Someone that I know keeps sending me right-wing spam. In the past, I have asked him not to do this because most of it is so incredibly ill-informed and aggressively offensive, presented without comment as if it were the sender's own thoughts, that it cannot be in anyway construed as opening an intelligent debate. I end up furious, and I just don't need that energy. I insist that we agree to disagree because neither of us, coming from different times and ideologies, are going to change the other's mind.
Sometimes he respects my request, other time, he doesn't. Today, he did not and I was the lucky recipient of "Words from Senator Bob." Thinking that he mistakenly included me on the recipient list, I asked why I had received it. He responded, "To show another person's thought process for your consideration. You might see something you hadn't seen before or you might know your enemy better."
I know that he baits me, but some days, I must take the bait. This was my response:
Do you honestly think that I (with three graduate degrees) am so terribly ignorant that I need propaganda to open my mind to this narrow point of view? I grew up with this anti-intellectual, beligerent, uninformed bullshit. I don't really need to see more of it.
Do you want me to send you MoveOn.org's factsheet on McCain? The fact sheet that shows that he wants a longer, bigger war? The fact sheet that shows that he actually supports torture? The fact sheet that shows that he means to overturn Roe v. Wade? The fact sheet that shows that he employs more corporate lobbyists in his own campaign than any other candidate?
I mean, really! The Republican party might as well be on a completely different planet from me and most of the people that I encounter in my everyday life. They are explicitly anti-Roe, they are explicitly against informed sex education and reproductive services, they are Cold Warriors after the Cold War is over, they are anti-intellectual in every possible respect, they cut federal funding for child health care and education while spending $12 billion each month on a rerun of Vietnam (but with sand! and about as much success) and give equally obscene tax cuts to billionaire corporations, they do nothing to improve the Byzantine and insurance-company-driven health care system (in fact, they further entrench it), they have engineered a depression, they fit about 75% of the characteristics of fascism (minus the efficiency), they actively hate most of the people that I know...seriously, what would anyone in that party have to offer me or anyone in my life? They are intent upon making life -- for not only me but also most of the people that I know -- worse.
All the evidence in the world is not going to change their supporters' minds either. They don't seem to give a shit about anyone else but themselves and claim deprivation because someone, somewhere might, just might, be getting a cent without having had to suffer for it (or inherit it) the good old fashioned way. So I don't even try to fight it. I do good by educating people -- people who are suffering more with every semester, with every fiscal year's cutbacks -- to have a fighting chance of living above the poverty line.
Again, the fact that you are baiting me, when I don't do the same to you, shows a deep level of disrespect.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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4 comments:
Too hard on him? Are you kidding? You nailed him good and proper. I, for one, thank you.
YOU GO GIRL!!!
ditto what they said. *smoochez*
what an interesting woman you are. have you White Privilege: unpacking the invisible knapsack?? it certainly redirected my critical thinking.
i understand that as a professor you wish to encourage all levels of discourse upon subjects such as politics, the person in question is either a republican who isn't going to change his mind, or else an asshole who is working very hard at poking your buttons (and he's succeeding). i suspect that he's both. were i in your place (and i know, i'm not) i'd just delete his "comments" and go on with my life. afterall, this is your space, is it not?
on a side note about mel gibson's movie apocolypto (or however it's spelt) the plagues of diseases that europeans brought to the americas, measles, influenza, small pox, tb to name just a few, did spread through the continents much faster than the actual movement of settlers.
as the plagues spread, the survivors and those who were ill with the diseases fled their homelands spreading the illnesses to other communities having a domino effect.
the relatively empty continent that the settlers encountered as they moved west wasn't that way by chance, it was by disease.
those groups who were isolated enough to avoid the plagues fell prey to them when they finally came into actual contact with the settlers.
that information is courtesy of one of my native studies classes. when i can find the articles that write of this i'll refer you to them.
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