Politics and Elections 2008

The political ads are coming. They're already here on the internet. There are plenty of anti-[name-a-party or name-a-candidate] pages out there in internet-land, especially for the more popular candidates. Democrat or Republican, Independent or whatever, SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE out there has some type of grudge against them, or simply doesn't like what they believe they or their party believe in (make sense?).

And, there are a lot of lies and half-truths going around in email about them, too. Heck, I was receiving emails in 2005 that said "Don't wait until 2008", lambasting BOTH parties for Social Security problems (which were all lies, btw).

What can you do?

1. Don't believe everything you read in email or on the internet.
   Just because a "friend of a friend" sent it to you, just because there's a famous name associated with it, just because it appears to come from an authority who's signature is on it, doesn't make it true. Read on to see why.
2. Be careful about news stories, even from trusted sources.
   Even they can be duped. Believe me it's happened in the past, and it continues to happen on a fairly regular basis. DO NOT believe tabloid "news" stories. While they purport to have sources, sometimes that source is simply the writer's imagination. And remember that every party or individual have been known to "mention" propaganda about themselves or their opponents. Sometimes it's people lower on the totem pole that passes it on, sometimes prompted by party/candidate or managers, who will normally then have plenty of "plausible deniability", meaning "You can't blame ME for that".
3. Remember that Politics is a realm of false promises.
   The idea of each party and individual in the race is to get elected and try to get their agenda run. They will make as many plausible promises as they can. Sometimes, they, themselves, actually believe that they can do what they promise. HOWEVER, remember that government has a lot of "checks-and-balances" (sometimes "red-tape"), which means that a LOT of people have to sign-off on those promises before they can be kept.
4. Don't perpetuate false emails.
   If you get an email that says something bad about someone else; that seems a little "funny"; that trivializes good deeds or glorifies bad; that may even be something you, yourself firmly believe, CHECK IT OUT. There are PLENTY of sites out there refuting these emails daily. I have a page of them and will tell you where it is, shortly. Use keywords from the emails in the search boxes, and see if they've already investigated it. See what they already have for each person, each subject, etc. The names (individual and party) in forwarded emails are subject to change at the whimsey of any sender who received it.
5. Don't CREATE false emails.
   Many people read pages and boards that go along with their own idealogy and beliefs. When someone at those sites or boards writes or "passes on" something they think is funny, true or not, sometimes just a simple joke, others will believe it as Gospel, cut-and-paste it into an email and send it off to friends, who send it off to their friends, who... (get the idea), most everyone adding their comments. Have you ever played the game (I forget the name) where you get 10-20 people together. One whispers something to someone, who (supposedly) repeats it to the next person, who repeats it to the next, who... and so on? The vast majority of the time, by the time it gets to the last person, the information has changed so much that it's almost unrecognizable. Emails are the same. While forwarding and cut-and-paste negate some of the changes, some people add their own comments, things they believe are related, cut-and-paste signatures that weren't on the original, etc., until the email you get is completely unrecognizable from the original. This happens regularly. Don't send an unsourced email. Don't send anything but the link, itself. That way, everyone can read it, and it doesn't go through the morphing that most of the negative emails go through.
6. Whether you start or wish to forward emails, INCLUDE SOURCES.
   If you do what I suggested you NOT do in #5, INCLUDE THE PAGE FROM WHICH YOU COPIED IT, and realize that somewhere in the forwarding process that source will probably disappear. Try to put it where it CANNOT be removed. If it's something you get that you wish to forward, try to find out if it's true or not. If not, include your source(s), and send it back to the person who sent it to you. If you believe in it, include comments of your own, but be sure you can differentiate between your comments and the original email, again realizing that somewhere down the road, they will probably either disappear or be merged into the original. About the only way you can be sure that anything you write does not get changed/forwarded is to write a webpage yourself and only send a link. Remember, though, that someone down the road will probably cut-and-paste what you wrote, either claiming themselves to be the author (I've seen things that started in USENET (think of the old-style computer bulletin boards) appear in articles, editorials and letters to the editor, verbatum, with the one that included it being the only "author".)

Email is a wonderful way to connect with new and old friends and family, but can also be used to sow and perpetuate dissent and anger. (See all the emails about blacks, Muslims, the Middle-East, Celebrities, etc.) The internet has a LOT of valid information out there, but there are a lot of ture-sounding jokes, half-truths and lies about almost very subject, especially politics.

Remember this every time you want to create or forward an email about politial issues and people.

Some of the sites to find out the TRUTH about emails can be found at my main site's Flim-Flam (Rumors/Urban Legends/Virus Hoax) Links (page section) and some of the articles and many-forwarded emails can be found in my Flim-Flams Subsection. Check them out.

BigDaddyBS (Bill Sanders)