white men, <\/em>murdering two of them. For this, I expressly said, he deserves nothing less than the ultimate penalty, death.\u00a0 His victims, I added, deserve our sympathy.<\/p>\nI received some emails.\u00a0 By now, I\u2019m all too familiar with \u201chate mail.\u201d Most of what I have received, admittedly, has never actually risen to the level of genuine hate. Most of what I have received from those on the left is more accurately labeled \u201carrogance,\u201d \u201cignorance,\u201d or \u201cidiocy\u201d mail.\u00a0 But last week, I received a genuine hate mail.\u00a0\u00a0 I reproduce it here:<\/p>\n
\u201cHey,<\/p>\n
Just read your in depth analysis of the Jeremy Christian article.\u00a0 I would like you to know that you\u2019re an absolute piece of f**king sh**.<\/p>\n
YOU are no more than Jeremy Christian. Your \u2018sympathy\u2019 towards the end is complete bulls**t. \u00a0You are ignorant, out of touch, and simply do not understand what the f**k goes on around you or in this country for that matter. I\u2019m not even 21 and I can see through your fake bulls**t.<\/p>\n
I hope you die a brutal death someday and have it be reported, blurred and relayed with the same transparent, bulls**t you are giving those victims who did more for a fellow human (with active human rights) than you\u2019ll ever do for anybody.\u00a0 I hope you family experiences this too. F**k you a**hole.\u00a0 Rot in f**king hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
The person did not sign his name.\u00a0 Ordinarily, I simply discard imbecilic emails from disgruntled \u201cprogressives\u201d and the like. But the raw hatred and irrationality embodied here provoked me to take a different course of action.<\/p>\n
First, I googled the address of the person from which this email was sent. The person who I found does indeed appear to be under 21 years of age.\u00a0 If he is the same person as the hate-filled emailer in question, then he attends a college in Connecticut where he plays on a sports team.\u00a0 I found as well that he takes an interest in, among other things, \u201chuman rights.\u201d I tracked down this punk\u2019s work history and located his professional aspirations.<\/p>\n
Now, to be sure, the name of the person in the email address of the sender was an unusual one. At first I suspected that it was a fake name. It is not\u2014however uncommon it is in the English speaking world. So, when, upon googling this name, I immediately found a match and the person\u2019s profile revealed him to be of college age, i.e. \u201cnot even 21,\u201d I felt confident that the person in the profile and the hate emailer were one and the same.<\/p>\n
Still, I can\u2019t be 100% certain that this is the case. And this is why I took the next step that I did:<\/p>\n
I showed the piece of hate mail to the local police and had officers read it. The police explained that if I wanted to file a complaint that I could.\u00a0 But a subpoena would first have to be issued to Google in order to determine with absolute certainty the identity of the person who owns the email account from which the hate mail was sent.<\/p>\n
As things stood at the present moment, the content of the email warranted a \u201cdisorderly persons\u201d charge.\u00a0 No subpoena would be forthcoming for such a charge. \u00a0Given the vile content enclosed, however, the police suggested the possibility of going after the sender on a \u201cterroristic threats\u201d charge.\u00a0 The only challenge with this last route is that the emailer didn\u2019t directly threaten me or my family.<\/p>\n
If, though, he sent me any follow up emails of this kind, then he would expose himself to a \u201charassment\u201d charge, in which case Google could <\/em>be subpoenaed.<\/p>\nThird, I decided that, for now, I would not pursue any charges.\u00a0 Several people suggested that I send his email to the administrators of the institution that he attends, the coaches of the athletic team for which he plays, and his connections on Linkedin. \u00a0Admittedly, I was tempted to take some, if not all, of these measures.\u00a0 The unreasonableness and toxicity of his emails, including and especially the mentioning of my family, <\/em>made me see red.\u00a0 But I chose, for now,<\/em> what I think is a higher road.<\/p>\nI decided that I wouldn\u2019t even reply to the hater directly, for fear that I would inflate this pathetic little person\u2019s ego further than it undoubtedly already is. Instead, I would share his email with this substantial audience and hold it up as the proverbial textbook illustration of the raw hatred and irrationality that has made civil disagreement impossible and that stems overwhelmingly from the left.<\/p>\n
I add something else: \u201cIt takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you\u2019ll do things differently.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0This is a quotation from Warren Buffett, a person with whom this hater seems to have some acquaintance.<\/p>\n
Yet this punk hasn\u2019t learned a thing, for if he had, he wouldn\u2019t have come as dangerously close as he did to trashing his reputation overnight.\u00a0 Had he sent his poisonous email to someone lacking my patience and Christian desire to love, not hate, he would have ruined himself.\u00a0 This, though, is a warning, for if I hear from him again, then his email(s) with his name will be made available and criminal charges filed.<\/p>\n
Evil shall not be permitted to prevail.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, I wrote two articles on Jeremy Christian, the \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d or \u201cterrorist\u201d \u201cTrump supporter\u201d from Portland who was none of these things. In the second of my two essays, I quoted from the affidavit for this case and Christian\u2019s own Facebook history to show that the standard leftist spin on this event was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
"Rot in Hell:" My Response to Hate Mail<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/06\/rot-hell-response-hate-mail.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Rot in Hell:" My Response to Hate Mail\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last week, I wrote two articles on Jeremy Christian, the \u201cwhite supremacist\u201d or \u201cterrorist\u201d \u201cTrump supporter\u201d from Portland who was none of these things. 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