My father was a Marine pilot in the Vietnam War. A couple of years ago, members of his unit contacted him. My dad welcomed the connection with these men, although he has changed a lot since he was in the military. Like many soldiers, he came back from the war disillusioned, and consequently, his politics moved sharply to the left.

As part of staying in touch, the men from his unit added my father to their email lists, and he began to receive political forwards in his inbox…very, very conservative forwards. He got the one about Obama the brainwashed Muslim, he’s privy to an onslaught of Hillary hatred, and he’s been on the receiving end of syrupy sweet storiesthat praise the President.

Instead of asking to be removed from these lists, or even deleting them upon arrival, my dad — and mom — like to sit down together and read the emails closely.

They love them. They pass them along to me. When we have dinner together, they bring them up with genuine glee: “Have you read the latest rumor?”

For my parents, these emails are comparable to a visit from an alien planet — an exciting and strange encounter right there in their inbox. I think the joy comes from the fact that while they get a glimpse of “the other side,” they also simultaneously affirm their own political identity. My parents aren’t aggressive people at all, but conservative forwards tend to bring out the exasperated liberals in them.

Which, I’ve come to see, is the ultimate point of forwards: to flood your friends, relatives and enemies alike with a message that either reaffirms their own opinions or passively attacks them. Either way, it bolsters opposing communities.

Since forwards generally come from anonymous sources, people tend to have no hesitations about sending them to a person they might offend. They’re like blunt objects you toss into cyberspace. And when they hit someone right on the head, you can always claim innocence — after all, it’s not a message you wrote, you’re simply clicking on all the names in your address book…

Political emails create an odd ideological battleground, where allegiances shift and semi-public smack downs are rampant. When my dad sent out a liberal forward to everyone in his address book, one of his Republican friends co-opted it to make a line-by-line rebuttal and personal attack on my dad’s character — of course, making sure to “reply all” and then add everyone in his own address book (lesson learned, my dad is more selective about his forwards now).

I’m amazed how often this sort of thing happens.

Whether a forward is “true” or not is rarely the point of sending it; the point is to mobilize support and/or piss someone off. Let’s be honest, no one is ever convinced to change their political alignment because their aunt cc’d them on some glurge. Instead, most forwards tap into pre-existing sentiments and whip them into a frenzy one way or the other. They cloak themselves as informative, but really they’re there to prey on deep-seated and unspoken anxieties.

For this reason, Snopes.com is one of my favorite websites in the world — it collects and investigates urban legends and popular mass emails. Snopes is like a map of the American subconscious. Each legend, the site shows, makes the sort of paranoid connection that plays to our secret assumptions, whatever those may be — for example, that all corporations are corrupt, that liberals are really communists, and that subliminal messagesare planted in advertisements.

Poking around Snopes (warning: it gets addictive), I’ve determined some guidelines that make for a guaranteed Popular Political Forward.
     1. Keep it short and uncomplicated.
     2. Peel away some “conventional” thinking to reveal a seedy “truth.”
     3. Play to fear (preferably xenophobic, racist, or sexist).

Perhaps not surprisingly, a disproportionate amount of forwards collected by Snopes are conservative. The site lists 18 Obama-related emails (all negative), and only three emails regarding McCain (all positive). Only one of the 18 Obama forwards is wholly accurate.

And beyond the election, a majority of the subjects on Snopes harp on conservative themes. There are rumors that “In God We Trust” will be removed from the dollar, that Starbucks doesn’t support the troops, and that theFrench are wimps, among others.

I guess we should have already learned this lesson from talk radio, but the Right has truly cornered the market on vitriol. They just do fearful and indignant better than the Left.

I’m not suggesting that we all need to start coming up with good urban legends about McCain to spread around — on the contrary, I’m quite proud of the fact that most of the misinformation and fear mongering comes from the other side of the aisle. When MoveOn.org took out an ad calling General Petraeus “General Betray Us,” a valuable point got lost in the methodology. It was a solid indication that the high road is always better.

In general, the liberal forwards I get are of the “add your name to this list” or “contribute money now” variety. This is how they need to remain: informative, action oriented and proposal-based. They may not be as juicy or exciting to read, but at least they don’t play to the lowest common denominator.

And as my parents have learned, if you really want some dirt, you can always turn your head and look to the Right…just make sure you don’t sink into the mud.

–Rider Strong