Out of the Blue, part 1

A posting of mine back in February garnered me a comment in passing earlier this afternoon. That posting consisted mostly of a copy of an email I sent a far-right friend of mine in response to a bigoted rant she'd forwarded me. (I included that rant itself also.)

Getting these conservative, irrational screeds is generally aggravating to me – especially when sent to me by a woman… for I hold women to a much higher standard than to so easily buy into conservatism; by nature, their hearts and beings are much more geared toward the compassion and patience that drives so much of the left. Blast; they should know better!! This is the burden of being a (moderate) male feminist.

Yet I admit such from-the-right diatribes are also entertaining, since they're nearly always transparently shallow and unreasoned, and generally follow the lines of racism, hyper-pseudo-patriotism, insensitivity, neo-Crusader (though fundamentalist) Christian, and obstinate refusal to weigh genuine truths. Thus such tantrums are easy to tear apart, with just a bit of research (especially into the ranters' own favorite literature, the Bible, and the US Constitution), and a bit of personal restraint of one's own impulse to soundly beat these feral lemmings with a biography of Gandhi.

That particular burr under my saddle was yet another culturally racist collective scapegoating of the Muslim community, passed off as an editorial from Spain (which, perhaps, it may have been at some point… though research failed to find the original piece), but playing right into the particular brand of intolerance and hatred that for years has fueled much of the American right's conservative juggernaut.

I won't trot down that path again here; you're welcome to reread my posting yourself. The brief comment I received today came from a retired Air Force veteran with the interesting moniker "Blue Dog" – though I won't identify him any further without his thumb up. (I'll respond to him once this posting is up.) He wrote, simply:

Thank you for addressing this article. I had seen it posted on a blog. And I KNEW someone would have taken a crack at its message of hatred and intolerance.

Folks who know me will acknowledge that I'm not great at receiving compliments. Where my February posting is concerned, I'd just tossed out into the ether the email note that had come out of my stewing over a piece of racist, rightist drivel – I wasn't fishing for compliments… though I admit that (as with most of my postings) I'd had a bit of a hope that eventually someone researching that "Spanish" editorial would stumble over my opinion, and perhaps even be brought to think a bit more seriously about the points it raises – and how lousily contrived it is.

…Which, indeed, it seems to have done. I checked out Blue Dog's blog, and – if he allows – I'd like to pass along a link to it here; the fellow reasons well, and does not kowtow to left or to right. So, yah – those three brief sentences from him are very much a compliment; more on him later, I hope.

Rruff, arf!!