So my daughter sent me one of those obnoxious right-wing emails

[skygazer]

The one about "Do you pull the blinds?" An excerpt is at the end - I'm sure you've all seen it -

Anyway, I sent her this reply -

Please do not send me trash like the following - I've not sent anything political in a long time out of respect for the fact that we have differing views and do not seem likely to come to any agreement in that respect; I would appreciate the same from you.

I do not understand why every Republican I know insists upon arguing their points with stale and nonsensical bulk emails such as the following, rather than relying on their own words, thoughts and convictions. I have never seen this type of email with a liberal point of view and I'm glad - it means that liberals are not relying on others to do their thinking and arguing for them.

The only clear "point" I get from this rubbish is a story about a man who is a child abuser since putting a 9 year old through the grilling described in this essay is little more than that. Not that it's any kind of true story - and the author is probably not real either. These things have been cranked out by the RNC for years and gullible people will read them and think they're some kind of awe-inspiring story. Pathetic.

We are not in Iraq because Saddam was beating his wife and children (or the people of the country, for that matter). Saddam was a miserable dictator but that's not why we're there.

We're not there to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people.

We're not there because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (he didn't).

We're not there because Saddam was instrumental in the attack of 9/11 (he wasn't - bin Laden was. Remember him? He's still fancy free).

We're there because the neo-cons have been planning on bringing us there for a good long time and we'll remain there for a good long time, as well as all the other places they'll have us go for oil and power and money and glory and empire. If we were truly interested in saving people from their horrible dictators, we'd have been in the Sudan by now or any of a dozen other spots in the world with worse and more tyrannical dictators.

I've been reading about WWII for many years now. WWII is something GW brings up frequently as a comparison to what he's doing in the "war on terror". There is a comparison there but it's not the one he's going for - it's a comparison with a country and a leader who used doublespeak and propaganda to lull the citizens, who used patriotism and nationalism to stir them into a frenzy, who flew the flag and chanted anthems, who got everyone behind him with his charisma and believability, who jailed those who dared dissent, who muzzled the media, who deliberately spoke to hand-picked audiences so it would appear his support was universal, who skewed scientific fact to fit his political agenda. He instigated war, bullied his allies, threatened his enemies and embroiled the world in a conflict of horrendous proportions.

And the world sat back and watched him do it, too stunned and afraid to do anything to stop it until so many people had been brutalized, it could no longer stand and watch.

Please do not send me any more of this propaganda. I prefer to use my own mind.

And the stupid email which begins as follows - (if you really want to read the whole stupid thing, pm me and I'll send it to you. It's really not worth it)

DO YOU CLOSE THE BLINDS? I HOPE NOT ..

From a person who's there, in the midst..........

The other day, my nine year old son wanted to know why we were at
war...My husband looked at our son and then looked at me. My husband
and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be honored to
serve and defend our Country again today. I knew that my husband would
give him a good explanation. My husband thought for a few minutes and
then told my son to go stand in our front living room window.

He said "Son, stand there and tell me what you see?"

"I see trees and cars and our neighbor's houses." he replied.

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our house and our yard is the
United States of America and you are President Bush."

Our son giggled and said "OK."

"Now son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that
every house and yard on this block is a different country" my husband
said.

"OK Dad, I'm pretending."

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and
pretend you see Saddam come out of his house with his wife, he has her
by the hair and is hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. He
hits her in the face, he throws her on the ground, then he starts to
kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop him,
they are screaming and crying, they are watching this but do nothing
because they are kids and they are afraid of their father.

You see all of this son....what do you do?"

"Dad?"

"What do you do son?"

"I'd call the police, Dad."

"OK. Pretend that the police are the United Nations. They take
your call. They listen to what you know and saw but they refuse to
help.What do you do then son?"

[MadMaddie]

1. That is just a bad analogy...it's always distorted isn't it....

the Repugs are so gullible and so willing to drink the Coolaid!!

You had a great response!!

[Iris]

2. It must be really hard to get something like this from your own child.

My worst nightmare.

[skygazer]

6. Oh, it just kills me!

Where did I go wrong? :cry:

She married a damn Repuke from Kansas - I blame him! :grr:

[KittyWampus]

16. Skygazer, your love and good will are still there inside your daughter

It's being eclipsed for a while.. but the sun will come out from behind the moon's shadow eventually.

:hug:

[skygazer]

26. Thanks - I really needed that

I joke but it really does hurt me that she went to the dark side. She IS such a good and compassionate person - she was always the one who wanted to reach out and help others. I just don't get it.

