About a week ago, my aunt asked for my view of this email which has been floating around in various forms for awhile. I wrote this response and have since been pointed to other responses that could be subject to the very same criticisms I voiced. It may be viewed as a waste of time to treat these rants seriously, but it felt good to ignore the obvious dishonest and baiting aspects and to treat this as a literary exercise, however verbose it may be.
My opinion is not of consequence in relation to this email. The color grey cannot be described to someone who only sees black and white as the author of this divisive rant appears to be. Maybe, red, blue and purple are more accurate metaphors. If there is a person who feels exactly as the person he describes, and I am not sure there is, I don't know if they would be capable of taking offense. Otherwise, this painting of "everyone but me" as a ridiculously out of touch extremist only serves to make the author and the like-minded reader feel superior.
My straightforward critique is that this email is far too didactic to be considered as effective rhetoric for all but a select few, although some mighty big historical aberrations have occurred as a result of words that were much less inflammatory. To be fair, if the intended effect is absurdist hyperbole, this is quite successful and could be viewed as humorous or laughable.
That's my view as requested,
Brian
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