In which I read and respond to some spam, because that’s totally normal and useful, right?

The following diatribe was on the server this morning. I have no idea why I even looked at it, but I did, and it sums up all of the problems I have with conservatives.

First of all, it’s wrongly attributed (which is a fundamental aspect of the majority of the right wing’s bullshit propaganda, I’ve noticed: blatant lying), and the content itself is just selfish and paranoid and wholly un-Christian and the entire thing just gives me apoplexy.

Anyway. Here’s one of the spams your science-hating “Christian” friends are sending to each other.

“I’m 83 and Tired” by Bill Cosby

I’m 83. Except for brief period in the 50’s when I was doing my National Service, I’ve worked hard since I was 17. Except for some serious health challenges, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn’t call in sick in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn’t inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I’m tired. Very tired.

I’m tired of being told that I have to “spread the wealth” to people who don’t have my work ethic. I’m tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I’m tired of being told that Islam is a “Religion of Peace,” when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family “honor”; of Muslims rioting over some slight offense; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren’t “believers”; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for “adultery”; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur’an and Shari’a law tells them to.

I’m tired of being told that out of “tolerance for other cultures” we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and madrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia , New Zealand , UK, America and Canada , while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance.

I’m tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I’m tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight it off?

I’m tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught.

I’m tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor. I’m really tired of people who don’t take responsibility for their lives and actions. I’m tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

I’m also tired and fed up with seeing young men and women in their teens and early 20’s be-deck them selves in tattoos and face studs, thereby making themselves un-employable and claiming money from the Government.

Yes, I’m damn tired. But I’m also glad to be 83. Because, mostly, I’m not going to have to see the world these people are making. I’m just sorry for my granddaughter and their children. Thank God I’m on the way out and not on the way in.¹

Holy fucking fuck, where to even begin?

You didn’t ‘inherit’ your job. Hah! You were given every job you ever got, good sir, by persons who chose you over someone else for reasons known only to themselves. You are not fundamentally better than other people, you’re just luckier. You possess absolutely no quality that doesn’t exist in someone else. You haven’t worked all your life because you have a better work ethic; you’ve worked all your life because people kept giving you work. You did not earn that work, it was given to you, and even then you did not own it.

Your belief that everyone is lazy and wants your stuff is a form of mental imbalance called paranoia. It can be treated with therapy and drugs. People don’t want YOUR PERSONAL STUFF, they want a more equitable distribution of wealth across the whole of human society. This concept is only hard to wrap your head around if you’re selfish to the point of sociopathy.

Oh, and you have an issue with Islam, do you? How worldly of you. But have you read the Qur’an? No, you haven’t, because you believe that your own idiot religion tells you non-biblical scripture is evil.

You can read “dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters” every day? Really? Oh, you mean dozens per year, not per day, you blatant liar. And it’s not like American men kill a couple thousand women each year or anything. Oh, wait, yes they do: three American women are killed by American men every single day, dude. (Guess what? Muslims only kill a couple hundred of their women each year, the underachievers.)

Islam is no more and no less fucked up than your own religion, and I don’t know if you have eyes in your face or what, but Christian fundamentalists are just as hateful as Islamic fundies. And though Christian fundamentalists haven’t blown anything up in recent memory, there were the ENTIRE FUCKING CRUSADES, which only took about three million souls. Perhaps a fundamentalist is a fundamentalist, regardless of where they were born and regardless of what religious tradition they were raised in? Do you think perhaps that’s possible? OF COURSE IT IS. So listen to me carefully: you do not have an issue with Islam. What you have is acute fucking racism, you provincial fuck.

There are more than a million Roman Catholics in Saudi Arabia. (They’re temporary workers, sure, but they’re there.) They don’t have churches, but so what? You barely tolerate non-Christians; Islam barely tolerates non-Muslims. Your bible tells you that your religion is the one true religion; their scripture says the same thing. How can you possibly be offended when you have so much in common? I mean, you both hate fags and women and the modern age!