When she was about 7, we were in the car and I had John Mellencamp's "Scarecrow" tape in the player. She listened to that song and asked what it was about and I told her about the plight of the small farmer and how people who'd worked the land for generations had to watch as their legacy was lost - I come from a farming state and I saw it happening as I was growing up. Most of the kids I went to school with were from farm families and not a single one ended up doing what they thought they would be - running the family farm. Very sad.

She sat in the car and cried. Sweet and good-hearted soul. How could she think what the US is doing is right?

[KittyWampus]

31. She isn't thinking. My humble suggestion is to find some humorous stuff

to share with her.

It's the antidote to the craziness.

[GreenPartyVoter]

35. *hugs* Maybe she'll come around someday

[northzax]

3. what do I do then?

why I kill me some Arabs (long A at the start) of course. who wouldn't?

[Dogmudgeon]

7. A-Rabbs?

As in "them A-Rabbs" -- ?

Kind of like Eye-Rackies or Eye-Rainians or even Eye-Talyans.

Yep, I think it's "... kill me some A-Rabbs".

;)

--p!
One of them You-Crainians.

[northzax]

9. yes, the spell check must have missed it

thanks!

[MidwestTransplant]

4. Ask her if she ever heard of Sudan.

[YDogg]

5. I applaud your reply.

I'd also send her to time out. ;)

[MADem]

8. Oh, fachrissake!! First of all, Saddam may be an asshole, but he NEVER

beat his wife!!!!!!!! She was the most pampered woman in Iraq when he had the deck and the con!

And the CHILDREN, Uday and Qusai, were the assholes who could be counted on to beat people and drag them around by the hair!!

You'd think if they were gonna make up this bullshit, they'd at least have some sort of realistic linkage throughout that one could relate to. Saddam was not a wife beater, and his kids were not sobbing children who recoiled at torture.

They need to sell their shit with BETTER EXAMPLES! But I suppose we should be grateful that they don't!!

[northzax]

10. ask her about the logical extension

"Son, you see me beating your mother, and Mrs. Hussein, what do you do?"
"Call the Police?"
"No, Son, you grab a stick and join in on beating down the bitches, of course."
"oh, thanks daddy. wait, why can you beat Mr. Hussein's wife, but he can't?"
"Shut up, boy, before I take my belt to you."
"Yes Sir, Praise Jesus."
"Praise Jesus, son."

[MissB]

15. bwahahahahaha

Kudos to you.

[Neil Lisst]

11. Why do they love such sappy, obviously contrived, bogus stories?

There are at least a dozen relatives or friends who send me those kinds of emails. They all contain these incredibly sappy, stupid, inane, unbelievable tales that sound like the kind of story Jerry Falwell must tell his flock.

Most of them end by saying something like "if you want good luck" or "if you love God" or "if you are tired of the liberal blah blah blah," then send this email to 10 people and God will personally spank your monkey.

[Dogmudgeon]

30. Snopes calls the stuff "Glurg", I think

For most of its history, it was just saccharine, feel-good crap, but these days, it's just as likely to be right-wing, saccharine, feel-good crap.

--p!

[Neil Lisst]

38. "you could have heard a pin drop"

That line ^^^ usually follows some tale of a good godly person making someone who isn't so godly feel ashamed.

It's a standard phrase. Look for it.

[AndyA]

12. I know how you feel

I have lots of Republicans in my family as well. They think they're just wonderful, and they are really a bit pathetic because they don't think for themselves. They let the RNC, Rush, Laura, and people like that think for them. They believe what they are told to believe.

Somewhere down the highway of life, they took the wrong exit and now can't get their own lives back. Most likely because they keep getting directions from the Republicans!

You just have to shake them off, and hope that some day they'll come around... :eyes:

[riona]

13. i truly sympathize with you

we get this junk in mail all the time. people know full well how i feel, yet they are totally insensitive and send it anyway. most of the "facts" in them are bogus. delete, delete........

[Iris]

14. It certainly gives meaning to "Vote Republican; It's Better than Thinking"

doesn't it?

[riona]

21. their brains are definitely well rested

[skygazer]

20. I usually don't reply to them

Though I always kinda want to. Especially the ones that re-write history (and especially when that type is sent by my father who has a tendency to scoff at what he calls "revisionist history" that is actually history from another point of view - always want to say something about "revisionist" but hold my tongue like a good girl).

I had to reply to this one though, because I have avoided politics with this kid since before the 2004 election. Then she sends me this shit. ~sigh~

[riona]

25. du helps don't you think?

[skygazer]

28. DU is my sanctuary

My oasis of sanity. :P

[The Stranger]

17. "Now, son. Understand that our family starved the children across the

street to death by preventing anyone from bringing them any food (and the police/UN helped with that)."

"When the neighbors across the street wouldn't give us their gasoline and other wealth any more, son, we drove through their house and yard with our vehicles to "shock and awe" them, then returned across the street with the pistol and killed them."

