I wrote a diary recently about a problem many of us have had to deal with -- the likely end of a longtime friendship because the friend had been infected with the teabagger virus.
In this instance, a since-kindergarten friend bugged out of a long-planned get-together in NYC on short notice to attend a no-account teabagger event in D.C. in mid-November -- one of those KILL THE BILL, surround-the-Capitol Beck/Republican events that attracted a few hundred teabaggers and no media attention.
And he thought I'd just understand his active opposition to health insurance reform.
Well, no, I don't, especially since he will get health insurance for life from New York state taxpayers due to the union contract for State University of New York employees.
We had an e-mail exchange this week that confirmed the end of the friendship, and that again highlighted the hypocrisy of many teabaggers who benefit, in one way or another, from the government they profess to hate.
Details, below.
I hadn't communicated with the friend, who we'll call JD, since November.
While cleaning out my e-mail last week, I found this from JD from last summer:
I am singing Obama's praises, as I just took advantage of cash for clunkers last Wednesday.
I turned in my ol beat-up jeep that I kept here in Oregon, and drove off in a brand new Honda Fit, 4,500 off the price and I'm going green.
That was the first new car that this mid-50s guy had ever bought, and Obama/Democratic stimulus policies, that he vociferously opposes, helped him do that.
But he was not "singing Obama's praises" for long.
Here's how he justified standing up myself and another since-kindergarten friend a few months later:
There has been a call to surround the Capitol for two more days. It's the least I can do and something I just have to do, as I am becoming more of a participant in the revolution to take back our country from the statists.
I just have to go as there has been a call to storm the hill right through Saturday, and I owe it to my masonic ancestors (and the great insurance coverage I have:).
KILL THE BILL!!
As if it's funny that he gets "great insurance coverage" from the taxpayers of NYS, and is eager to "KILL THE BILL!!" that would help millions of Americans get affordable health insurance.
Anyway, after re-reading the cash for clunkers e-mail, I again challenged JD about his selfish hypocrisy.
And got this spittle-flecked reply:
You and Mark (another longtime friend since childhood) must have been crushed to learn that the Times Square bomber is a jihadist. I know you and Mayor Mikey and the White House were hoping it was someone from the Tea Party movement.
No, it's the libs rioting in the streets of Athens, Greece, and Phoenix, AZ., not us. It's the Muslim extremists trying to blow up airplanes over Detroit, killing soldiers in Texas, and trying to blow up tourists in NYC.
Pass these pin drop moments (an attached wingnut e-mail I won't afflict you with) on to your leftie friends who secretly hate America and are anxious to tell me how to spend my paycheck.
snip
Hey, I like libs. I just don't feel like being around them.
When I replied to this mendacious e-mail, again trying to get JD to own up to his obvious hypocrisy, and closed with recalling that he told us he lied to get out of an Air Force commitment, the spittle flew even more:
ooh. personal attacks now. how old are you?
on my service, i told my commanding officer that i condone conventional war, but not nuclear. told them so and for my honesty, was rewarded with an honorably discharge.
just played it up for you ingrates, because i knew all of you were in it for the joke.
in fact, bought my first house with VA benefits. i am going to be buried for free in a veteran's cemetery out west. ha! i am an honorable discharged AF officer, pure and simple.
there are plenty of conservatives in the academy. we just are a growing, silent minority. we aren't going to quit our jobs (that we are so good at) just because we believe in limited government. although i am now vested and have great health insurance for life. ha!
snip
do you know how great it's been being adored by college-age students for these fiftenn years, tweeking their political sensibilities, all the while talking of verse? sweet.
i've blocked your email address. you would have to call and leave a long phone message but that would be pathetic.
I won't waste my time with a "long, pathetic" phone message, trying again to get JD to look in the mirror and inquiring what he means by "tweeking" his students' "political sensibilities" while being paid by NYS taxpayers to teach them how to write effectively.
And I know what he told us about his cup of coffee in the Air Force -- he did ROTC in college for the beer money, endured basic training and missile launch officer training, then spent exactly one day in an ICBM silo before expressing a conscientious objection to ICBMs.
He told us he conned the Air Force shrink assigned to deal with such cases into believing that he had developed a religious conviction that nuclear war was wrong, and he could not therefore push the button if ordered.
Maybe he lied to us about that years ago. But he didn't cop to that until this e-mail, when it became convenient to change the story he's told for years.
The original story was certainly plausible because he's an accomplished bullshitter, and, until he got into teaching in his mid-30s, an equally accomplished slacker.
JD proudly says he got away with an honorable discharge and veteran's benefits for a few months of active duty.
People who have earned veteran's benefits through actual service, in a silo or in more dangerous places, and the taxpayers who fund such well-earned benefits, should be outraged that a shirker like JD gets any veteran's benefits at all.
Whether or not he's a hypocritical teabagger.
Whatever, our 50-year friendship is irretrieveably over.
Good riddance.
As one of his many former friends put it:
He's a taker, not a giver.
Best to ignore such people, they can't be changed.
Sociopaths.