And lower your standard of living? Are you kidding me? You’re really that butthurt by a few stupid windmills and electric cars? I bet you don’t even realize that you throw away, in the form of packaging alone, more wealth each year than many members of your planet’s population even earn. Which makes you, sir, an entitled asshole.

And why not support drug addicts? They’re human beings. They make up a small percentage of the population, and they genuinely suffer. As do their families. As do their communities. You have very nearly the highest standard of living on the entire planet and you can’t subsidize a little drug treatment without resentment? Really, dude? And hey, regardless of your feelings on the matter, addiction is a disease. We know this because: HEY! SCIENCE!

You’re disappointed by the moral decrepitude displayed by the rich and famous? So am I. You have not cornered the moral market. I just happen to extend my disappointment to encompass the blatant greed that allows conscious beings to starve to death or die of treatable diseases. In other words: I think hoarding unimaginably vast amounts of wealth is disgusting.

Tattoos put people on welfare? LOLWUT. Sure, body mods are often gross-looking, but people have been doing weird things to the way they look since the beginning of the species. The fact that some idiot kid tattoos his face does not cost you any significant amount of anything. You just sound like a closed-minded prick.

Entitlement? Responsibility? Really. You’re saying that everyone who gets sick without insurance is a lazy fuck, without exception? That everyone who is so stressed and marginalized that they start using chemicals to cope is entitled? That everyone who has not had the great good fortune to be in the right place at the right time is after your wealth, your house, your tasteless useless tchotchkes?

And don’t get me started on the “big-whatever.” If you genuinely believe that it is good and right and moral for giant corporations to suck wealth out of the middle and lower classes and pay massive salaries to the 1%; if you really and truly feel that any one man is worth many many billions of dollars for working what is effectively just another goddamned day job; if you really feel that greed isn’t the root of all evil; well, I’m sorry but you’re either mentally ill or evil. There’s no other way to describe someone who genuinely thinks that capitalism as currently practiced is healthy and works well when it so clearly and demonstrably does not. Any system that accepts as unavoidable the destitution of its weakest members is inhuman.

What you are, dear conservative, is an uptight, miserable asshole. You hate your life. You have not worked your endless 50-hour weeks happily: you have suffered your conformity all your life and you’re pissed off about it. You didn’t want to be a good boy, and you resent every minute you spent doing what you thought was the right thing. You would love nothing more than to stop being the hard-working rule-follower that you are and just fuck off and be lazy. To get something for nothing is your deepest fantasy and your biggest shame. You are pathologically jealous of everyone who ever survived without working and being miserable, so much so that you cannot see through it to their suffering. You think time off work for chemotherapy is a fucking vacation, especially if the recipient won’t be able to pay for it. You think addiction is trivial. You think living on welfare in squalor is pleasant and easy. You, sir, are a fucking idiot.

If you wish to call yourself a moral being, if you wish to consider yourself a valuable member of humanity, your duty is to understand that you are not an island. You did not ‘earn’ everything you have: other humans gave it to you. They fed you, they educated you, they befriended you, they hired you, they gave you market tips, they got your golf club application approved, they gave you a deal, they loaned you a tie, they helped you. Sure, you worked hard. But so does everybody else.

Your definition of ‘work’ is one in which you go to a job and earn a paycheck, but I would submit that living under the poverty line in the ghetto is hard work too. Being depressed or having PTSD is hard work. Being disabled is hard work. Being homeless is hard work. Dying of breast cancer because you live in the only first world country that doesn’t provide you with health care is hard work. Being unemployed in a recession for three years and slowly losing everything you’ve ever had is hard work. Suffering is hard work.

“They” don’t want your stuff, dear conservative. They don’t give a shit about you, honestly, because they’re too busy suffering. Your failure is that you hate them for it and call it a ‘work ethic.’ I hope your extraordinarily good luck never runs out, sir, because having to be on the receiving end of basic human kindness would probably fucking kill you.

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¹Apparently conservatives don’t know how to fact check–it’s probably too much like SCIENCE–because they’ve been sending this email to each other for years now and it’s still attributed to Cosby, who isn’t the author.