More Fear, More Hatred

Fellow left-leaner Janet -- I hope she's okay with my using her first name here -- happened upon a posting here from a couple weeks back, and took time to respond:

-----Original Message-----
From: Janet [mailto:donotreply@wordpress.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 3:26 PM
To: A. Gene Childe
Subject: [MT2mb] Comment: "The Politics of Fear and Hatred"  

New comment on your post #576 "The Politics of Fear and Hatred" Author : Janet (IP: [numbers] . [URL]) [E-mail] [URL] [Whois]

Comment: 

I frequently get annoying e-mails along these lines, as my family is uber conservative. (I've jokingly suggested they change their Republican symbol from an elephant to an ostrich... they didn't find it as funny as I did.) I'm amazed that they continue to forward this [junk] without a) verifying its authenticity via snopes or any other reliable publication b) considering whether or not this is hateful, prejudicial, or divisive and c) fixing the grammatical errors. Because seriously, the people formulating this spam probably dropped out of high school to work in pa's garage. 

Intelligence. Please. Obama 08.

Well! Credit goes to regular submitter Spartacus; I was just relaying his rant. (I don't share her apparent opinion of high-school dropouts either, per se: my late-great father-in-law never completed high school himself. And he and his late wife -- both rural country-folk -- were rabidly anti-conservative.) I replied to Janet, bcc-ing Spartacus: 

-----Original Message-----
From: MT2mb
To: JanetPlanet@Yipee.com
Subject: Re: The Politics of Fear and Hatred
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:29:24 -0400

Hi, Janet:

Thanks for the comment! The kudos goes to my friend Spartacus, of course.

Here's a further solution I recently heard about, and I'm just itching to try for myself… Whenever you get one of those forwarded brain-is-vacant or I-live-to-hate emails, and you know the person who sent it, make an immediate contribution in that person's name to the most liberal, far-left-of-center agency you can think of. It needn't be big $$, but make sure you include the "friend's" email address and mailing address. Barack, of course, would love the contribution… but there's no reason, in theory, you couldn't donate, say, five to twenty bucks in their name to, the Green Party, for example, or even the Communist Party. Planned Parenthood can do the trick… or even a wiccan, satanist, or neo-pagan group. (Not that I'm particularly fond of these.) 

[Let me repeat that: I really don't endorse the wiccans / neo-pagans / satanists et al. ...or even Planned Parenthood. I name them here only with the intent of shock-value to the ultraconservatives.]

What will happen is that this person will likely receive a warm thank-you from that agency/movement, and you will have canceled out, in part and in principle, whatever contribution they've made to their own favorite far-right cause. You may (or may not) wish to let this "friend" know in advance that they'll be getting the thank-you because of a donation some kind-hearted soul made in their name… which you will repeat and continue every time they send you such garbage/vitriol. End result is a decrease in the bad junk in your inbox… plus a few more shekels for some folks who may genuinely need it.

A few cycles back, I had a leftist Democrat friend who every major election would stick to his Republican wife's car-bumper the classic sticker, "Vote Republican – it's easier than thinking!" And every time we get one of those stupid (evil, even) forwarded emails, the sender has just underscored this axiom.

Myself, I'm in the odd position of being a very comfortably, liberally left-of-center Democrat… yet also firmly Catholic and anti-abortion (plus anti-war and anti- death-penalty, of course)… and still feminist. This stance I haven't taken because some pulpit-pounder told me to, or even because the Church takes the unequivocal stand against abortion, but because years of reflection in faith and in science have carried me there, from a previous, solid pro-abortion stance. (First date with a girlfriend in 1989 was to a pro-"choice" rally in Washington DC.) My heart remains with the women who feel they have no other choice/option, even while I disagree with their "solution".

And I don't buy into the position argued by some of my Church's clergy that anti-abortion is the determinant of how I really ought to vote. Social justice, equality, proper stewardship of resources (both ecological and economic), and other needy- and future-focused issues are what my candidates must embrace. If s/he supports abortion… well, yes, I have some genuine difficulty with that, but I'm not about to vote for the other guy for that reason alone.

Consistently the right favors loosening the reigns on the corporate world, and gutting governmental intake via taxes… to the point where social services and education are cut to the bone, if not marrow. And if they oppose abortion at the same time? Sorry, Father – I will not make myself a bedfellow of these types. No, thanks. I agree with the criticism that that is single-issue voting, regardless of how so many of my fellow Catholics howl at being so called.

I don't claim to be wiser, or just smarter or kinder, than some of the particularly saintly religious folks who urge such single-issue guidance. I love them, but simply can't take that step.

Pardon me there; I pushed my own button… I've blogged on this before, and will be putting up at least one or two more postings on it before next Tuesday, and we'll see.

Take care, and vote, and get a bunch more people to do so – see if you can get some homebound or carless folks out to the polling-places. Good luck!

Regards,

Aging Child