Monday, June 15, 2009
My Birther Dad
My dad is a "birther." We were talking about the election fraud in Iran, and he pops out about how our last presidential election was also fraud, explaining that Obama isn't a citizen because he wasn't born here. And I'm thinking, "Wow, and from my own family too." And I don't know why I'm surprised, seeing as how he still believed that Clinton was a Soviet spy long after it was obvious that Clinton presided over a huge capitalist boom; which I suppose would make him the worst spy ever.

And this sort of nonsense holds through here. Because again, he plopped this factoid out there as if it were common knowledge, and yet somehow thought that Obama's mother was an immigrant who was about to be deported. Yes, he considered himself to be an expert on Obama's citizenship, yet didn't know that Obama's mother was an American citizen born in Kansas. And when I told him this, as well as that Obama was raised by his grandparents, or how his grandfather was involved with D-Day, this was all news to him. He had never heard some of the most basic parts of Obama's bio. And yes, he had somehow confused Obama's mother with his father's half-sister.

And this is someone I'm supposed to have an intelligent debate with. And the thing is, I don't necessarily fault him for this. He's just repeating what he's heard, and that obviously wasn't enough. He didn't even know the basics of the birther's wild claims. All he knew was that there was some sort of controversy over Obama's citizenship and lack of birth certificate, and that's it. He was convinced this was true and had the audacity to call this "election fraud" while talking to me; a guy who eats, drinks, and sleeps politics. He even insisted that birth certificates are public information, and because it was being withheld by Obama that it was part of the conspiracy.

[snip]


I should add that my correction of all this was quite smooth and it's possible he realized his mistake. He would never have admitted to this, of course, but I was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing that it left him with nothing to say. He had obviously never heard any of it before and it never even occurred to him that there was a defense of Obama's citizenship. Oh yeah, and he also asked me "What's a liberal?" later on during a slightly different discussion. Keeping it simple, I said "FDR was a liberal." And again, I was met with silence.

I was thinking that if you asked the birthers if they believe the moon landing was faked, or that the U.S. blew up the world trade center, that most of them would say that either scenerio was ludicrous. Not all, but I'd bet a large percentage think that's nonsense.