Hate-Based Illiterates
Shakespeare's Sister ("Irritated by Ignorance: A Rant"), reading exposés of the activities of hate-based fundamentalists groups written by Deborah Levinson (who is apparently fearless enough to wade into that noxious swamp), presents us with some barely literate, dripping-with-hatred comments from Ms. Levinson's mailbag. The vitriol is astonishing and yet predictable; in other circumstances it might even be humorous.
S'sS comments
It’s truly amazing—whether reading the hate mail at a site like Deborah’s, dealing with trolls at a lefty blog, or reading Freeper comments, it’s all the same…one ignorant, uneducated idiot after another, who can barely string together a coherent sentence and is in desperate need of a second-grade spelling course. These are the same people who whine and moan about “liberal elites” and how we on the Left think we’re “so much better” than they are.
Well, you know what? We are meant to be literate. We are meant to be able to communicate using an agreed-upon set of grammar rules and spelling. Failure to learn the language beyond its most basic applications, leaving one barely capable of stuttering out a marginally understandable thought now and then, is ridiculous, and it does make one inferior to the vast swath of adults who are able to function at a level higher than that of a drooling moron.
Myself, I realized from reading this how surprising it is that the hate-based fundamentalists are so anti-intellectual and widely illiterate. Don't they take any hint from the fact that the word of their God is written? If He had wanted them to hate book learnin' so much, surely the Bible would have been done up as a graphic novel, or perhaps a picture book of stained-glass windows, purported to have been an earlier time's way of dealing with the problem when literacy was not such an easily available option. How can these people revere the language and poetry of the King James translation of their book of myths at the same time that they undertand it so little and don't bother to learn how to read and write themselves? Did they never learn what was the whole point of the Protestant Reformation?
From the letters that S'sS quotes, these were my favorite excerpts:
Why does men only have a penis and a anus instead of a penis, anus and vagina??
The logic is challenging, but apparently the author finds this an iron-clad argument against male-male partnerships. (It comes near an assertion about "Adam & Steve", making one wonder whether he realized he was quoting a black minister on that one? Liberty-loving homophobes are so often white supremacists as well — see the next entry — that I suspect he might be troubled to learn that.)
The other excerpt:
I don't have hate for you people, I have disgust and pity for you. Because believe certain morals and in preserving the white race I am labeled a racist.
I'm surprised, really, that this writer seems unhappy at the idea of being labeled a racist, since most modern-day white supremacists seem to rejoice in the label, which apparently marks them out as suitably anti-PC as well. ("We reserve the right to hate!") How odd that he claims the mental capacity to distinguish "hate" from "disgust".
"Just because I believe in the superiority of the white race doesn't mean I'm a racist" sounds so silly that this author is instantly remanded to the outer fringe of semi-literate haters.
And yet, it's a familiar argument that, when applied in a different context, causes people to stop and ponder the question as though it flows from the profound center of good Christian faith: "Just because I can't stand fuckin' fudgepackers don't mean I'm no homophobe. You know, like, hate the sin, love the sinner and all that shit."
Why does this version of the idiocy attract so much respect?