from my email

once in awhile, i get an email from one of my buddies that has been forwarded to them from who knows where. i inevitably delete them because they usually tend to be religious pap or right wing propaganda- neither of which appeals to me. they are sent to me in the spirit of love and sisterhood generally, so i don’t respond harshly- but i sometimes do send them a note back. it isn’t meant to offend- but i feel it’s important sometimes to refute the outright lies and/or overt propaganda and nationalism usually at the heart of the original email. anyhoo, that’s my intro- and i did alert my sweet friend that i was going to make a post out of the email- and that this person could remain anonymous without further ado:

catching wild pigs

There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof. noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, “do you know how to catch wild pigs?” The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said this was no joke. “You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America.

The government keeps pushing us toward socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of ‘programs’ such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time. One should always remember: There is no such thing as a free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America, you might want to tell this to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to our way of life then you will probably delete this, but God help you when the gate slams shut!! In this ‘very important’ election year, listen closely to what the candidates are promising you - just maybe you will be able to tell who is about to slam the gate on America. Think about this very carefully because:

‘A government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is also big enough to take away everything you have.’ - Thomas Jefferson

yep. there are people here in america who actually see things this way. they actually cannot see that this country is in real danger- because our government has already been dismantled and is horribly broken. a country this size needs a government to regulate things. hell, the original 13 colonies saw the need- and now we are up to 52 states and a few territories. gutting the government has seen our basic necessities of life unregulated- food, water, energy, economy- with disastrous results. i don’t need to rehash the stories here- even the msm has carried them. the ‘free rides’ that the right likes to harp about? welfare, medicaid, social security, head start, etc…. well, don’t the republicans bitch when the services aren’t there for their need?

it does no good to try to talk to people who actually see the country and the world in this way. they are in denial and prefer their reality to everyone else’s. luckily, my friend has a good heart- and does not see the world in this way. sending me this email was food for my blog

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barry and audrey

In 1964, my mother, Audrey, became absolutely rabid on the topic of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was making his doomed run for president on the basis of what was considered at the time a far right wing agenda. Being 7 years old, I don’t remember why Audrey was so adamant that Barry was the savior of this country, but I remember how deeply his failure to win the presidency affected her.

That was when my mother began experiencing depression, the first hint of bipolar disorder which led to mood swings of astonishing intensity. I have to wonder if the loss of the campaign played into those other losses in her life: her mother died when she was two years old; she lived in a foster home with distant relatives; was victimized by a child molester of the worst kind; between my oldest sister and me, she had six stillborn baby boys, each of which she carried to the 7th or 8th month before they died.

But Barry enchanted her that year, 1964. For Barry, she campaigned tirelessly, attended conventions, fundraisers, walked the streets. She was relentless in her advocacy. When he lost, she lost something too: the sparkle in her eyes, the note of excitement and anticipation that had sounded in her voice that year.

I am, of course, horrified by this because Goldwater was one of the most virulently conservative men to have ever seriously run for president to that point. I can’t reconcile what I think of far right wing zealots with what I think of my mother. They are callous, indifferent to the plight of regular folks, religious crackpots, greedy, corrupt, conscienceless. My mother was kind, loving, accepting, open of heart and mind, religious in the best way, smart and capable.

How could Audrey be seduced by Barry? What did he say, stand for, believe in that enchanted her, that won her heart and her mind? Here in the south, even in the upper left hand corner of it, we generally plant our crazy people right on the front porch for all to see, but this, honestly, embarrasses me, my mother as this kind of conservative.

I am comforted somewhat in reading the Wikipedia entry on Goldwater. It seems there was a huge push in his campaign to vanquish communism, to protect from potential nuclear war. This was surely a response to the widespread fear in the ’60s that the hateful commies were going to blow us to mist and the world would end in a horror of radiation poisoning and suffering. Audrey always urged me to take seriously the bomb drills we had weekly at First Lutheran. Those drills found us grade schoolers tucked up against each other like biscuits in a pan, hands clenched tightly over our necks, ready as we could ever be for the bombs to fall.

To say that it was a culture of fear is almost laughable; it was so much more than that. In that time, in that school, that religious community, the fear of communism was alive. We were constantly reminded by our teachers in morning devotions that they were coming and we must be strong in our faith.

The worst fearmonger, Stanton Hoffmeier, the cadaverous and frightening music teacher, assured us that the communists were well on the way, lurking even now, perhaps, in the cloakroom. Upon arrival, they would quiz every child as to their religious leanings and then all Christians would be killed. His sadism was evident in his gleeful assurance that we would have to face the bayonet and admit to our Lutheranism, else we’d burn in hell for eternity. Immediate gutting, death and glory, or life lived as a slave to the Russians, with the absolute promise of hell for denying our faith.

That decade was frightening in so many ways: Vietnam, riots, cities burning, the Cold War, assassinations, more assassinations, pollution out of control, the fear of nuclear war. There was death and mayhem at every turn and it was overwhelming, but 1964 was just the beginning. If I felt this, in my relative innocence, perhaps my mother, even in 1964 and standing at the threshold of mental illness, also felt overwhelmed and afraid. Maybe the strong voice of Barry Goldwater, assured and confident, as right wing zealots so often are, gave her comfort.

I wonder how she would have felt, had she stuck around, to know of my growing radicalism, my political activism in the ’70s and ’80s, of my Marxist leanings and the feminism that transformed me. Would she shudder in horror that I’ve become a socialist in response to the right wing madness that began with Goldwater? On some level, I think ~ I hope ~ she would have applauded, would have cheered me on, this brilliant, educated woman whose life was so tightly circumscribed by the expectations of women of her time, by her children, her traditional man, her place in society.

I wish I could have known her as an adult. I wish I could have given her what Barry gave her for those brief months, and that it would have been enough. I wish she were here so I could ask her these questions. I wish for so much, for my mother, even now.

Crossposted at Big Ass Belle’s place.

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