What Being a Target of the Right Teaches Me

To my surprise, my hate mail is overwhelmingly from middle-aged White males in successful careers. This bodes ill for the future of our republic.

Our neighbors

As a journalist, I’ve always prided myself on being attacked by both left and right. To me, this means I’m doing my job. I call the shots as I see them. A now ex-friend refused to speak to me for a year after I published articles critical of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2016 election. A former fan in Nevada ended our online friendship abruptly, spitting “Snowflake!” at me after I’d excoriated Donald Trump in another article. Winston Churchill reportedly said, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” And FDR added, “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.”

I guess I’m a kind of Rorschach test. Readers see in me what they want. I belong to no political party and often voted split ticket in the pre-Trump days. I regard none of my critics as “enemies,” just close-minded hair-trigger judgmentalists. I write according to my moral compass. Like it or leave it.

These days, I’m catching flak exclusively from the right — mostly far right. Several months ago, I wrote a short, anodyne comment on LinkedIn merely calling for better protection of our national secrets (in reaction to the FBI’s recovering classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort). To my surprise, some 26,000 read it with hundreds leaving comments which were overwhelmingly hostile and often attacking me personally. It made me wonder what the reaction would be had I extolled my mom’s apple pie.

The other day, I published the following piece:

So far, this article has been read by 4134 viewers on LinkedIn with 96 leaving comments: virtually all attacking me personally. Here’s a sampling of my hate mail (unedited):

“Wow…I found myself looking at the author’s pic and was shaking my head in agreement…YEP, his is certainly the face of the American Marxist😱”

“James, you need professional help.”

“Mr. Bruno. You have to get some history education before making statements like that. I guess US education is far behind political talking points.”

“Possibly Mr. Bruno you might sit down with Kari Lake in person and have a substantive American oriented conversation about meritocracy. She would likely teach you more than you know now... You are no Kari Lake sir!”

“I still blame people like you for the covid shutdowns and mandates, so I guess we’ll be even.”

“James Bruno, You deserve to be deleted from LonkedIn fir these claims.”

“Democrats are purposefully trying to destroy the foundation of the United States.”

At least no one (yet) has threatened to wield a hammer to my skull or knock on my door sporting an AR-15.

A glance at their bios reveals at least 95 percent are middle-aged White males, largely successful businessmen, engineers, computer techs and other professionals. No assault-rifle-brandishing, Stars & Bars-waving, tattooed Billy-Bobs as far as I could see.

I did also get a couple of supportive messages:

“So many trolls and brainwashed Trumpists reacting to this one post of yours. You must have hit where it hurts. I guess the process of building up a new leader for intellectual flat earthers must not be disturbed in the early days.”

“James, you’re on the right way. Go on, please.”

I’m no stranger to personal attacks in reaction to my writings. A random sampling among Amazon reviewers of my books:

“He’s a classic Washington has-been.”

“Mr. Bruno is a Male, Pale, and Yale misogynistic, self-centered, and angry Foreign Service officer.”

I confess to the first two failings; but substitute “Columbia” for “Yale” on that last one, even though it doesn’t rhyme. I left the Foreign Service years ago. Misogynistic, I am not, but I could perhaps be a tad self-centered as well as angry on occasion. We authors can also be thin skinned. Sulphuric reviews deflate our egos and get our imaginations all worked up in very unconstructive ways.

But I digress.

The point here is that we live in perilous times marked by reflexive, hate-filled attacks, liberally hurled at each other, often baseless or grounded in Dark Ages-caliber superstition.

What I learn from my LinkedIn detractors, and what causes me to really fear for our country, is that they’re not fringe wackos, losers shooting out barbs from their man cave in their parents’ basement. They’re our neighbors, health practitioners, service providers, moms and dads of our kids’ friends. And I find this scary.

In a few days, I head out to the nation of Georgia to interview Russians who have fled Putin’s autocracy. They have set up an office of the Free Russia Foundation, dedicated to “a free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous Russia.” Many risked their lives. Some still fear for their lives, with Putin’s goons having infiltrated expat communities everywhere. But I think they have something they can teach us.