No more political emails!

Please don't take this personally.  I emailed this to a bunch of people earlier.

I am declaring that I will not get any of my information on politics going forward from emails from anyone.  If I am sent an email that has a subject that hints at all that it is political, I will delete it without reading it.  If you must know why, please keep reading.  If you don't care, please know that you face the possibility of having all of your email labeled as spam.

So if you are getting ready to label me as an extremist, please understand that I am an American first with an independent affiliation.  I have been registered as a member of the Republican and Democrat parties at different times during my life and I am currently disgusted with politics in this country.  The problem is that the email sphere has become as unreliable, vicious, libelous and childish as I have ever seen it.  It has become the bane of my brain-space.  There are many other sources of information that I am choosing to use for my evaluation of political information.  And there are many other wonderful things about life that I am choosing at this time.

I would ask that you too take the time to think about what you send and whether or not it is truly something of value and not a ranting by someone who has no credible authority whatsoever.  In this era of instant gratification, wouldn't it be better to show some restraint or at least consider that others are not as rabid about a particular subject as you are?

This extends to social media as well.  With the impending 2012 presidential elections, this medium will be used and abused as much as email.  At least with social media, I can unfriend, unfollow and disconnect.  So forget including me in distribution lists, flash mobs, chain letters or petitions to get whoever recalled from office, whoever elected to office or solicit my vote.  Unlike our politicians, my vote is not for sale to the highest paying lobbyist.  No more political cartoons (I'll get mine from the Sunday paper, thank you.), no more quotes from supposed intellectuals, no more videos from talking heads, no more doctored pictures, no more commercials with information taken out of context, no more blather from cable/broadcast news.  To quote from the movie "Network", "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."  And I don't want to hear about it for the next 15 months.  When I'm ready to vote, I'll do my own research without kibitzing coming from useless emails.

I encourage you to take this same pledge.  No more political email.  And I'm not talking about some phony political pledge that supports a platform that benefits a very small minority.  Think like an American.  What's good for all of us is good for each of us.  If you are going to take the pledge, please comment below.  And feel free to use this as a template for your own declaration to your email contacts.  And if this is all too much for you, please feel free to delete my email address from your contact list.