Life At Villa Boswell

Someone recently forwarded to me a "Conservative Rant" email. You can read it for yourself below the fold. One of these kinds of emails is too many for me, and I just don’t get it.

1. Why people who know my philosophical perspective send me unsolicited, tasteless rants about views I don’t hold? I don’t do this to them.  In fact, I think rants of any kind are pretty much a total waste of time. This is their subtext: "I will email you my opinions, enforced–not by research–but by shouting and exclamation points.  You can then shout back at me and we can both get really upset and not have any meaningful exchange of real information." I appreciate well-written articles supported by more than someone’s opinion, and, in any case, I send neither rants nor articles espousing a particular point of view to people whose views are not aligned with that view.  Unless I’m invited to.
2. Why do these people then get mad at me when I reply in a calm, non-shouting way, rationally explaining my perspective on the situation and backing it up with references?  Did they not open the discussion in the first place by sending me an email?  Is there some law out there that says that, when I receive an unsolicited conservative rant that I’m not supposed to reply?
3. Why do these people also want to CC me openly along with 23 other people, most of whom I don’t know, and most whom then get my email address, that then gets forwarded on to all their conservative buddies with their hotmail accounts?
4. Why is there an inverse relation to those people who forward emails and those people who actually write emails of their own?  Ya think?

Etiquette Tip: If you are interested in my reply to a topic, then email it to me.  Otherwise, leave me off your list.  If you openly cc me with 30 other people, I will correctly assume that this is an open conversation, because that’s how email etiquette works, and will reply to all.  If you don’t like that, then learn to use BCC, or again, leave me off your list.  I don’t feel connected to you by jokes, or by rants, or by little cartoon characters praying to angels that I must to pass on to 30 people in 2 minutes or else I won’t have good things happen to me. I feel connected to you when you email me even 2 sentences about how you are doing, and when you express interest in how I am doing. 

Here was my reply to this email:

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This is what allows us to have the freedom to either worship as we choose, or to not worship at all.  In this way, you cannot be forced to worship or espouse a belief that you do not hold.  This is is not something I "believe" in either; it’s a fact of our great democracy, something that makes our democracy function and is a cornerstone of that freedom we Americans all value. 

" I pledge allegiance to the flag of the corporate states of America… and to the Republicans for which it stands; one nation, under debt, easily divisible, with liberty and justice for oil."

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 8:59 pm and is filed under Discussions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.