An open letter
Blogger
Dean Esmay was reading an article by
John Perry Barlow and had a bit of a revalation so he wrote an open letter to Mr. barlow. I'll cherry-pick a couple paragraphs:
bq.
Letter To John Perry Barlow From A Pot-Smoking Deadhead Bush Voter
bq. I think what bemused me most when reading your missive, Mr. Barlow, was your description of the young man who was probably popular and on the football team and supported Bush, while you the nerdy outsider supported Kerry, and you saw the whole thing through some sort of 50s-vs.-60s lens. Nothing could show me just how insular so many on the left have become than that. Few of the war supporters I know fit such stereotypes at all. "Think for yourself, question authority" is something a lot of us sucked in with our mothers' milk--and by the way, you know we kids who were born in the 1960s are now in our 30s and 40s and parents ourselves, right? A lot of us grew up being told to question authority, and
a lot of that authority we now question is the left-wing orthodoxy of your generation, an orthodoxy many of us bought into as it was taught to us in school, in the books we read, and especially in the universities, not to mention in a lot of what we see out of Hollywood today.
(Emphasis mine)
And more:
bq. You also, in your missive, speak of watching "Fahrenheit 9/11." I hope you're aware that that movie uses all the same propaganda techniques as used by the great Fascist and Stalinist film producers such as Goebbels and Eisenstein. Indeed, I must tell you that after I finally watched that film, my hands were literally shaking. Not because of my great love and devotion to Bush (which I'm sure the left-wing stereotypers would love to believe) but because I had not seen such concentrated hatred and dishonest propaganda put to film in my lifetime. By comparison, Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will seemed tame. (Yes, yes, parts of it were funny. Leni Riefenstahl had funny bits in her movies too. So what?)
And some more:
bq. Now I must tell you that, because I have taken my stance on the Iraq war, I was forced on this weblog to eventually require people to register before they could leave comments. Why? Because I got tired of being called a Nazi, a "Bush apologist," a right-wing extremist, a brown shirt, a fascist, a sellout, and a liar on a daily basis by those "open-minded" and "thoughtful" leftists who are apparently still part of your tribe. My family has received death threats from angry leftists. I realized at some point that I could either take down the weblog completely, or I could start tossing out people who thought they had a right to abuse me and my family just because they didn't like my opinions.
bq. In other words, I've experienced firsthand just how hateful, intolerant, and irrational you guys can be when someone dares to question your beliefs. You guys often come off exactly like the theocratic mullahs and the lock-step fascists you claim to hate (but which you, oddly enough, don't seem willing to use American power to try to overthrow).
bq. Of all the people I know who support this war, most of us have conversations like this with each other all the time:
bq. "Why are the anti-war people so vicious and nasty?"
bq. "Why are the anti-war people so irrational and hateful and smug?"
bq. "How do we get through to them? They just won't listen!"
bq. "Don't you get tired of being called a liar and a fascist? I sure do."
bq. It reached a point for a lot of us that on election day, we were doing more than just saying "We want to re-elect George Bush." When we pulled that lever for Bush, we were also just plain saying
"FUCK YOU!"
There is a lot more and it really hits home. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Barlow replies to this. Hasn't yet that I can see...
Posted by DaveH at November 12, 2004 4:24 PM