I only made it about halfway through, though. The bitterness and anger and spite just got too thick for me. And Tom found it "inspiring"...sheesh.

Funny thing, too: Ask the person who sent you that (as I've asked the people who send me those things) if they feel bitter and angry, and they'll vehemently deny it. Even as they delight in reading and writing those angry and bitter diatribes. Maybe it's just normalization--angry and bitter has come to seem normal to them.

Last time I visited the RightWinger who sends me most of those hate-filled emails, he tried to give me a book called (something like) "The 100 People Destroying America". Would you be surprised to learn that they're all Democrats or Liberals? It seemed to me like the handbook for the "daily hate"--read one chapter a day, and spend the day in patriotic outrage against an evil Liberal intent on destroying what you love.

But he and Mrs. Atilla couldn't see it. It wasn't hateful at all to them...and in the next breath I was told "Liberals are the one who hate, not us!". Coming after an earlier declaration that "I'm not an extremist, I'm a patriot!", I could only shake my head in wonder. Near as I can figure out, they were saying that extremism is patriotism...echoing Goldwater's famous declaration that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice!".

I despair of ever understanding the "Conservative mind". I'd be delighted just to figure out peaceful coexistence.