Letter to a Friend

Background: I received an email yesterday from a friend. It was a forwarded "petition to Obama" to stop the granting of Social Security benefits to illegal aliens(!) Supposedly Congress voted for this and now Obama was being called upon to stop it.
I smelled a rat and Googled "social security illegal aliens". The very first hit was the expected item on Snopes.com debunking this bogus campaign, which has apparently been in circulation for going on 3 years (it long predates Obama). Below is my response to my friend.

You have to ask yourself how plausible claims like this are. Why would a Senator vote for something like they claimed in that email? To win the votes of some illegal aliens? But illegal aliens can't vote*. All the Senator would be doing is handing his or her opponent a knife to stab them with in the next re-election campaign. Most politicians are smart enough to figure that out (although I must say that watching the recent antics of the Limbaugh-worshipping Republicans is making me wonder).

I believe that the people who pass these emails around have a very clear agenda: to destroy the citizens' faith in any and all government. This is one of the biggest things that Obama, bless him, has to fight against: ever since Reagan started campaigning 30 years ago, the public has been bombarded with the message that government is inherently inept, corrupt, and incapable of getting anything right. The Republicans' eternal solution is deregulation and tax cuts: programs that benefit the rich and screw everybody else. (This is the inherent contradiction in Republican ideology: why would you entrust the operation of the government to people who don't believe that government can work? For the answer, see Bush, George W.)

The Republicans have flat-out admitted that their strategy is to obstruct everything Obama tries to do. Rush hopes he fails, remember? And yet they wave the flag and brag about their "patriotism."

Don't help the bastards, OK?

(I wish you'd send this to your list.)

--Rob

*The nonexistent problem of "voter fraud" is another big Republican lie.