Why do Freepers love lying emails? [View All]

[GOPFighter]

This is my 1000th post BTW, and I'm using it to discuss something that bothers me. Last week I received another email from my freeper-minded family. This is how part of it reads:

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Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the most
recent Presidential election:

Population of counties won:
by Gore, 127 million;
by Bush, 143 million;

Square miles of land won:
by Gore, 580,000;
by Bush, 2,427,000;

States won:
by Gore, 19;
by Bush, 29;

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won:
by Gore, 13.2;
by Bush, 2.1

Professor Olson adds, "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was(mostly) the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country, Gore's territory encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

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Even though this has been debunked by Snopes (especially the murder rate differential) this email continues to have legs among conservatives.

My family all knows I'm a liberal (whoooboy have we had some arguments!), but she sent it to me anyway. I assume she thought these "facts" would make me see the light and I would come back over from the "dark side." Actually it made me see red, for two reasons, 1) it's inane premises (even though Bush got fewer votes than Gore, Bush is legitimate because he won in counties with more land than the counties Gore won?), and 2) because it was deeply insulting (Gore voters tend to be murderous and live in government-owned tenements and live on welfare).

In the past I've held off responding to these emails in the interest of family harmony, but I answered this one - as kindly as possible - pointing her to Snopes.com and reminding her that, in fact Gore got more votes than Bush and that's what elections are all about, right? I also made it plain I will not let these go unanswered in the future.

But here's what baffles me. I get emails like this at least once a month from family, friends, and coworkers. They all have a conservative message (often extremely mean-spirited) and most have been debunked by Snopes or others. But this appears to be an entirely conservative phenomenon. I have never received, nor have I heard of similar emails with liberal themes. The most I ever get from Liberals are links to articles in newspapers and magazines, or graphics poking fun of Bush. No lies, no mean spiritedness. Why? Why are conservative so hung up on this kind of trash? Are they so insecure in their political beliefs that they need distorted facts or angry, mean spirited hate-mongering emails to make them feel superior?

I haven't heard back from the sender yet. Have any of you responded to family members who have sent similar emails? How did they take it?

GOPFighter