Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:02:31 -0400
From: <cabe+nc.rr.com>
Subject: Goodnite Mark’s intolerance
I find it really, really difficult to get my head around the profound intolerance represented in Goodnite Mark’s post on Chatlist #5395. It isn’t possible to know how many people he alienated with his comments, but my bet is that it is plenty. (And isn’t Mark the same guy who has gone to the well on the Chatlist, on numerous occasions asking for help from his Chatham County neighbors with one or another of his multiple problems?)
He describes as “idiots” people who choose to support an (unnamed) socialist and atheist. He then offers a bizarre definition of a communist as someone who is “a socialist who is also an atheist with a mentality of overtaxing everyone and letting government spread the wealth.”
But what really disheartened and disgusted me is his statement that he can’t see “how anyone who hasn’t lived here all their life can honestly say they will represent the wants, desires and needs of lifelong residents.” I wasn’t born here, but we’ve lived in North Carolina for 40 years of my adulthood. My family, according to the folks who have looked into our genealogy, has roots in North Carolina that are 200 years deep. I’m not running for office, but apparently Goodnite Mark, and people who think like him, would instantly claim that I am incapable of weighing the pros and cons of issues, of thinking carefully and critically about those issues, and of listening to the “wants, desires and needs” of Chatham County residents, because I am not a “lifelong resident.” From his stated perspective, I would therefore be unqualified to hold elected office in this County.
It’s a good thing he sees that politics is toxic to him (as he says), but it looks as if he’s already well poisoned by his own intolerance of the wealth (yes, wealth) of differences among Chatham County residents, whether lifelong or not.
The intolerant, stuck-in-the-mud attitude Goodnite Mark expresses does neither him nor the citizens of Chatham County — no matter what their political or religious persuasions — any favors. Goodnite Mark, and perhaps others, may want Chatham County to be an isolated island of no change, of any sort at any time. If so, they are trying to live in a fairy tale, a never-never land. They’ll need truck loads of fairy dust to make that come true.
Pat Cabe