An email entitled "Lies of Eskov in HP AOL Ariticle" (sic) was received this morning by the Campaign For America's Future and forwarded with the comment, "Here's a nice complimentary one... geez." Hate mail comes with the job and this note was unexceptional, but it got me thinking anyway.
What follows isn't "work safe." The email began this way (but with the words unredacted):
PROGRESSIVE = SOCIALISM
SOCIALISM = FAILURE
ESKOW = BULLSH*TThe article this Commie assh*le, given light by the F*ckingTonPost, is a disgrace. How can you support a fake and a liar of this stature? I know!!! You are Muslim funded and your goal is to destroy FREE ENTERPRISE !!
That article defended contributions veterans have made to this country, and suggested that cutting their Social Security or Medicare would be a poor way to repay them. So the email writer's apparently angry about social benefits being given wounded veterans or families of the fallen.
But the web of his hostility clearly includes government itself, hence the word "socialism." That's interesting -- because without government he never could have written that email. In fact, there's a good chance he wouldn't even be alive without government.
The Muslim-bashing is no surprise. It's a favorite activity of Tea Party types manipulated into directing their anger against innocents. Muslim immigrants are just the latest wave of newcomers to be scapegoated for their foreignness, their accents, and their religion. Jews, Irish, Italians, Poles -- there are always people who need somebody to hate, and immigrants make an easy target.
Some of our greatest scientists and engineers were immigrants, or the children of immigrants, and their discoveries made the United States a superpower. What might have happened if the Nazis or the Soviets had developed nuclear weapons and the US hadn't? The Manhattan Project was a government project. Does that make it socialist?
If you live in a free and independent United States, thank an immigrant.
Speaking of government spending, it was DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) that first developed the Internet. That's right. The Internet was designed and built by the Federal government.
If you can spend hours online reading articles that enrage you, thank the Federal government.
It's hardworking American Capitalists and dedicated workers who've prospered by PRODUCING WEALTH BY PRODUCING COMSUMER GOODS, rather than bull sh*t.
You and your kind are corrupting the young with your tragic and unproven love of Socialism, which has failed in EVERY SOCIETY in history. China was failing until they has allowed private enterprise, Russia failed with it's Communistic attempts at creating wealth.
Our correspondent's right about one thing. Wealth is produced by the production of consumer (or "comsumer") goods. It's not produced by greedy and reckless Wall Street gambling, which has destroyed far more jobs than it has created.
But consumer goods are only produced when there are consumers to buy them. For that you need people with jobs. Once they're earning income, other people will get hired to produce the goods they want. Those new hires will buy more goods, and then even more people will get jobs.
You save a struggling, jobless economy like ours by putting that process in motion. That's how Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Depression and saved capitalism in the 1930's, and it's exactly what's needed today.
If your 1930's ancestors didn't live in a failed United States ripe for Communist or Fascist revolution, thank a New Dealer.
What the f*ck is your main goal, alongs with that of Campaign For America? A Muslim takeover?
Virulent race hatred was common in the 1930's, too. It gets worse every time there's great economic uncertainty. Back then the radio was filled with the rantings of Father Coughlin, the virulently and violently antisemitic priest who headed a group called the Christian Front.
Now we've got Rush Limbaugh telling an African American caller to "take the bone out of your nose," while the Fox network spreads a relentless stream of fear-mongering and bigoted lies about the 1.2 billion Muslims who are not terrorists. If people really believe that Muslims can "take over" the United States, they'll unquestioningly support wasteful military spending and the erosion of their own liberties.
Which reminds me: If you still have any privacy rights, thank a civil libertarian.
You make me want to puke.
[name redacted] ... AMERICAN CAPITALIST .. and proud to be one.
Capitalist? I'm pretty sure he puts his money in a bank. He'd go out of business if one day his money wasn't there. Fortunately, the government regulates the bank and makes sure that doesn't happen.
If you own a successful small business, thank a regulator.
PS - I know poor! I lived it! However, I found a way out by working for it. You assh*les try to make victims out of everybody !!!!!
The piece that infuriated him so much was a Memorial Day remembrance of my grandfather and uncle. One was wounded in World War I and the other was killed in World War II. Veterans like them sacrificed to keep people like this email writer free and safe, and they -- or their survivors -- deserve financial security.
Some right-wingers love to say that other people want to make "victims of everybody." But here's the perfect example of the victim mentality. Here's somebody who was kept healthy by government health inspectors, taught by government teachers, protected by government police, and kept free by soldiers who fought and fell to defend him.
Now he feels victimized because somebody wants to make sure that the government's there to do the same things for the generations to come. That's all right. He can keep spitting venom. Millions of government employees will keep working for him every day, whether he expresses his gratitude to them or not.
My guess is that when he says he "knows poor," he doesn't mean really poor. He probably doesn't mean he had a distended belly as a child, that he brushed the flies of the eyes of his dying little sister or watched as his mother prostituted herself to earn a few pennies to feed him. That level of poverty is rare in this country, thanks to a government system of taxation that protects every American from that fate.
Not only did our correspondent avoid that fate, but he learned the basic skills of reading and writing too. Teachers, just like the ones fighting for their rights in Madison, gave him the opportunity to learn those skills. Now he's putting them to enthusiastic, if less than artful, use.
Which reminds me: If you can write a hate-filled, obscenity-laced email to total strangers, thank a teacher.
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Randy Turner: Limbaugh Plans To Grow Republican Party During July 4 Visit To Tornado-Ravaged Joplin
It is always frustrating to realize that the vote of someone who took the time to learn reality can be cancelled by ignorance such as shown by your e-mail "fan".
But feel free to moan about the lack of "civility" in political discussion...
I am sure your original detractor would not be pleased to see this post, woud you mind sharing his response with us (if he has one). I would like to see if he was able to comprehend the absurdities of his thoughts or if, after your piece, he is still stuck in his ignorance and unwillng to move forward. I am just curious.
Indeed, what industry instills greater pride in its former employees than all others. Again, that dreaded socialism.
ps Tiny, F and F.
ps Tiny, F and F.
Karl Polanyi
" The Great Transformation"
REPUBLICAN DEREGULATION IS TO BLAME
The Republican-led Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999, which repealed part of the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 and removed the wall between commercial and investment banks.
The year before the repeal, “of the Glass-Steagal Act by the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999. sub-prime loans were just five percent of all mortgage lending. By the time the credit crisis peaked in 2008, they were approaching 30 percent
Hank Paulson, the Federal Reserve, and the SEC all confirmed, the financial crisis "was triggered by a dramatic weakening of underwriting standards for US. subprime mortgages, beginning in late 2004.”
In 2004, it was Bush who started to push Fannie and Freddie into sub prime mortgages, because they were boasting about how they were expanding home ownership for low-income people.
If the government is at fault it is do to lack of oversight and deregulation under the REPUBLICANS.