What My Mom Said
My mom, who lives in Indiana and is 80, went on this bus trip to see a musical performance. She enjoyed it … but that’s not what she said, or at least not the point of this post.
Afterwards, on the bus ride home, Gus started in. Gus isn’t his real name. But he and his wife were sitting beside Mom, and they’re friends. Gus is always sending Mom emails, and Mom forwards some of the most ridiculous ones to me.
So anyway, Gus starts in. You know, about how Obama is a Muslim, and how he’s destroying our democracy so on so forth… And finally Mom turns to him and says, “Now Gus, you know Obama isn’t Muslim.” To which Gus says, “Well he is too! Everyone knows it!” When Mom asks where he learned it, he said the internet, that it was all over the internet. He proceeded with the litany of other “facts,” that Obama isn’t an American citizen, so forth. My mom told him she had voted for Obama and these things weren’t true. Not that he listened.
The woman behind Mom leaned forward and patted her shoulder in support. Another woman caught Mom’s attention and rolled her eyes.
Afterwards, Mom told the woman behind her, “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” The woman said, “Oh, I was fully behind you.”
Mom wonders if she’ll stop getting the Obama-bashing emails that Gus sends on a daily basis (and like I said, Mom forwards some of these to me). Too early to tell. But the emails make for very sobering reading. They brim with hatred and ignorance. Many are racist. I don’t know who writes them, and I don’t know how wide a distribution they have. But I suspect it’s substantial, hinting at an American mental wasteland for which there may not be enough reasonable people to neutralize.
Go Mom.
