I received the most amazingly annoying forwarded email from my mother just yesterday that ruined my day. Amazing because after knowing me as an adult for some three decades now she somehow thought that I would be in agreement with its content or convinced by it so as to no longer remain among the "great unwashed" truly liberal. It ruined my day because I was so completely annoyed with her that I unloaded on her with both barrels like Dick Cheney at a dove hunt. I love my mother, for an ever-diminishing number of reasons, and letting her get under my skin to such an extent ruined my mood for the rest of the day.
I'm not sure what caused me to be so viscerally annoyed by it. In the past, from politeness or an interest in a minimal degree of harmony in social relations, I've simply made myself deaf to her ignorance and wanton disregard for facts and the meanings behind them.
However, I've either grown to old to indulge others in their stupidities or come to realize that persons such as my mother are actually engaged in a form of "passive-aggressive" propagandizing. If you don't respond they win through default. If you do respond they win by irritating you to the point you simply can't find the time to refute their unlimited number of "experts, out of context references, or unwavering belief in the correctness of persons, who for reasons unknown, already knew what they have just now found to be true and must now pass on to you and I.
Unfortunately, circumstances both social and economical in our nation have come to such a critical junction that ignoring the ignorant and pretending to be deaf to the stupid things we hear and read can only make one a willing accomplice to these persons -such as my mother.
So I ask you speak up or speak out when confronted by such persons. Bad manners aside and at a risk of making yourself or someone uncomfortable in a social situation, your failure to refute lies, expose ignorance and confront those and that which would do permanent harm to our nation will be forgiven by those who benefit in the future.
As an example, the crimes of the holocaust were aided and abetted through sins of omission to a far greater degree than sins of commission. Hence they became and will always remain crimes so large that no one can be held guilty entirely, yet no one who survived them can be wholly absolved.
Please begin today and speak out when confronted by that which is just too dangerous to continue to ignore.
Feel free to forward it to anyone you see fit.
If you are feeling particularly jolly send it out as a mass-mailing to anyone and everyone you know, or suspect, might be a member of one of these groups: Republican Party, Tea Party, John Birch Society, Koch Industries, American Petroleum Institute, Republicans for Rick Perry, NRA, Flat Earth Society, consumers of the Fox News and Murdoch propaganda machine, people who find no shame in having not removed their McCain/Palin bumper stickers, Herman Cain Campaign, National Restaurant Association, The American Nazi Party and its degenerate offspring, and anyone selling discount Viagra over the Internet.
Norris Stough
The contents of her email are reproduced below exactly. While reading it, keep in mind that my mother has little to do with her time and fills her days by visiting a variety of doctors or having some procedure done as regularly as most people change their underwear; thereby driving up the demand for unnecessary medical treatment and the consequent high-cost of medical services to everyone. I've put her email in blue to separate it from those comments of mine that followed in my reply to her.
Marline Stough email: 3stoughmar@gmail.com to bcc: me
show details Oct 31 (1 day ago)
If you find the statistics incorrect, please share your source of rebuttal. Thanks.
There are actually two messages here. The 1st is very interesting, but the 2nd is absolutely astounding - and explains a lot.
A recent "Investor's Business Daily" article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization.
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65% England 46% Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
And now for the last statistic:
National Health Insurance?
U.S. NO
England YES
Canada YES
Check this last set of statistics!!
The percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is…a real-life business, not a government job. Here are the percentages.
T. Roosevelt................... 38%
Taft................................... 40%
Wilson.............................. 52%
Harding........................... 49%
Coolidge......................... 48%
Hoover............................. 42%
F. Roosevelt................... 50%
Truman............................ 50%
Eisenhower.................... 57%
Kennedy......................... 30%
Johnson.......................... 47%
Nixon............................... 53%
Ford.................................. 42%
Carter............................... 32%
Reagan............................ 56%
GH Bush......................... 51%
Clinton............................. 39%
GW Bush......................... 55%
Obama..................... 8%
This helps to explain the incompetence of this administration: only 8% of them have ever worked in private business!
That's right! Only eight percent---the least, by far, of the last 19 presidents! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business?
How can the president of a major nation and society, the one with the most successful economic system in world history, stand and talk about business when he's never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one? And when it's the same for 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers? They've spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs or as "community organizers." They should have been in an employment line.
Pass this on because we'll NEVER see these facts in the main stream media.
"One of the penalties of not participating in politics is that you will be governed by your inferiors." Plato
Here is a further link to the internet trash can from which she picked this mindless garbage:
http://auth.history.com/reply/500764/t/penalties---participating--politics------governed---infe.html
My reply to her follows in red text to reflect my anger with her.
Cherry picking statistics is a time honored tradition amongst those with too little interest in educating themselves on the pros and cons of complicated issues and too much time to spread propaganda on issues upon which they have already formed an opinion - however ill-informed it may be. I despise quotations of philosophers taken out of context. Have you even read Plato? (note: this was not in the email to her, but she wouldn't know Plato from Pluto)
As was one of Hitler's favorite quotes, "if you are going to tell a lie, tell. a big lie."
You don't seem to have sense enough to realize that it was big business personages working in government to their own benefit who brought us the "Bush Republican Bonanza" we are all paying for now.
Stop sending me this crap. You listen to Fox News too much and spend too little time asking yourself who is saying these things, why they might be saying them and, most importantly, are there educated and informed sources who say otherwise. The problem with the ongoing Republican "white-washing of the past" is that it has to be continuously maintained or the ugly truth beneath keeps coming to the surface. By all means keep me informed of your needs and comings and goings, but keep your regurgitated political commentary to yourself
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