"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Reply All
Is it just me, or is any one else sick of their inboxes constantly jammed full of United We Stand and God Bless America e-mail forwards, day in and day out, monotonously rivaling even the penis-enlargement, lower-your-mortgage-rate spammers for sheer tenaciously annoying perseverance?
I finally snapped the other day and fired away an off-the-cuff, reply-all flame job to the sender and his whole unfortunate mail list, perhaps undiplomatically registering my impatience with any more mindless, flag and eagle image laden e-mail forwards, sappily regurgitating the official administration/FOXNews line on Amerika's reactionary, post 9-11 military adventurism.
After some brief reflection, I thought it meet to compose a brief form reply which I can store, copy, and paste, as the need arises. To ensure maximum dissemination, I think the "Reply All" e-mail option the most apropos. I'm sorry, but if you can't stand my reply all, use your delete button!
Herewith, then, I give you my new, standard, contra-jingo, reply-all form letter. Use it as is, or as a model for your own personalized version. The important thing is to circulate a more circumspect perspective.
Hello,
Umm . . . I love my country, but . . .
. . . I despise the current state of American politics, its authoritarian socialist agendas and hypocritical officeholders,
. . . its blatant corporate/military imperialist adventurism,
. . . its complicity in the grand theft of the people's honest, constitutional money,
. . . its voracious appetite for extorting and controlling peaceable Americans just trying to earn an honest living,
. . . the insane and draconian, morally misplaced, "war on drugs,"
. . . the controlled media bombarding the air and cable waves with incessant Orwellian "war is peace" propaganda,
. . . the collectivist public education machinery indoctrinating the generations with twisted visions of the historical record and the ideals of human liberty and freedom,
. . . and, perhaps most of all, the deluded, rah-rah, "united we stand" lemmings, festooning their cars, homes, and workplaces, with the flag I once respected that has become the symbol of the cruise missile, the "smart bomb," and the very evil which the American revolutionary heroes feared the most: "democracy."