One year a piñata

Sometime last year during the Republican primaries I became part of a loose email group consisting of a bunch of guys way off to my political right. Maybe it started when someone shared a meme making fun of President Obama bowing to the Emperor of Japan, or perhaps someone circulated an outraged email accusing the President of not laying a wreath on Memorial Day. The provocation doesn't matter, I did what I always do: I went to snopes.com to find out the real story and then I sent it to everyone who had gotten the original email.
Some of the people I knew -- mostly old school friends -- and some I didn't.
Over a few weeks this loose bunch of emailers' behavior gelled into a predictable choreography: Provocation from one of them, research and response by me.
So I became the designated piñata, which is how things remained until today, the day before Election Day. Putting it in David Letterman's terms, these are the
Top 10 Things I Learned Being a Piñata

1. We live in political echo chambers. Had I not joined this group, the rest of them would have endlessly circulated their (often inaccurate or completely fabricated) emails, expressing outrage at how horrible the [President][Minority Leader][Democrats in general] are. The idea of fact-checking would have never entered into the conversation.
2. Fox News has wormed its way into viewers' brains. I noticed their arguments were often very similar to one another, to the point of sharing exact phrases. I'm not a frequent Fox News viewer but on occasions when I've watched I was struck by hearing the very same phrases. Fox News has become a very effective meme propagator.
3. It's nearly impossible to change someone's mind. Over the past year I found hundreds of errors, exaggerations and flat-out confabulations I was able to show my rightie friends. This had zero impact. None. They remain resolutely and happily entrenched in their beliefs. Oh, and they blame Snopes.
4. It's easy to fall into the "He's an idiot" trap. Armed with overwhelming evidence supporting the correctness of my arguments, it has been difficult to see why I didn't pull off at least one conversion. But I didn't. So my conclusion was, over and over again, sterling educational pedigrees aside, they're too dumb to get it. What else could it be?
5. One issue overwhelms all other issues. Each of the guys on the email list had their own hot button: Israel. Muslims. Immigration, The debt. Whatever that issue was, it overshadowed everything else. And it also managed to color everything else to the point where no productive conversation could take place.
6. How school buddies have diverged politically over time. I have no memory of what my friends' politics were when we were together in school. My best guess is that in the majority of cases politics at that time really didn't matter--other than avoiding getting drafted into overseas peril. Today, decades later, how far apart we are.
7. No harm being the minority. Being continually on the defensive sharpened my thinking, improved my arguments and I learned things I probably wouldn't have otherwise.
8. Agreement overlooks many faults. People with whom I have seldom agreed (i.e., Glenn Beck, George W. Bush) suddenly became attractive when I found out we had a common enemy. 
9. Accuracy vanishes when forwarding a friendly point of view.The number of jaw-droppingly astounding claims I've received from my email buddies is amazing. They are just so delighted to hear Barack Obama has a Muslim love child, or Nancy Pelosi is a multiple ax murderer, or Bill Clinton's foundation funds ISIS, that they will pass it along without so much as the smallest effort to check its accuracy. 
10. This was fun. In an election season almost completely fun-deprived, being a piñata added a lot of enjoyment. I recommend it.