In the past few days, I have received several emails (from people I've known most of my life--heck, I'm related to some of them) that are full of the most vile lies and frightening predictions about what's going to happen to this country if Barack Obama is elected president. I am stunned by the viciousness of their tone. I am shocked by their hatefulness. I am saddened beyond measure by what they show about how little we as a nation have learned in the past 40-plus years.
Not only do these emails claim that Obama is a Muslim (he most emphatically is NOT), they claim he's already in league with terrorists and is literally going to hand the US over to them if he's elected. Their tone is so extreme that I can see their writers spitting, spewing, and frothing at the mouth.
Now, my correspondents did not pen these emails themselves. They just forwarded them to me, either because they think I agree with them (how wrong is that?) or because they are trying to educate me. I certainly got some schooling, but not necessarily in the way my correspondents intended.
I refuse to quote from the email screeds because I do not want to add even one iota to their credibility quotient [Zero plus one iota is one iota, after all.--Ed.]. I also deleted them from my computer as soon as finished them. Yes, I read them all the way through. Everyone is entitled to a hearing. Besides, I was in such a state of disbelief that people whom I consider friends could say such things, that I was hoping that the emails would end by saying, " . . . NOT!" No such luck. I am left with a filthy taste in my mouth and a deep wish I'd never read the things to begin with.
The original writers are the very people Obama indelicately called "bitter" in his speech in San Francisco several months ago. Believe me, calling these people "bitter" is an understatement. But what saddens me the most is that the writers feel so free to express their bigotry in such vile ways. I know we collectively have a long way to go, but I thought race relations in this country had improved in innumerable little ways which in turn would bring about long-term improvements. Again, no such luck.
The original writers of these embarrassments are at heart afraid. They seem to think that by giving an opportunity to someone not 100% just like them means they are losing something and that they will thus be diminished or reduced somehow as a result. Nothing could be further from the truth. Diversity in success improves all our lives. But they are acting like cornered, wounded animals. They are jaw-droppingly vicious and irrational in their attacks on Obama.
I would like very much to help them, to reassure them, to correct their errors of fact and logic, but I know I cannot. I'd get attacked as being just another one of those evil. liberal, elitists who are trying to ruin the country. I am neither evil nor elitist. I am liberal on most issues, but not because I presuppose the liberal stand is the correct one. I am liberal where I am liberal because I think through the issues using facts and logic to get to what is the best result for the benefit of my country. I LOVE my country, thank you very much. That's why all this blind, raging hatred so distresses me.
Besides, Mark Twain was right: Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
Postscript: I am not calling anyone a pig, either. It's just a metaphor!
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