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• Thursday, August 21, 2008 09:42 AM

  I get these same emails from the midwest

  I'm a native midwesterner who has lived in the SF Bay Area for most of my life, and have the typical mindset of that area -very progressive. I have relatives still in the midwest, and a branch of the family that moved to Texas many years ago. I have had extremely little contact with these people until I started getting these awful, ignorant, and often racist messages from them. I need to point out that nearly all my relatives are educated professionals, which makes this all the more stupifying.

  At first I used to just delete them, but then, I felt it necessary to reply back with a few snarky, but reality-based comments of my own. At times, I have actually been upset to realize that MY OWN RELATIVES are this stupid!

  A clue to the ignorance of the senders is when they don't delete the previous scores, or hundreds of names that the messages have already been forwarded to - a sign of poor computer skills. You can hardly even find the message for all the forwarding info.

  Since I have recieved these right-wing hate messages only from the midwest, I have to conclude that there is something in the water there...or maybe it's just that the much lower cost of living gives people an artificial sense of well-being, a sense of having "made it" in life, making them more likely to stick with the status quo, and adopt the "I've got mine" attitude, where they enjoy hating everyone else who isn't exactly like them.

  Would anyone like to share coping tactics for these messages?

  —micki777 Read micki777's other letters
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