I’m guessing not, because if my brief conversation today with a birther/Tea Partier/ [del] bigot [/del] uber-conservative is any indication, they will shape-shift in a most frustrating manner.
Brief synopsis of the conversation:
Anti-Obama Person: We have a Muslim for president…
Me: He’s not a Muslim, he’s Christian.
ABP: Well, he was born in Kenya.
Me: No, he was born in the US, in Hawaii.
ABP: But his father was Kenyan. (As if this was all the proof needed.)
Me: You just told me your father was German, does that make you a Nazi?
ABP: Michelle says that Kenya is her homeland. Obama hates America and sympathises with Muslims. And he’s spent more tax dollars than any other president in history.
Me: Yeah, but he’s not a Muslim and wasn’t born in Kenya.
ABP: But he’s a Socialist!
At which point I gave up and changed the subject. I figured I’d get pissed off and frustrated, plus I’m not well-informed enough to be able to mount a good argument against a spate of Fox News-inspired cites.
ABP is not unintelligent; he is quite well-off and successful in life generally.
I voted for Obama but have been somewhat disappointed in his performance - however I think that there’s some sort of emotional need for some people to believe in conspiracies. I think it’s maybe too simplistic to simply say it’s racism in the Obama/Muslim/Birther case.
However, I don’t understand what drives this sort of thinking, and tend to go the “agree to disagree” route and change the subject. Whether its Obama Birthers. Jewish control of banks and media, 9-11 alternative theories, black helicopters, whatever.
If there’s a succinct argument I’d love to hear it. Or, is it mostly pointless to attempt to use facts and logic to argue with an emotional, irrational person?
There is no argument that would work because logic was not used to reach that stance. Perhaps anti-logic would work.
Obama was born in Kenya!
He couldn’t have been born in Kenya because the Muslim sundown never faces Africa on a Thursday. He was born in the U.S. on a hippie commune where he learned all about commune-ism.
You can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into. Trying to argue this logically is like two people from different religions arguing theology; they’re operating from different sets of facts.
Yes. If they make the claim that we don’t know where Obama was born, concede their point by giving them a list of the 50 states in the United States and then sarcastically tell them to “take your pick”.
‘You are wrong. Full stop. If you seriously believe that, then you should hie yourself to the nearest psychologist to determine the depth of your insanity. You are a racist, stupid, sorry excuse for a human being. Now shut up and never talk to me again. Better yet, don’t talk at all – except to your shrink.’
“There’s more proof that Obama was born in Honolulu than that you and your anchor babies were born in this country. Your birth certificates are forgeries, and your mama was a collaborating French whore in WWII.”
Also clip art, preferably a mixture of totally random subjects (animated American flag, daisies, a firetruck, Millard Filmore, etc).
If you wanna go old school, make it look like it’s seen the rounds already with multiple headers from “previous forwarders” and with the corresponding nested >>>>s.
Absolutely not, conspiracy theorists cannot be logically removed from their beliefs. True believers in the 9/11 controlled demolitions, Obama’s Kenyan birth and other such things are not operating as normal, rational actors on those matters and are impervious to any form of rational discussion on those issues.
The way their minds work is, anything that remotely supports their claims, even if it is debunked by every expert in the world is worth the weight of 5,000 (or any infinite number really) things that show their claims to be demonstrably untrue. As part of this, all of those 5,000 things showing how their belief is demonstrably false will be ascribed as “produced by the conspirators or paid for by them, so useless.” Anything debunking their “proof” is again, the work of shills paid to lie.
If is truly like trying to argue someone out of being a Christian or a Muslim, if they are true believes it is essentially impossible.
Now there are some people who might have, through intellectually laziness, let themselves come to believe or “accept” things that, if you question it with them they will see they were wrong. A lot of people believe for example in various seriously off the wall conspiracy theories relating to the JFK assassination, but many of them are just casual observers of that and because of the massive proliferation of TV specials and such on those conspiracies they aren’t really properly informed about the real facts. Those people are just ordinary misinformed people, not irredeemable conspiracy theorists.
Birthers so fervently want to believe Obama is not an American citizen because they so fervently want to believe there’s no way a black man can legitimately become president of the United States. A black president changes what America is to them; makes it worse, and wrong, and broken, and that simply cannot be, so Obama simply cannot be president, not really.
Please, please, pretty please! May I have your permission to print this and then carry it in my wallet so that the next time a “Birther” starts on their nonsense, I can read it to them verbatim? Thank you thank you thank you!
Nothing can stop the US Air Force!! But for those of us who are not among the most famous names in history, and who are not videotaped, punching idiots out is a fast ticket to serious legal trouble.
As said upthread, you can’t argue someone out of a position they didn’t argue themselves into. At best you can influence people who trust the conspiracy theorists, but are themselves still able to think and listen.
I can’t get to the reference now, but the judge’s ruling in the Orly Taitz case contains utterly devastating anti-birther comments. That judge was a GWB appointee, by the way. One of the arguments was along the lines of “Do you think Hillary Clinton would have hesitated for one second to disqualify Obama by showing he was not a citizen?” if you get the “secret back room deal to be Secretary of State” crap back, roll your eyes and ask a third party nearby you if she’d have voluntarily give up the brass ring under any circumstances to settle for a kewpie doll.
Also, I have it from a very highly placed source that Michele Bachman was born in Canada.
My hazy memories of the stupidity displayed by the Republicans during the Clinton administration leads me to believe this is all based around the fact that Obama’s not a Republican. Birtherism isn’t racist, it’s just an attempt to paint Obama as ineligible for the presidency. If Hillary Clinton had won, the same people would arrive at exactly the same conclusion, that she’s not eligible for the presidency. Just via a different route.
