Today's gripe

This afternoon my sister sent me an e-mail that some unnamed soul had sent to her, apparently one of her friends. The content was a lengthy diatribe by an individual claiming to be David Kaiser, historian, professor, and author of more than a dozen books. Though it was written in a superficially scholarly style (no major errors in grammar or punctuation), the text included enough inflammatory rhetoric to arouse my sister's suspicions concerning its legitimacy. The basic thrust of the piece was to draw a radical parallel between the rise of Barack Obama and the rise of Adolf Hitler, with powerful suggestions that America is headed toward the same destiny as Germany in the 1930s.

Since I have access to Google, it took less than a minute to find what I needed. David Kaiser is a blogger, among his other talents, and has denied writing the screed in question. As I pointed out to my sister in one of several e-mail replies, the "Kaiser" hoax has been discussed on several blogs better than mine.

In the version I skimmed over in the original e-mail, several sentences were highlighted in vivid shades of yellow and violet. Someone apparently wanted to make sure the reader didn't miss those parts. They dealt with the failure of the American public education system, unelected judges legislating from the bench, media bias, the threat of Islam, etc. All of which is simple regurgitation of the same points that Limbaugh, Hannity, and Boortz discuss daily with their pea-brained listeners on AM radio talkfests. The idea that a learned scholar would repeat this bilge in writing he expected would be taken seriously was preposterous. There were also veiled defenses of Wasilla Wondermom, a dead giveaway that this goddamned crap was cranked out by a fucking idiot.

Okay, these viral internet chain letters piss me off. I've written about it before and make no secret of the fact that anybody sending me one is going to hear from me in negative terms. As a rule of thumb, I believe this trash is forwarded by idiots who think the people they're sending it to are idiots. When a fucking idiot treats me like an idiot, it's insulting.

What makes the chain letter in question especially offensive is the implied parallel between Obama and Hitler. I'm no historian, but I'm not buying that. In my opinion, the closest parallels between the U.S. and 1930s Germany occurred from election day 2000 until election day 2008, and Republicans were in charge while it was happening.