The commie, socialist wannabe

I received an email recently from a former colleague, a retired Texas school administrator who trades in tea party agitprop. The email linked to a piece of hogwash that's made its way around the Internet a dozen or more times, titled, “4 Simple Questions.” It was written by a New Jersey lawyer, Richard Silverlieb. 

“Help me figure this one out, Bobby,” my former colleague asked, sarcastically. “I'm not sure I can!”

Well, I knew it was a set-up, but I glanced over it, then responded, first, by questioning Silverlieb’s objectivity, inasmuch as he ends his screed with "A pen in the hand of this socialist commie wannabe is far more dangerous than a gun in the hands of 200 million patriotic law-abiding citizens."

Then, I questioned his veracity by pointing out that communism and socialism are not the same and that no one I know cares if one gun is shared among 200 million law-abiding, patriotic citizens. I mean, that is what he wrote. "…a gun in the hands of 200 million patriotic law-abiding citizens." 

I suspected Silverlieb's accusations were as pristine factually as they were grammatically and, of course, I was correct. Almost every one is deemed false or highly misleading by either or both Snopes or Politifact. Of course, my former colleague thinks Snopes and Politifact are libtard b.s. published by Bolsheviks, and, besides, mere facts are just some pinhead's opinion. Darwin is wrong because not all apes have evolved into humans, and snow in Boston means global warming is a hoax, perpetrated by someone really, really evil. Like Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

My former colleague reminds me quite a lot of an old friend who turned 61 recently. Many of us sent him the obligatory ‘Hope you have a great birthday blah blah blah’ message. Late in the afternoon, my old friend posted a message on Facebook, thanking everyone for thinking of him. He told us he had spent the day with his children and grandchildren, had a great time and yak yak yak, but then, for no apparent reason, he took a roundhouse swing at "the idiots in Washington D.C." 

Why go there? Why couldn’t he have just written, "Thanks for the kind thoughts and messages. I hope you all had as good a day as I did." Why drag politics into this otherwise sweet moment?

Well, here's why. He believes he's oppressed. He feels threatened. He fears the big, bad goose-stepping government of the criminal commie socialist wannabe is going to ban the future sale of .223 M855 ammunition. This especially infuriates him because .223 M855 ammo is the only ammo capable of bringing down a stag or a wild hog or whatever it is he picks off from the comfort of his deer blind. Apparently, regular bullets just bounce off.

Should I have been surprised by his micro-rant? I suppose not. He seems to get much of his political and some of his religious instruction from the NRA or Duck Dynasty. A week or so earlier, he suggested that Obama "Just needs to stop breathing.”

So, what does this suggest? It suggests that these otherwise good people — salt of the Earth types — wake each morning and return to sleep each night, swathed in the comfort of their loathing of one man, the scary wannabe. They call him all kinds of names and make fun of his wife and ridicule his two teenage daughters. The wife is said to resemble a monkey, and the daughters are surly and hateful.

Of course, that's pittance compared to the lies they tell about the commie socialist, who, by now, should have destroyed the economy, gutted the military, declared Sharia law and dispatched his ISIS storm-troopers to confiscate all guns, knives and Bibles. That the economy seems to have improved significantly since the meltdown he inherited in 2008, and that he made the call that took out Bin Laden only infuriates them further, so they invent and circulate more lies about him, and nothing is too petty. He failed to salute the nice Marine standing next to the helicopter. He refused to wear an American flag lapel pin, or he wore it on the wrong side, which means he hates America. He hates America so much, he sent U.S. soldiers to West Africa because he wants them to die of Ebola.

So, here's the deal: I wonder what might the country be like today if my old classmate and my former colleague and the rest of their kind had invested as much time and emotion and energy into something constructive — losing weight, learning a second language, mentoring an at-risk child, reading a book that didn't involve snipers or Bill O’Reilly? 

Perhaps the nation would not be as mean and dumb, as frightened and fatuous as it is today. Perhaps we might have found a way to come together to get something done. Perhaps we might have found that we have more in common than we do in opposition. Perhaps we might even have attempted to do what Jesus instructed us to do: love each other, even our enemies, even the socialist, commie wannabe.