If you are around my age, you hated to get a chain letter in the mail when you were a kid. There was always a bunch of nonsense and then a long list of dreadful things that had happened to people who had broken the chain. You knew the letter was silly, but who wanted to take the chance of being cursed for life?
Now we have FaceBook and other social media that amplify phony and/or irrelevant “facts” at a steroidal pace, and we fear what will happen if we don’t respond to untruths and distortions right away. Or that, lacking any witty or thoughtful comment, no one will “follow” us. I have come to the conclusion that personal tear-downs should be largely ignored. Reacting to them on a regular basis could become a full-time job, sapping you of your time and energy better expended on real problems and their solutions. The nuns teaching in my grade school saw the chain letter as some sort of Satanic ritual. I think they were right!
But just to put some of the crazier stuff out there to rest: I am not personally in charge of the Westchester County Airport and did not bring thousands of disease-ridden criminals of the worst order in from Haiti and the Mexican border. Now, my wife and I have been supporting the efforts of HIAS (formerly known as Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) and a consortium of local synagogues and churches to bring over interpreters and others who aided American forces in Afghanistan. And indeed the process had been very slow under both Trump and Biden administrations. But our right-wing friends were saying we weren’t doing enough to facilitate this airlift, which turned out to be one of the most massive operations of this type, flying 140,000 people out of a war zone in a matter of weeks. I plead Not Guilty.
I am also not responsible for the (non-existent) uptick in crime in this district. George Soros does not pay me and other reputed antifa Commies to attend rallies and break windows. I am not the Unabomber. I was too young to have kidnapped the Lindbergh baby.
Over the past 3.5 years, there are a lot of positive things we Westchester Democrats have done and can talk about proudly. We deserve and should gain re-election without being torn down, or tearing down, our opponents personally with a lot of off-topic nonsense.
Wishing good luck to Laurie Giacobbe, my electoral opponent’s wife, before the start of the 8th Annual Eastchester 5K last Sunday morning.
Taking it All in Stride: Cruising (haha) to victory in the over-60 division
“Love is the only force capable of turning an enemy into a friend.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.