Many of you have already seen it. You know, the spam email attributed to the retired pastor from MS that is making the rounds on the internet and on blogs where the letter is praised or derided depending upon which side of the aisle you sit. Yesterday Irrelevant Prolixity posted a
diary on this email. I read it, digested it and posted a comment or two on the issue then let it go. I largely dismissed it as another in a long string of right-leaning spam emails that get sent to me regularly by my family in this vein.
But then it happened. My family sent it to me. And I finally had had enough.
It was forwarded by a rabid conservative family member who mass emailed it to everyone in my family with a computer. Attached was the comment "Now this is what I've felt all along, I'm glad someone finally had the courage to speak up." Then the flood of affirmative emails started pouring in in response. Then it got ugly. And I could not keep silent. Below is what I wrote in response.
Normally I would ignore this type of message, but this time I feel compelled to call foul.
It pains me to see people so blatently buy into a message without bothering to do any research to actually see if there was truth or fact to back up the allegations put forth in this letter. You have a powerful tool at your disposal which could have been used to verify what most of you seem to have taken as absolute gospel; the very computer you sit in front of and upon which you are reading this response. Yet none of you bothered to do so before the self-congratulating and the chorus of affirmative responses came pouring forth. To try and outline the discrepancies and half-truths for all of you would be a waste of time and an invitation to open myself up to claims of being for the "other side" as it were. If you cared enough, you would have undertaken this yourselves. This isn't about rebutting so much as it is about asking you to do some self-examination about why it is you latched onto this letter as you have and the principles that the letter implies are present in some, but lacking others.
The complex realities of our world cannot be packaged in slick 30 second sound bites from the media and glib emails for you to digest and go on your merry way, having been fooled into thinking that you understand the issues. In the race to get to your nail appointments, golf outings and cocktail parties, you arm ourselves with just enough information to know what the other guy is speaking of, although most times they know not what they are talking about. Much like yourselves. I hope this distinction is not lost upon you. Your lack of interest in delving deeper is a direct result of the "me" attitude that has sadly circumvented the ideology of "we" in this country. As in "We The People", not "What's in it for Me the Person". That means all of us, not simply the ones you deem worthy to sit at the table you have created for yourselves. And this is about the views you hold dear that place you smack in the middle of the argument regarding the "Haves" vs. the "Have Nots". I am not talking about having money, power or material items. In a nutshell, I am referring to this: You `have' moral authority apparently given to you by God to sit in smug judgment of others on a variety of political and socio-economic issues, which you rarely fail to take advantage of, but I and others `have not' the right to rebut it or challenge you for fear of calling your "Christianity" into question. When we do, you pull out the "big guns" to attempt to brand us as fringe, unpatriotic, and amoral. It worked for a while, but people are beginning to wake up to the reality that you are simply firing blanks.
To blindly follow an ideology without question, as many of you do, is a recipe for disaster. To trust as truth, as you so often do, the packaged blurbs tossed out at you as entertainment masquerading as news shows that you care more for the varnish than the substance. To devour everything served up in pat speeches by the political establishment you hold in such back-slapping self-congratulatory esteem shows a fundamental flaw in your understanding of just what our political process entails. You choose to be disengaged rather than hold a mirror up to yourselves and your ideology. To do so would reek of unpatriotism in your minds, but I have a news flash for you: To NOT do so is the issue that stinks of unpatriotism. You call yourselves the defenders of our freedom and way of life, yet you know so little about why you even have it.
Idealistic, you say? Absolutely. Idealism is what gave you the country you live in today yet so incredulously discount as irrelevant. There are plenty of writings from the Founding Fathers to erase any doubt of that, if you are so inclined to bother to seek them out.
My attitude is not in keeping with the `realities' of the world around me, you reply? I beg to differ. Actually, I beg of you nothing. I assert my right to differ and dissent, which you would seek to take from me because I will not toe the line you seek me to toe.
Welcome to the way the `other half' lives. And watch your backs because we are gaining on you...
There has been complete silence from them since.