"You see, son, we told everyone in the neighborhood that the husband had weapons, when he really did not."

"Then we took their house, changed it to be like ours, and tortured anyone that was left living there, son. Some of them were tortured to death."

"How do you feel about us now, son?"

How do you feel about us now?

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

19. Touche! n/t

[jedr]

18. I love the fact that the husband had to do the explaining;

As if the mother wasn't capable of such a task and he was the lord of the household..Even as a man, that alone was enough to send me over the edge, not to mention that the metaphor was even close to being right.:banghead:

[skygazer]

23. Yeah, that grated on me too

They both "served their country in the Gulf War" but dad has to give the explanation because mom was probably barefoot in the kitchen cooking dinner for the 17 other kids and homeschooling the older ones. :eyes:

[BlueJazz]

22. Ever notice this (Email Crap from Re pugs) always reads like ...

..it was written for people who are gullible and/or in the 6th grade?

Geez..it's insulting to even receive it...

I guess if you can't state facts than make up some nonsense .. :)

[walldude]

24. Seen this one a few times.

It does a good job of manipulating the people it's supposed to. Too bad it has no bearing on the world around us. I have wondered when the kid was going to answer, "Well if I am the U.S.A. then I go and attack the guy who lives next door to Saddam!"

[jrw14125]

27. I get these all the time, as well. The one about the Iraqi woman in...

the grocery store has gone around a few times in the past week. And yes, they ALWAYS end with "send this to X number of people, adn you will be BLESSED, etc, etc.

1 thing that annoys the he77 out of them is to respond with this:

"The whacko’s get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees. ... Simply put, we want to bring out the whacko’s to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." -- Michael Scanlon, former press secretary to indicted Republican Congressman Tom Delay (in a memo sent to the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to describe his strategy for protecting the tribe's gambling business; entered into evidence before the U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee).

[seabeyond]

29. let us know if she replies. good for you, parent

i blame the kansas repug hubby too

[skygazer]

33. Actually, I just got her reply

"I wasn't trying to make a point. I thought it was a cute story."

I'm not sure what part she thought was cute - the part where the guy hollers at the kid to "NEVER BE AFRAID TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT! EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DO IT ALONE!" BE PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN! BE PROUD OF OUR TROOPS!! SUPPORT THEM!!! SUPPORT AMERICA SO THAT IN THE FUTURE OUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER HAVE TO CLOSE THEIR BLINDS..." or the part where the kid is freaking out crying because his dad is asking him to picture the neighbor going on a murderous rampage. :eyes:

[baby_mouse]

32. The other day...

The other day, my nine year old boy wanted to know why we were at
war...My lord and master looked at our son and then looked at me. My lord and master
and I were in the Army during the Gulf War and we would be afraid not to
serve and defend our Country again today. I knew that my lord and master would
give him a good seeing-to. My lord and master stared blankly for a few minutes and
then told my boy to go stand in in the corner. He waited for a while. We had dinner. We cheered Anne Coulter on Television. We drove out to McDonalds and bought some more dinner. Or son was still there when we got back. We killed som dogs. We tortured some Iraqi prisoners of war. We went outside and kicked away an old woman's walking stick. Whe we got back my lord and master told my boy to look out of our front window.

He said "Boy, stand there and tell me what you see?"

"I see desert and black glass and corpses and our neighbor's shack." he replied.

"OK, now I want you to pretend that our fortress and our courtyard is the
United States of America and you are President Bush."

Our boy paled and said "OK."

"Now son, I want you to look out the window and pretend that
every shack and hovel on this block is a different country that belongs to us," my husband
said.

"OK Sir, I'm pretending."

"Now I want you to stand there and look out the window and
pretend you see me come out of that house with its owner's wife, I have her
by the hair and I'm hitting her. You see her bleeding and crying. I hit her in the face, I throw her on the ground, then I start to kick her to death. Their children run out and are afraid to stop me, they are screaming and crying, they are watching this but do nothing
because they are kids and they are afraid of me.

You see all of this son....what do you do?"

"Sir?"

"What do you do boy?"

"I'd... I'd do nothing, Sir."

"Nothing?"

"I'd cheer you on, Dad."

"That's my boy."

[area51]

34. Great reply!

:toast:

[Swamp Rat]

36. Did she marry a rethuglican retard or something?

My experience with politically right leaning women, at least the married ones, has forced me to conclude (generally speaking and narrowly defined) that they are or became stupid repukes on account of their freeptard husbands. In a repuke household, the "man" is supposed to do all the thinking, and the women are supposed to be submissive, both physically and mentally.... GROSS! :puke:

[Catrina]

37. That's years old ~ I remember it on a rightwing site I used to post on

about three years ago.