Emails without a basis.

Emails without a basis.

Every so often a friend sends me an email about social security for illegal aliens. The average reader has a knee-jerk reaction and signs the petition or forwards the upsetting letter which usually states that a group of non-deserving immigrants will gain substantially from our American generosity by getting free health care or other benefits the rest of us good Americans will never see.

There is never a House or Representatives, Senate, or Executive bill number. There is never a name for the new law or potential legislation. There's only the insinuation for such a thing. And hundreds of outraged Americans sign.

I am always careful to check out the basis for these statements. For instance, during the George W. administration when we were supposed to be building a wall between the US and Mexico, when we had a Republican majority in Congress and a conservative Supreme Court, we were also supposed to write our President to stop him from giving all our money away to illegal aliens.

And people actually believed the administration would do this. That George and Dick had plans to endow all those poor people with health care and considerable funds.

It just goes to show how easily the public is misled. How any propaganda, no matter how ignorant or outrageous, can illicit a posse of outraged vigilantes who never take time to wonder if these hate letters might be total bull.

So when my friend wrote me about his eighty-something parents who read a letter to this effect recently, I wrote him and said these upsetting letters are on par with rhetoric disciples of Adolph Hitler sent around. Lies on top of more lies. Beware of what you read on the internet. All is not true.

In fact, another friend just sent me an email stating that many lipsticks from leading cosmetic companies cause cancer. The email stated a bogus doctor's name and a test for telling if your lipstick could be lethal. All bunk. There is no such doctor, the test doesn't work, and I checked out the information on the internet and discovered that this is another letter based on lies.

So be careful. Just because something's in print, doesn't mean it's true.