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This is true about email lists. You've got to be really, really careful about them. Two examples: 1. My mother's family has a server that everyone uses to communicate but I don't even bother to reply to others who mention anything political because there are a few who are extremely liberal environmentalists who couldn't argue their way out of a paper or plastic bag. It was the hypersensitivity of these few people that has made all the rest reluctant to say anything about anything except, "Pray for Aunt Gertie who is going through the menopause." 2. There was an email server called, ha ha, Happy Students, at my grad school that was basically for, "Hey, I'm out of LB medium. Could anyone spare some until we get our new order" or "Our plate reader is down, does anyone know some other place on campus?" or "We ordered too many latex gloves. Anyone want to trade anything for a few boxes?"

So after the election in 1994, one of the people posted "How the Gingrinch Stole Congress," a long, whiny, bitchy, liberal screed. I replied*, basically telling the individual to suck it up and then I got a lot of emails slamming me for being political on Happy Students and that the other guy (who was vitriolic in his hatred of Republicans) was "only joking around." The majority of responses were of the "hey, it was for a chuckle," "it was just satire," etc., that indicated to me that they were so deep-seated and unreflective in their prejudices that they couldn't imagine anyone not agreeing with them and, so, concluding that anyone who did either didn't get the joke or was filled with ill-will. It was the same sort of thing I saw in a post-doc who, after bitching about the NRA, looked on me in horror when I asked her if she wanted to see my NRA membership card and started to take it out of my pocket. I told her we didn't eat babies or anything like that. I think basically they were shocked, shocked that anyone would question them and their motives. *Okay, I guess I sort of bitch-slapped him, but if you knew him, you'd know that he really, really needed it:

So, let me see if I've got this straight. If the Whoville population votes for liberal, Democrat, programs and politics (though, remember who said, back in the awful '80's, that the key to the Democrat election strategy then was to "find the fear button and lean on it as hard as [they]" could--Tony Coelho, gee, a Democrat), they are enlightened and rational, but if they vote for non-liberal (i.e., non-socialist) Republicans they are being misled and ripped off? Such a society-wide characterization in terms that are so easily refuted by facts says far more about the individual psychology and ideology of its "creators" than it does about the Whoville population.

It's so much easier to mourn their gullibility, their stupidity, their guileless noble victimhood than it is to entertain the possibility that their decision was informed and rational. It's so much easier to deny the pain of being rejected if you believe the one rejecting you didn't know the real you, didn't appreciate the sacrifice of time, intellect, and resources (in the form of Whoville lifeblood sucked out of him as taxes) you've been spending on his behalf--if he doesn't realize this, he's misled (not able to acknowledge what you know to be in his best interest) or incompetent, and so to be pitied and cared for; if he does realize this, then he must be evil (actively opposing the good you so ardently desire to do for him), and so must be characterized as the ravening wolf who lusts to devour your flock of lambs.

To believe that someone who thinks differently than you is, by doing so, opposing you or the good you hope to do is to be delusional, or at best childish (Mommy, the moon's following me!). It may be simply that he has his own ideas, beliefs, and understandings of life to which he is just as entitled as you. He may be more successful at promoting his ideas than you are. Of course, that doesn't mean they are necessarily correct; but to characterize, then, those who believe him rather than you as gullible, or stupid, or weak is to climb up on a pedestal from which you may all too easily fall. On November 8 we heard the crash.

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, engage in some self-examination, stop sentimentalizing life, and get real. Remember, those little lambs can grow up to be big rams that won't be so easily led.

The funny thing is that the guy who had started the server was graduating from med school and wanted to know if anyone would take it over, so I got put on as the owner of the thing and just watched it peter out and die.