This morning I arrived at work to find an email from a staunch Republican uncle celebrating the Mass. election results.
The top of my head exploded for several minutes.
After several more moments spent stuffing what remained of my brains back into my skull, I rapidly dashed off a heart-felt response and hammered the send button.
I'm posting my response here in hopes it helps others respond to obnoxious family members. Sadly, we all have them, and days like today inevitably bring them out of the woodwork...
Text of emails:
As much as I am fond of you Uncle [], these types of emails leave me no choice but to respond. I want to preface my response by saying that I sincerely hope I do not offend anyone! But I can't hold my tongue.
The Republican party has proven itself to be woefully incapable of leading this country in a competent, compassionate manner. During the Bush years, America's backbone, it's middle class, was squeezed almost to the point of oblivion, while the corporate big wigs laughed all the way to the store where they bought their mega-yachts (or their $3,000 shower curtains). Our Earth was polluted without regard for our role as its stewards. The poor living in our inner cities were abandoned. Everyone was supposed to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even though we weren't all playing on a level field. The rules were designed to be slanted in favor of the wealthy. We were told it would "trickle down" but the trickle never came. Meanwhile, corporate America was left to do as it pleased, and it turned out that corporate America was pleased to do a lot of things that were really bad for the average American, including eliminating pensions, sending jobs overseas en masse, and driving bubbles and crashes on Wall Street that eventually came to a calamitous roost on the average American's most treasured asset, their home.
Instead of exporting charity abroad, we exported wars that made most of world view us, at best, as a nation of arrogant bullies, and at worst, as their most despised enemy, further jeopardizing our national security. Our hard-earned tax dollars now go toward fighting costly foreign wars without end and rebuilding foreign countries decimated by our own bombs, while at home our roads and bridges crumble, our social security system teeters on the brink of bankruptcy threatening to plunge millions of seniors into the deepest poverty, and our middle class struggles to come up with the money to pay for their children's' educations and ever-mounting healthcare costs (let alone put away something for their increasingly remote retirement).
I for one haven't forgotten it was the Republican's brilliant idea to privatize social security and bet our entire retirement nest eggs on the stock market. Talk about a disaster averted - thankfully the idea never got off the ground. What we need right now are smart, practical, egalitarian solutions to America's problems. We don't need a lot of nonsensical bluster about "family values." We need results. Until the Republicans can come up with some sensible and concrete, and most of all truly compassionate, plans for tangibly improving the average American's lot in life, they may win the odd election, but it will be a hollow victory.
Love,
[me]
-----Original Message-----
From: []
Sent: Tuesday, January 19, 2010 9:56 PM
To: []
Cc: []
Subject: Re: Breaking News - America on Track
Family and friends,
Thought you'd want to be the first to know that Massachusetts has taken a a giant step towards a better future for our country. They have elected Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy. The steamroller in Washington, DC, is about to be slowed down.
[]