Email Horseshit

You know, I got a forwarded email today from my wife's brother. It seems we are the beneficiary of a lot of these examples of hazy reasoning, and I mostly just chuck them in the delete file. But this one just started to eat at me, so rather than responding to him (not a good thing to do with your family), I'm putting my thoughts out here.

The email was titled "Our Social Security--check this out", and it went into some bullshit claims about Social Security and the two political parties. It's basic theme was that the Democrats had ruined the original intent of Social Security, and that now they were blaming the Republicans for trying to "take it away." The whole text and the refutation of the points contained therein are here, so you can see what I'm talking about, but I think this goes deeper than just this specific issue.

I've gotten several emails like this, mostly from family members who are unaware of how offensive some of them are to me, and they seem to have one thing in common: outrageously awful claims of malfeasance or horrible actions which have absolutely no truth to them. Even a cursory look through a search engine like Google can turn up proof of the utter lack of truth to these claims. Yet people spread them like wildfire, all the while I'm sure assuming they are spreading the truth.

What can be done about this? Is it wrong not to respond in order to maintain familial peace? Would responding have any effect other than to cause strife and a hardening of these people's already set opinions? Are these folks really so lacking in intellectual curiosity that they will accept utter fabrication so long as it confirms their own righteous wrongness? And who is originating this crap that is full of obvious and malignant lies?

I haven't got the answers to any of these questions. All I know is that it is scary that people who are related to me, by blood or marriage, are so unthinking. And even scarier to think of all the ones out there that I don't get this kind of horseshit from!