I am soooo fucking sick of hearing your blind opinions on the war!

The BBQ Pit
1

An acquaintance of mine forwards me probably 5 e-mails a day on average, and about 80% of them lately are either uninformed rants about Arabs and/or Palestinians, or uninformed rants about people, countries, or institutions that oppose the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Most of these are merely opinion columns he forwards from various conservative, hawkish, and/or anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sources, and what is almost worse, when he adds any sort of commentary of his own, the spelling and grammar are awful. (He is rabidly and Zionistically Jewish, from Ukraine, and didn’t learn English until his late 20’s; just imagine **december, ** only not quite as calm and with terrible writing skills in English.) In general, his attitude is very much “my people, right or wrong,” although who he considers to be his “people” can vary from Jews, to former Soviets, to Americans, to Republicans.

Now sometimes I enjoy making him into rhetorical hash, but lately I am just plain sick of it. Plus he hasn’t held an actual job in over a year, so he has pretty much unlimited amounts of time to annoy the crap out of me, whereas I have an actual and rather demanding job, which leaves me limited amounts of time and energy for other pursuits, and quite frankly debating someone who doesn’t pay any attention to conflicting information is not high on my priority list lately. The guy is like the goddamn Energizer Bunny of conservative e-mail rhetoric.

Lately I’m just too upset about so many aspects of the war, and I really don’t see the point in wasting my breath, or e-mail electrons, on someone who obviously doesn’t give a shit about the innumerable carefully crafted replies I’ve sent him in the past. He insists that he’s an open-minded, tolerant person, and that I’m just wrong because the Rush Limbaugh or JDL newsletter opinion column said so, nyah nyah nyah. I don’t know why he manages to get my goat so effectively; maybe because in certain other respects he’s an educated and intelligent person, so I feel like he should know better. Maybe it’s because I think that if he were so concerned about supporting and protecting Israel against the evil Arabs and/or Muslims, he goddamn well should have emigrated there himself along with the entire rest of his family (who live there now), instead of holding out for a refugee visa for the U.S.

I know I should basically just tell him to fuck off, but somehow I just haven’t been able to make myself do it. I keep telling him that if he thinks war on Iraq is such a great idea, he should get off his duff and enlist, but somehow he seems reluctant to put anything important to him on the line in any way that would actually create a real risk for him.

Thanks for reading; I just had to get this off my chest. Anyhow, any ideas, either on how to tell him to fuck off politely, or on how to let his B.S. roll off my back?

2

Hmmm. Mail filter?

Filter him out, give yourself a break for a couple weeks, then turn him back on (if he’s someone you feel you simply must communicate with) and see if he’s settled…

3

I agree with DrLizardo. You’re better off not even reading his emails, just to keep yourself from getting frustrated or drawn back in. Give yourself a break, and save your energy for debating with someone who is actually willing to listen and discuss.

4

I suggest that you carefully study his e-mails until you understand the wisdom contained in them. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Yep, just tell him to knock it off, or filter his ass to oblivion.

6

Doing vanity searches, are we? :stuck_out_tongue:

Too bad you’re straight and married. Otherwise, I’d fix you up. Know anyone in Chicago who wants to date a nice Jewish boy with an MBA from U. of C., even if he is unemployed? Maybe if he were, ummm, otherwise occupied, he’d leave me alone.

7

An MBA from the U of C is impressive. He might go far. This guy’s e-mails may show that he has a romantic interest in you. Maybe you should give him a tumble, Eva. Right-wing/left wing marriages can fine, as I well know.

8

Well, others have posited the possibility that he is romantically interested, but for myself, I don’t believe in having sex, let alone a relationship, with someone I disagree with so fundamentally on so many issues that are so important to me. (It’s not just the war, it’s on basically everything remotely connected to politics.) It’s sure been a while, but I hope I never get that desperate. (Plus I also don’t believe that closed-mindedness on GD-type issues bodes well for his flexibility in, ummmm, other areas. If it’s worked for you, though, then more power to you.)

For the others: he’s sending the e-mails to my work address, which is just fine by me (if he sent them to my personal one, I wouldn’t even get a break on weekends). The down side of that, though, is that I don’t believe there’s any way to filter him. I think I’m just going to have to find a way to tell him that there’s no point in us discussing certain issues, because all it’s apparently accomplishing is pissing me off.

9

Holy shit. I bet my boyfriend knows him. He kept going on about some guy in one of his groups at B-school that was the only conservative Jew he’d ever met.

10

God, I hear you. One time I went to this boy’s house who was bloody gorgeous, this delicious pierced German guy. Before going to bed we chatted, and he had the most vulgar, poor-bashing, crude, neo-liberal, anti-immigrant ideology that he felt compelled to share with me in the least civil of manners.

The sex was dreadful. I couldn’t even enjoy his tongue stud after that. :frowning:

11

Oh, the matter at hand: what e-mail software does your workplace use? Outlook and Lotus Notes have filtering capabilities, but I don’t know about other programs.

12

Perhaps you could just tell the person that while you respect their views, you would appreciate it if he stopped sending you emails which assault your beliefs. After all, you don’t do it to him (I’m assuming).

13

My husband teaches at our local branch campus, and frequenly discusses current events in an effort to get his students to * think. * Half of them last quarter freely admitted that they neither read newspapers or watched television news, but had loud and strident opinions on the (then impending) war with Iraq. (Mostly parroted opinions of their preacher, co-workers or parents.) None of them knew any history of the region, or any of the international politics involved. Even after carefully elucidating them about these things, plus revealing the shocking truth that Saddam did not order 9/11, a good portion of them still seemed willfully ignorant.

On the last day of class, one girl handed him a gem of a paper apparently making rounds on the internet entitled, “Why Muslims Can’t be Good Citizens.” (This same girl had complained when the class discussed racism that they shouldn’t because it made the country “look bad.”)

14

Well, we use Lotus Notes at work, but I’m still reluctant to filter him entirely, even temporarily. Every once in a while he does send something useful and/or funny. Plus he’s a frequent participant in a monthly Russian Language Dinner I host under the auspices of a local nonprofit whose mission is promoting understanding of international relations, so I don’t think it would be terribly diplomatic, which would be a Bad Thing.

Maybe I’ll be able to think more clearly about it after a good night’s sleep.

15

Eva my friend…
It’s simple… tell him he should e-mail december :slight_smile:

16

Eva Luna,

just on the side (and nothing to do with this thread), I’ve two nieces, one of em is called Luna, the other is called Eva :slight_smile:

I’m Eva’s godmother (full name Eva Mara Emma)

just thought I’d share this :slight_smile:

17

Thanks for sharing. Those are pretty names, congratulate whoever chose them.

18

I’d recommend a quick email – short, sweet and to the point. Be polite and tell him you’d rather not discuss this issue with him further, and you’d appreciate him not forwarding you any more Iraq-themed emails. If he continues, either filter his ass into oblivion or practice repeated use of the ‘Delete’ key. (I had to do something similar recently with an email acquaintance who kept sending me racially insensitive jokes and slurs – a polite email asking him to stop took care of the problem nicely.)

19

You could always strap a few pounds of TNT to your chest, charge into his home, and detonate it.

20

Tell you what. I’ll give you my coworker’s email address, and they can amuse themselves by sending each other poorly-informed emails all day, and maybe leave us alone.