A hollow victory

Tonight I received a mass email forward sent by a Republican friend of Lincoln's. I responded to the forward and we engaged in a bit of back and forth via email. While I enjoyed the mental exercise after two weeks in an illness fog, he didn't put up much of a fight. It wasn't a terribly satisfactory victory.

It started by him forwarding an email about all the reasons why Obama scares the man who originally wrote the email. The email itself is too long - and not worthy - of reposting but here is an excerpt:

• You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
• You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.
• You scare me because you lack humility and "class", always blaming others.
• You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
• You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.
• Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Admittedly my first response was quite snotty but I figured I'd exercise my brain a little after that. Here is our interchange. My comment are in blue and his are in red (cute, huh?)

You scare me because you believe this shit.

You will see as time goes by. I respect your opinion.

I'm sorry, I should have said "You scare me because you forward on fear tactics and hate mongering with untrue "facts" and false information. That would have been more polite.

I am trying to save the lemmings from the pied piper. Better to be cautious then drink it all in without question.

I fully agree. As long as the lemmings don't just start following a different pied piper. Drinking it all in without question goes both ways. The letter was meant to inflame, cause fear, and raise the ire of people who may be too lazy to do their own research It provided no facts, no back up documentation, and provided no outlet for gaining knowledge. I'm not saying some of the information below might not be true. Just that the guy's tactic is the cowards way to fight the battle - much less the war - he's trying to wage on that which he does not agree.

Well Obama scares me for all the same reasons.

Which is why both sides should take a step back, take a deep breath, and start looking at the facts and not the sound bites. I'm sure if you truly had all the facts in front of you there may be some things that you agree with on the "Obama" side. I'm a Democrat but there are certainly times that I concede - albeit grudgingly sometimes - that they're wrong and the Republicans are right (no pun intended). Today's society is all about filling the time on 24-hour news channels and bringing in the ad dollars. Sensationalism is a great way to make money but not a great way to run a country. If the American people give into that the country is then, in fact, run by the media and not the elected politicians. "For the people, by the people" then becomes "for the money, by the media". I don't care who is in power, that's not how I want my country run.

No response from him after that. Can you see why that wasn't a very satisfactory exchange?

Now, here is how I would like to respond to the selection from the original email above.

CAUTION: contains lots of snottiness and plenty of sarcasm.

• You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you. (Feel free to pick up a newspaper, a magazine, browse a few non-partisan websites, read an auto-biography....really, anything that gets your head out of your ass.)
• You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support. (He probably took out student loans like other hard-working college kids, he was a lawyer and had a job, and failing all that, he was married to a woman who made almost $300,000 a year. If that's your idea of "no visible signs of support" then I'd love to see what your salary is, Sir. Wiping your ass with dollar bills must get tiresome after awhile. Does it chafe?)
• You scare me because you lack humility and "class", always blaming others. (I prefer to think of it as confidence, "lacking in 'class" is a distinction typically made by a person who feels he is above others in society and therefore not worthy of the term himself, and depending on what he's blaming on others (something the person purposely left out of the email), some of that shit is the mess George W. Bush left behind and rightfully should be blamed on others.)
• You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American. (This one is a loaded accusation. Is he trying, like many have, to give the impression that Obama is a Muslim - which he is not - and therefore a terrorist threat? Putting aside that obvious racism (religious-ism?) ask yourself how the question would be different if the President was the son of a military man (such as John McCain) and had spent his "formative years" living on an air force base in Germany or Guam or Japan. Would that make him less American? I don't know if John McCain lived overseas during his "formative years" but if he had I'm sure the same author would be touting that as a "multi-culturalism experience" and not a threat to the United States. Hypocrisy is a wonder part of American culture so congratulations to you, Sir.)
• You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do. (I'm sorry. I didn't realize that Fox News, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh had gone off the air. How did I miss that memo?)
• Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years. (A strong, emotional closing to clinch the fear factor. Well done. Who knows, you could be right. But I would worry less about that and more about the fact that courtesy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney your phone may be tapped right now by right of the Patriot Act. Maybe you should go check that out and stop writing these transparently ill-researched, intentionally inflammatory emails. As a matter of fact, 'Big Brother' might be looking over your shoulder right now. You better watch out.....big bad Obama has access to that shit now.)

And now I'll be stepping down off my soapbox. Unfortunately it wasn't the brain work-out I was hoping for. I didn't even break a sweat.