blinded by the right

I have this uncle named Jim. He is a Baptist Fundamentalist Christian. He occasionally sends out mass emails, which I receive along with my parents and other relatives I'm sure, which usually have some sort of incredible Christian message, meaning that all the pronouns referring to God are capitalized ("and His children with stand with Him at the Right Hand of the LORD"). These are sometimes signed by my uncle (who's like 68 years old, by the way) as 'brother Jim'. And that's OK. I just skim and delete them usually, and don't see any harm done.

BUT, my brothers and sisters, yesterday he crossed the line. I received a forwarded email with the subject line "social security". It described, in completely biased terms and poor grammar, how the Democrats were lying to the American people, and throughout the past forty years have passed law after law to take away the hard earned benefits of the working man, while at the same time blaming Republicans. As 'evidence', the email provided vague historical 'facts', such as "Lyndon Johnson, and a Democratic Congress, passed a law that taxed...." without mentioning of course that Johnson's actions were done to created Medicare and other social systems which didn't exist prior. So, anyway, I was angry upon reading it, and even more angry that my family and others were being sent this crap. So I wrote my uncle, who I haven't talked to in over a year, and told him not to send out mass emails containing biased and half-true facts. This morning he replied and said that as far as he knew all those facts were true, and would I mind telling him which were not. Well, though I was at work, and quite busy, I took the time to do a little online research, went to several .gov sites and looked at official laws and policy for each of the vague example the slanderous email gave. Then I wrote a long and detailed email with all of the evidence I'd accrued, and pointed out the biased nature of the piece. I was so angry the whole time. Obviously my uncle is going to vote fucking republican, I'm not going to change his mind about anything, but it still felt like I had to do it. He hasn't replied yet, but either way I'll see him at the wedding on Saturday. I'll probably end up stabbing him with a broken beer bottle. Good times.

By the way, I wrote my parents an email and told them an abridged version of this story. I also said that if either of them votes for Bush in November I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving.