's liquidation sale.  It sounds like a nightmare, but I can handle it because I know the rest of the planet will be around for one million more years.  We need to keep it clean for our estranged children and our estranged children’s estranged children.  It would be easy to throw your trash out the window just like it would be easy to pick up a phone and call your son to apologize for your the way you treated him when he was a teenager.  Instead I throw my garbage, including letters I’ve written but never sent to my 28 year old son, in a city-approved dump where it can all be burned or shot into space in ships captained by the smartest chimpanzees and gorillas among us.  To paraphrase Radiohead: stop littering / start shouting!