Sunday, November 23, 2015
I spent the entire day writing a response to several emails my friend Jeff sent me regarding Edward Snowden. It all began a month or so ago after the first Democratic debate. I wrote to the gang my reaction and impressions of Clinton, which were strongly positive except for her disingenuous answer on Snowden. Jeff responded, "Snowden? The only one on the stage that called him hero was Lincoln Chaffe. Even the only guy who voted against the Patriot Act, Bernie knows he belongs in prison. And for good reasons...Snowden was a pure Casablanca moment in this country - "shocked just shocked that surveillance is going on here.... He immediately within hours of the leak went to China (that big human rights center of the world LOL) and shared the information with one of the biggest threats to world security there is and then days later went and shared it with Russia where he is being protected. Putin? Yeah another glowing icon of human rights, democracy and world peace. Michael - even Bernie thinks you are nuts."
I responded with a benign reply, and then another, without hearing from Jeff for another month until a few days after the Partis attack. He then sent me this email:
"I wonder if in aftermath of Paris your moral compass has found it's way back to some semblance of rationality. Can we agree that the murdering of innocent people, the subjugation, slavery and physical abuse of women (125 million genitally mutilated, thousand murdered in the name of honor, acid thrown in faces for the crime of attending school), massive ethnic cleansing through areas controlled by ISIS and open and declared intent to kill as many in the west as possible by any means necessary from AK47s to chemical and nuclear warfare is a bigger problem than a computer reading your email header?Maybe these things are worse than meta-data monitoring and taping yahoo data centers?"
For the first time in 13 years of such email banter, our friend Susan responded with a "give me a break" email. Jeff responded with two more crazy emails, and by then I was ready to respond with a full-on bitch slap. Unfortunately, these responses take several days to outline, research and compose. In the end, it will be worth it to put the nonsense in its place. Anyway, I spent all day writing my response to Jeff, and will probably also spend all day tomorrow working on my response.
I spent the entire day writing a response to several emails my friend Jeff sent me regarding Edward Snowden. It all began a month or so ago after the first Democratic debate. I wrote to the gang my reaction and impressions of Clinton, which were strongly positive except for her disingenuous answer on Snowden. Jeff responded, "Snowden? The only one on the stage that called him hero was Lincoln Chaffe. Even the only guy who voted against the Patriot Act, Bernie knows he belongs in prison. And for good reasons...Snowden was a pure Casablanca moment in this country - "shocked just shocked that surveillance is going on here.... He immediately within hours of the leak went to China (that big human rights center of the world LOL) and shared the information with one of the biggest threats to world security there is and then days later went and shared it with Russia where he is being protected. Putin? Yeah another glowing icon of human rights, democracy and world peace. Michael - even Bernie thinks you are nuts."
I responded with a benign reply, and then another, without hearing from Jeff for another month until a few days after the Partis attack. He then sent me this email:
"I wonder if in aftermath of Paris your moral compass has found it's way back to some semblance of rationality. Can we agree that the murdering of innocent people, the subjugation, slavery and physical abuse of women (125 million genitally mutilated, thousand murdered in the name of honor, acid thrown in faces for the crime of attending school), massive ethnic cleansing through areas controlled by ISIS and open and declared intent to kill as many in the west as possible by any means necessary from AK47s to chemical and nuclear warfare is a bigger problem than a computer reading your email header?Maybe these things are worse than meta-data monitoring and taping yahoo data centers?"
For the first time in 13 years of such email banter, our friend Susan responded with a "give me a break" email. Jeff responded with two more crazy emails, and by then I was ready to respond with a full-on bitch slap. Unfortunately, these responses take several days to outline, research and compose. In the end, it will be worth it to put the nonsense in its place. Anyway, I spent all day writing my response to Jeff, and will probably also spend all day tomorrow working on my response.
No comments:
Post a Comment