Risk-taking in Old Age -- An Open Letter to a Friend "Across the Aisle"

Is it worth it?   At what point do you risk a valued friendship by speaking your mind?
I've had that experience this year and the consequences so far are not  much fun.   Below is the letter I wrote nearly three moths ago to a particularly cherished friend doing just that,  "speaking my mind"  (such as it is).   At what cost I am not yet sure.   An explanation of why it was written follows the letter.

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"My Dear Friend,

How about you?   Did you go to snopes.com and read about this?  Yes, the flyover was denied.  But ... It had nothing to do with  President Obama, as the regulation prohibiting flyovers at religious or primarily religious events was passed in 2001, and the Air Force makes the decisions on this issue, not the President.

 And what in hell does this have to do with the President or his religion?   He is NOT a Muslim, and the "right" had better wake up and take a cue from Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, who is one of the few with the balls to stand up for "Freedom of Religion" as set forth in our Constitution, which the "Right" is so eager to uphold so long as it fits in with their strategy of "taking back our country" by outright lying to the people!

 Now I am the one who is "scared" ... of people who forward crap like this and who suspend their critical thinking and Christian beliefs (recall the Golden Rule) in favor of emotional stimulation by the likes of Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Palin, Hannity, Bachmann and other radicals who have taken over the party my father once proudly belonged to all his life.

 Do you really want Social Security to be "privatized."   Where would those funds be now if  George Bush had managed to do that 8 years or so ago?   You really want everything to be deregulated and run amok like the gambling bankers of Wall Street during the "housing bubble" with their stock-market hedge funds and derivatives manipulations?    Do you really want 10 -year-old girls to be giving birth to deformed babies fathered by their own dads, or rape victims forced to carry the fetuses of their rapists to term because their rape was "part of God's plan.?"    Do you really want to see stem cell research that holds so much promise for Type I diabetics like my grandson, or Alzheimer's patients like a best friend, or ALS sufferers doomed to a premature lingering horrible death like my friend's husband, or the  young cousin who died at 19 from muscular dystrophy, what about Jerry's kids?   .... just so an "embryonic" cell which would have been disposed of anyway can't be used to improve the lot of living people?  Do you really think you will enjoy living in a country where the middle class has disappeared and slipped into poverty just so the top 2% or so of rich people in our country won't have to go back to the tax rate they were paying prior to the "unpaid for" Bush tax cuts?  Some of us on Soc. Sec. and Medicare may not be able to afford to go visit friends and loved ones any more and will probably lose our homes if all the things Sen. Boehner wants to legislate become effective.  And it is not because we didn't work hard all our lives .... we can't all be entrepreneurs!   The Repubicans who passed those tax cuts had a reason for imposing a 10-year limit after which they would expire.  It was because they realized you can't keep up that kind of inequitable practice too long without compensating for it.  And then blame the deficit on the next President?   What are these people thinking?   Shall we have only corporate farms, Wal Marts full of Chinese-made goods, banks too big to fail, multinational corporations, off-shore oil wells and polluting chemical companies unregulated, etc. in this country?    The ocean is dying, the skies hazed over with smog and God only knows what else, the fresh water brimming with antibiotics & hazardous chemicals from ag and industrial runoff.  .... state-sized chunks of ice are calving from the ice-shelves ... the weather is becoming more and more calamitous in its effects ... but, of course, there is no such thing as "global warming."   And let's just throw out any of the Constitutional rights that don't serve our purpose, or worse yet invoke them when they fit in with our motives and ignore them when they appear to interfere .... bad-mouth or terrorize all the peaceful Muslim citizens of the United States, deny them their rights,  and pretend that the rest of the word won't notice ... that Al Qaeda will not use these latest practices of the radical right as propaganda to recruit whole armies of would-be terrorists ... more than likely some of our own hounded US Muslim youth among them! 

 Mr. Messenger, I'll tell you what I would like to know.   I would like to know facts     ----      NOT lies, omissions, misrepresentations, out of context quotations, innuendo, hate-filled opinions, tasteless jokes, disrespect for our President in every imaginable form.  Mindless forwarding of that kind of thing just to get people too lazy to check things out for themselves (but eager to believe anything that stokes their irrational fears and intolerant beliefs) worked up and ready to "take back our country."    You can't go back.  The 50's are gone forever.   Our country was never like what it will become if the likes of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell fronting for the banking industry and the corporatocracy  take over under the tutelage of Rupert Murdoch and the Koch brothers. 

 I would never shoot you.  More than likely someone from the NRA would be glad to shut me up.   Hell, I don't favor taking away guns ... and I believe in a strong military with our soldiers' and veterans' needs at the top of the list for receiving well-deserved benefits.   Pay our soldiers what they are worth instead of hiring "privatized" contractors like Blackwater/Xe and Halliburton so the mercenaries can be paid three times more than our soldiers.   We would have plenty of quality volunteers for the Armed Services if we did that.   Our military should be for our own defense and coping with disasters and in some cases protection of peoples incapable of doing it themselves. Waging war for fun and profit is a despicable, expensive and ungodly practice, IMHO.

 All rants lose their steam eventually, and mine just did.   I am trusting that our lifelong friendship can withstand a verbal blast of my pent-up political views.   I love you.   But I can't for the life of me understand why my dearest friends are so caught up in spreading dangerous opinions and distorted information without regard for the possible consequences.   Remember Pogo "I have seen the enemy and he is us."   Some truths remain self-evident.   Please, please ... arm yourself with factual information that has not been tampered with or colored all over with bias, and that can be substantiated.  Think about the real facts that you uncover and look ahead at the possible consequences of all courses of action being considered by our leaders.  I guess I am about "forwarded out."   It's not fun anymore to open an email and behold such messages.

 May you stay safe, healthy and happy... and find peace in your heart."

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There are few things in life I value above a friendship, especially a nearly life-long one, and more especially if one's been lucky enough to have lived a full life blessed with many amazing and wonderful friends.  What I despair of most in our current political scenario, next to the downfall of our beloved country, is the divisiveness that  political partisanship is wedging between our personal relationships. 

Coupled with the misinformation, double-speak, rumor, innuendo, and outright blatant lies almost consistently present in right-wing emails, this polarization may be splitting ties that have bound folks together for decades, if not, as in my case, a relatively long lifetime.   I hasten to mention that I am well aware all the blame does not lie with one party or the other, but I have received very few (none that I actually recall) derogatory  forwards from my Dem friends reviling Republicans.   Of course, this blog is admittedly biased, but then I am not sending it directly to anyone's e-mailbox ... they have to come and get it.  :)

Back to the case in point.   I received a comparatively mild forwarded email from such a beloved friend, bearing this personal message:  

   "Hey, don't shoot the messenger just included my Liberal friends too cause I thought everyone would like to know and look it's already been to snopes. " 

 I read it ... it was a piece I had seen before bemoaning the fact that a military flyover had been denied for a group function which had enjoyed that distinction in the past.   Of course, the piece blamed our President, personally, for such a horrid turn of events.    Following is the text of the email ... so you can relate it to the torrent of thoughts that welled up in me as I read the clincher ... that last line in RED CAPITAL LETTERS. 

"Subject: Fwd: Flyover denied

 Unbelievable, isn't it!!! Everyone needs to see this. I foresee many flyovers by the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels will be canceled in the next three years also.  Also demonstrations by the Golden Knights and our service bands. This guy OBAMA is out of control!!!

Obama denied a military flyover at the annual God and Country rally in Idaho, where new military recruits were inducted and all military were honored.  This is the first time in 42 years that there has not been a military flyover in formation, and organizers were stunned that Obama refused to allow this.

When the lady organizing the event contacted the Pentagon to ask why this was not allowed, as it had occurred every year for 42 years, she was told it was because of the event had a Christian nature.

The video also mentions that when Obama made a recent speech, a cross and a Christian symbol for Jesus had to be covered first.

This is beyond unbelievable action by the Commander in Chief and our President, and the Americans need to know about it!

YouTube - Obama Denies Flyover of  'GOD & Country Rally'-1st Time In 42Yrs Why? Because Of Its  "Christian Nature"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zGMuN_Ep38*
Confirmed:   http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/flyover.asp

WATCH THIS BEFORE IT'S PULLED AND SEND TO EVERY AMERICAN PATRIOT YOU KNOW!
          ALL YOU LIBERALS WANTED CHANGE.  NOW YOU HAVE IT.
 DOES ANYONE STILL THINK HE’S NOT A MUSLIM??!!"
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 I  did what I almost always do ... went to snopes and read what it had to say.  (I also always try factcheck.org.)   My annoyance and dismay over that last line continued to act as an abrasive in my mind.  I simply can not reconcile the kind and generous person I know my friend to be with the hatred and bigotry embodied in that line.  

For months I had checked out the facts on similar email propaganda sent by others and sent the resulting info with a friendly note on to the senders of same.   Seldom did anyone comment on anything as trivial as factual information, when they had a wealth of FOX news commentators to feed their misconceptions and more forwarded hate mail pouring into their email daily.   So, I routinely deleted such forwarded emails and awaited the next batch.   Once in a while a sender would tire of getting my fact-laden rebuttals to their communiques and eventually most of them quit emailing me.  

This particular friend was not a frequent offender, but because I held him in such high regard, I guess it just hit me harder.  He was mostly trying to kid me, but by then I had just "had it" with such things, and they weren't at all funny to me anymore.   The possibility of an impending culture war loomed large in my mind, not to mention freedom of religion, equality, respect for our country's leader, and other such concepts.   So, I wrote the letter which headlines this blog.

Unfortunately, though I have written him several times, I have not heard anything from this gentlemen yet.   I reread the whole thing today and concluded that I did not succeed in trying to convey that it was the seriousness of that kind of fomenting that upset me, and not my friend himself.   I cannot and will not apologize for expressing my feelings and opinions in the matter, and referring to such facts as I was able to muster to support my position.   However, I can and will apologize to him in case my words hurt his feelings or otherwise embarrassed him in any way.  I know the sentiments in the offending email did not reflect my friend's deep down core beliefs.  He is a person, not only of incredible and multifaceted talents, but also of honesty, loyalty, and integrity.   And I want him to know I know that.  :)   I guess the next step is to write such an apology directly to him.   Which I will do tomorrow, and I fervently hope he will accept it, but I have no guarantee.

Such is the risk  taken when one speaks out for one's beliefs and values.   Consequences are something each person should consider when deciding upon a course of action.   I will miss my friend more than I can ever say if he chooses not to accept my apology.   But I did what I felt I had to do.   Doing nothing at all would have left him thinking that the truth didn't matter to me.  Nothing could be further from the truth.


*Source:  snopes.com/politics/military/flyover.asp