Though I don’t really have the disposable income to be a postcrosser, which is someone who has numerous friends that one exchanges postcards with around the world in order to collect as many postcards from various locations as possible, I do have quite a few friends and acquaintances who have postcrossing as a hobby. These friends of mine like to joke that unlike my blogging, their own blogging and postal habits are nonpolitical and therefore less likely to get them in trouble with oppressive foreign regimes. I agree that they are less likely to get in trouble than I am, but I disagree that their hobbies are nonpolitical.

After all, let us examine what post-crossing is. Post-crossing is exchanging postcards between people from different states and countries. These postcards have themes and are generally based on some sort of local identity. Many desirable postcards have national themes, and these themes are definitely political. For example, to have a postcard that says Somaliland or the Confederate States of America or Northern Cyprus or Transdnistria or Abkhazia or Nagorno-Karagagh or Western Sahara or South Ossetia is to accept the legitimacy of such regimes, at least tacitly. Such activity is inevitably political.

Postcards are a type of propaganda. I will own to enjoying postcards, both sending them and receiving them, but they are definitely political (and being a self-aware and politically inclined person, this does not bother me). The reason why postcards are so political is that the way they are sent and the way they portray a given area are political and highly biased presentations. Let us spend some time talking about both of these aspects.

First, post-crossing is a highly political act that depends on the development of a high enough infrastructure to support tourism and a functioning postal service. In order to do post-crossing right, you need to have two people who send each other postcards from their respective areas to add to a collection. To do this requires that there be a functioning postal service in both areas (which requires a sufficient infrastructure in government and in transportation in order to support the habit), as well as enough of a freedom of speech and expression to allow people to send such correspondence.

There is a reason why regimes like North Korea have postcards, though, and that is because a nation’s (or city’s) postcards invariably reflect well (in the eyes of the regime) on the area. One does not find too many postcards of slums or starving children. Instead, one finds postcards of smiling people or beautiful buildings or statues or quirky vehicles and sights and natural and man-made beauty that draw tourists. Postcards are not made of the cities and sights that nations and cities and regions hide, but rather of the Potemkin villages that regimes want to be seen. Postcards, in other words, as well as the postal service that sends them, are like advertisements in that they are an official means of communication that does not speak of things that people are ashamed of or guilty about, but rather those aspects of life in a place that people want to share with others and celebrate.

The deceit, in other words, of postcards is that they commit sins of omission (which we are all guilty of) in portraying an unbalanced and uniformly positive picture of a place rather than a more balanced but also less flattering picture. Postcards present a place as it wishes to be seen, not as it really is. If we judge a place by its postcards we will be invariably disappointed by the reality. We might come to sunny Florida and then be disappointed by the thunderstorms. We might go off the beaten path and away from the tourist traps and might see unpleasant sights of how a people really lives, and this can happen in any part of the world. All of us, and all of our places, have things that we would rather not be seen, and aspects we greatly want others to see. We all want to present our most flattering pose, to be seen as better than we are. We are therefore all implicated in the same deceit.

That said, I certainly am not bothered by the beauty of the postcards I have bought to send to others or that I have received from friends and family all over the world. The fact that I am fully aware that the pictures on those postcards are only a partial tale, and the most flattering part at that, does not mean I am offended by the photographic or artistic presentation of them. One can appreciate beauty while being aware that there is always ugliness beneath the surface or away from the bright lights. Since I know such things are true of my own life and my own haunts, I automatically expect them of every other place. I appreciate the light while always aware there is a shadow. I appreciate the beauty while always aware that there is ugliness also.

Perhaps I take such matters far more seriously than most, but as we are human beings, everything that we do takes on aspects of our character as human beings. In that the vast majority of us have a desire to present only those things we want others to see or that we think others will appreciate, it is no surprise that our postcards say the same about our cities, our states and provinces, and our countries. Why should we expect ourselves to be any more candid in the collective or in the aggregate than we are in the particular? If we attempt to engage in image management in our own lives, how should we expect postcards to be any different when they are the result of regions that are seeking to manage their images as well? Since we are political in our fiber, how can we expect any aspect of our lives to avoid being political in how and what is presented, and in what is ignored or swept under the rug?