Count Your Blessings

You may have seen an email going around attributed to Jay Leno. Jay Leno did not write it, it's on www.snopes.com. It's just the most recent fraudulently attributed mass email scam. An ultraconservative columnist probably with ties to the Bush administration wrote it and he probably got paid by the administration for writing it, too.

I was forwarded the email from my Aunt, who claimed that a friend of her daughter wrote the cover letter, but he did not. It's word for word from Snopes, too. He copied it from where ever he got the email. I had already noticed it and read it before my Aunt sent it to me.

The email, in a nutshell, says that people in the country are all dissatisfied, and they shouldn't be, they should count their blessings instead. This email really makes me mad. If you're interested in my take on the email, here is what I would write back to the guy who wrote it:

"Counting your blessings is fine, I believe. However, by this logic, you should be glad when you have a heart attack that your diabetes is under control. Or that the crazed madman cut off some of your fingers, but your toes are in fine shape! We don't concentrate on the positive because things that we fixed, solved, or set up long ago are supposed to keep working right. We concentrate on the negative, particularly the negative that we can control or stop so that we can identify the problems and fix them. That's what it is to be an engineer. I fix the problems. If I walked into a factory that was spewing toxic chemicals on the floor and about to explode and asked them why they were bitching because the lights were working fine, someone should just take away my license on the spot.

"If we can fix the many problems with the country and the direction it's heading right now, then we just have more things to be thankful about. Is the point of the letter to accuse anyone that thinks the War in Iraq is stupid that they ought to shut up and be happy that things aren't worse? How is that a shining example of an America you can be proud of? That sounds like criminal irresponsibility to me.

"People that don't like Bush are not anti-American and they are not against God. Buying into propaganda like this is dangerous. Only through participating in democracy, caring about what's going on, and by being willing to stand up and disagree when things are not going right will we ever be able to fix things. If you are curious about the opinion of another Republican, decorated war hero, and strongly devout conservative and his views to the contrary of this era of GOP Bush apologists, you should look at Dwight D. Eisenhower's speech he gave on January 17, 1960. 3 days before leaving office, he warned about a future situation that is an exact description of the Iraq War. It's his famous "Military Industrial Complex" speech. If he were alive today, he would not be in support of the War, or this administration. I have no doubt about it. He was most proud of the fact that in the opening years of the Cold War, that he did not escalate the world into a real war.

"We do have a wonderful country and we should be proud of it. Many people have sacrificed to make America great. We won't have a wonderful country in the future if we spend more time counting our blessings than securing our liberties and correcting our government when it's leading the country astray."

I finished my response by apologizing to my Aunt for getting on a soapbox. I told her that this patriot bashing drivel really gets under my skin, and that anyone that believes that I don't love this country because I don't agree with them should be ashamed of themselves. However, I didn't send this message to her, because she didn't write it or even take the time to really think about it or research it. My Aunt is a good person that I believe has fallen victim to the right wing ultraconservative Bush defending propagandists of the day. I would say that she is just a victim in this climate, but really, when people start questioning the patriotism of their fellow citizens, aren't we all victims?