Patrick,
I commend you on that wonderful article. Like I always suspected, these people are hysterical and fanatical and they sent in their negative replies because they really do feel you are correct in many (if not all) of your opinions. These type of people love to practice this type of behavior but they hate to be told about it. And upon being told about themselves they only get worse—not better. I should know because I live in Raleigh, North Carolina (I am originally from New York City) and I see this all of the time in the court system, at work and many other places.
By the way, I especially loved it when you reminded the last person that George Bush was the first president in 100 years to enter the White House without the popular vote. That was classic!
Keep up the good work!
KF
10 April 2002
Reading wsws.org restores my balance—because the vitriol and ignorance of the right-wing commercial-laden pabulum and hysteria that serves as media is almost impossible to endure.
This is one of the only political sites today providing coherent essays day after day. The level of attack exposed in the letters to the editor is a good barometer of how dangerous the US has become. Exposing their proto-fascist mindset at every turn, the aggressively nationalistic voices of American conservatism reveal the broadly successful strategy of the elites. Just as Hitler launched his war of aggression on Poland, with the justification that Germans could no longer tolerate communist terror (they were linked with the burning of the Reichstag), Bush has launched an unending war for territorial expansion justified in the name of justice.
JB
10 April 2002
Dear WSWS,
I’m impressed with your patient attempt to educate the authors of those strange letters to Patrick Martin (“The Pickering nomination and right-wing threats of violence: Patrick Martin replies to readers’ letters”). I imagine that simply ignoring them would have been easier, but I recognize that that wouldn’t have helped anyone.
I was especially struck by JA’s suggestion that all socialists commit suicide. It takes little mental effort to translate this into, “I believe that all people who hold a particular viewpoint should die,” a frightening and remarkably anti-intellectual attitude.
GS
New Hampshire
10 April 2002