.
.
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I keep getting his e-mails.
Vile stuff, often.
Jokes about this race, that race,
internet-propagated lies about people
he considers traitors, Photoshopped photos
proving the poor are simply leeches,
turgid prose wrapped in stars and stripes
and hate and bunting and lines from the Constitution,
treated like quotes from holy script.
He wants his country back, and he lives
on a nice pension,
with a nice wife,
in a nice country half the world away
for half the year.
An old friend, really.
I welcomed him as I ever have,
the last time I saw him.
We didn't talk politics.
The arthritis hasn't let up on him,
deep and progressing,
but he still gets around, is still able to use a computer.
But his last e-mail, a forwarded joke--
sent who knows how many times,
equating mongrel dogs with mixed-race children,
and how the guy applies for welfare for his dogs--
that finally crossed the line.
I thought about sending him a joke, a little joke,
just something light and funny
about stupid, lame, arthritic gimps
who suck at my taxes for medical treatment
from a nice apartment 8,750 miles from the U.S.
I decided against it.
I live with a gimp
and she's pissed at him, too.
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This kinda crap (the e-mails, not the poem. Heh!) is all I get from one of my brothers. The most bigoted and offensive stuff, I send back to him (and whomever else is on his spam list) with my reaction. Sometimes, I find the debunking at snopes.com and send that link as well.
ReplyDeleteThe internet, while a wonderful vehicle for discovery, seems also to have become an easy tool for connecting incurious lemmings.
Permanent unfriending helps. Even blood relations. I'm serious. Simply cutting off communications with a certain class of person is the best way forward.
ReplyDelete