Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who
created the universe, and the vast majority believe you.
Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
- George Carlin
I got this email yesterday:
Distribution has begun...Refuse new coins!
True Americans will refuse these
It has begun..
REFUSE NEW COINS
This simple action will make a strong statement.
Please help do this. Refuse to accept these when they are
handed to you.
I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead. The lady just smiled and said 'way to go' , so she had read this e -mail. Please help out..our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S. Government to Release New Dollar Coins
You guessed it
'IN GOD WE TRUST' IS GONE from the front and back!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!
DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE
Together we can force them out of circulation..
Please send to all on your mailing list!!
The font of the original email was much, much bigger. Because, you know, your crazy talk will somehow make sense to me if each letter is the size of a grapefruit. The email was sent to me by a woman who runs a local health and wellness center. The center itself is an asset to our community. Its focus is on natural approaches to one's well-being. For example, they bring in massage therapists, reiki practitioners, yoga instructors, etc. They also have a lot of seminars. At some point I must have gotten myself on the mailing list for the center. The emails have always bugged me because every other words is a different size/color font and reading them always makes me feel a little stabby. But, I thought the intent was good so I subdued my anal-retentive need for consistency and balance and readability.
Anyway, I unsubscribed from the mailing list once I received the email about the coins. If one more person tries to tell me how to be a better American, I might just lose my shit. Seriously.
Oh, and does no one do any fact checking, for crying out loud? I don't have any dollar coins, but according to Snopes, "in God we trust" is on the dollar coin - it is just on the edge instead of the traditional location. Read the whole thing if you wish (and here is another article as well). From what I've been reading, the dollar coins aren't even being produced at this point. I think most of us hate them anyway. I don't know how many versions of the dollar coin there have been, but some of the ones I've seen in my lifetime have been far too close in size to the quarter (the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin comes to mind). Try handing one to a sixteen-year-old cashier if you want to see why it's a problem. But, I digress.
Another point that people seem to forget: "in God we trust" was not added to paper currency until the late 1950s. It was added as a knee-jerk reaction to the whole "Red Scare" business. Apparently we thought that if we put something about God on our money, it would scare away those wicked commies. Maybe we thought a reference to God was their Kryptonite or something.
I get so tired of misinformation. My wee baby sister and I were talking about this the other day. People say that Obama is trying to take away their guns. False. He has periodically made statements about assault weapons (you know, machine guns and whatnot), but in general, he supports the Second Amendment. He seems to avoid the issue as much as he can. President Obama is also regularly accused of being soft on immigration (he does say that he favors immigration reform . . . whatever that means), but record numbers of people have been deported since he took office in 2009.
I just wish people wouldn't blindly forward every stupid email they receive.
Let me just say this:
- Whether or not it says "in God we trust" on our money
- Whether or not same-sex couples are allowed to marry
- Whether or not people smoke wacky-tobacky in the privacy of their homes
- Whether or not my friends/neighbors/co-workers/elected officials believe in God
. . . it does not affect my life in any way.
I wish people would just focus on being decent human beings instead of worrying so much about whether everyone else meets their definition of a proper American.