This past week, I got into an extended conversation with a friend over the Keystone XL pipeline. It started when I pointed out that Tar Sands oil is one of the most toxic naturally occuring substances on Earth. In pure Right Wing brainwashed fashion, he answered, "I hope you can back that up."
I simply replied that it was only a comment and not testimony before Congress, but my friend would not let it go and proceded unloading all the propoganda that we've been fed by the supporters of the project. He demanded PROOF!
Big mistake...
I provided multiple sources on the toxicity of the sands oil, how the builders were using sub-standard materials imported from China, and how land owner rights were being trampled by the use of immenent domain. I quoted source after source from various, and sometimes even opposing, groups, institutes, and respected experts. In the end, all my friend had to say that I was a radical left-winger with information taken from liberally biased media sources. Not very original.
So sad when the indoctrination of right wing thought permeates so deeply into one's soul as to supplant objective reasoning.
I was willing to write the whole episode off and forget it, but then I recieved a piece of e-mail from another friend that offered some right wing examples of their "wish list" of things destroying America, the jist of which I will share here:
1. Hillary: in prison!
2. Put "GOD" back in America!!!
3. Borders: Closed!
4. Congress: On the same retirement & healthcare plans as everybody else
5. Congress: Obey its own laws NOW!
6. Language: English only!
7. Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights
8. Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before & during Welfare!
9. NO freebies to Non-Citizens!
10. Balance the budget.
11. Stop giving away our money to foreign countries! Charge them for our help! We need it here.
12. Fix the TAX CODE!
And most of all...
13. "RESPECT OUR MILITARY, POLICE AND OUR FLAG!!"
The beginning of the e-mail asserted that these are the reasons Donald Trump is zooming up in the polls, and the end was a macho challenge that only the gutsiest people would pass the e-mail on.
Answering each one of these items:
1. Last time I heard, it was Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield who were the ones being charged with war crimes by European countries.
2. Putting "GOD" back in America is the job of Churches, not the government. If you want this so badly, I suggest you not only attend the Church of choice, but also support it financially, and hit the streets and organize on it's behalf.
3. Borders Closed!? BOTH political parties know about this problem but have shirked it off. One likes the exploitation wages reserved for those living below the radar, and the other worries about offending it's Latino base. Both are guilty of taking advantage of these immigrants in the worse way and should be ashamed of themselves.
4. This will never happen under the watch of either party. Why destroy their own creation that serves them so well. Cuts in wages and benefits are for American workers, not their bought and paid for public servants who sold them out!
5. Congress is too busy changing laws that hold the capitalist class responsible for their crimes against the environment, workers, and the overall well being of America. All the while they scream "less government intrusion" and their minions lap it up like they are doing them a favor as the social safety net unravels beneath them.
6. I am not bi-lingual, but I wish I was. People in most developed and modern countries speak multiple languages. People advocating for this turn a deaf ear to opposing views even when they expressed in ENGLISH.
7. See Item #2, search SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE, as well as the right to disagree, voice that disagreement, and advocate against you.
8. Drug tests for welfare recipients has been a JOKE everywhere it's been tried, without significant numbers of people found to be addicts.
9. "Freebies" would not be an issue if, again, Churches were carrying out their Christian duty of feeding the poor, healing the sick, comforting the disaffected, and so on...
10. See items #1 (i.e. the millions wasted on Benghazi hearings), #4, #8, #9. #10, #11, and #12; and many many more.
11. A careful consideration of our Foreign Policy and financial aid to other nations could use an audit, but, a lot of that money is used to support our friends against our enemies OVER THERE so we don't have to fight them OVER HERE.
12. The tax code is FIXED,to the advantage of corporations and billionaires and AGAINST most people that recieved or will recieve this e-mail. That's the problem.
13. This hits close to home as someone who served. The same people cheering support for our troops are the same ones who want to send them to war.
Police officers are left refereeing in the streets that the racist and bigotry promoted by bigots in boardrooms to keep working people battling each other. They do a thankless job. Some do succumb to hyper-agressiveness, but they make up a small percentage of the overall members. It makes all their fellow officers job harder when they lose their cool and do something stupid, BUT, why shouldn't they be allowed to be as frustrated as the rest of us?
Lastly, but not least, is our National Ensign, the Stars and Stripes, Old Glory; proudly MADE IN CHINA for you to purchase at a heavily discounted price in your local big box (no soul) stores. Our flag has only the power the people living and serving under it puts into it, and we desecrate it more in our disrespect for each other, by violating each others rights and by denying the compassion of our great country to those who need it the most. I will not stand for someone damaging a flag in my presence, yet, by proper flag edicate, I see it also disrespected when displayed flat across a football field or flying from some wing-nut's truck antenna.
It saddens me when I see friends engulfed in the hateful rhetoric being circulated in our society. It's all over social media, as spam in our "inbox", and repeated among ourselves at work, home, and the places we gather. it's time we took a hard look at what's being said, what the person saying it wants to impart into our thinking and then rejecting it for the narrow minded, hyprocritical, and selfish garbage it is.
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Misguided but Well Meaning Friends
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