To put it into perspective, don’t 50% of Americans think New Mexico is outside the US? And I guaranty more than 50% think Puerto Rico is a foreign country.
And besides, Obama was born outside the U.S. He was born in the Kingdom of Hawaii according to Congress.
Re: Your three sentences
Cite?
Cite?
Pathetic.
After years of Reagan’s deficit spending, Bush Sr’s tax increases, and 8 years of Bush Jr. ladling out pork to everyone imaginable except the poor, tax protesters were nearly unknown. After all these years of virtual obscurity. Suddenly they explode into a nationally visible movement around the time Obama is inaugurated, enraged at the “socialism” and “redistribution”.
What do you suppose is the reason for these years of reticence ending around the time that (supposedly) a black President wants to use tax money to help the poor (nonwhite) people?
Are you saying that Obama was born in 1893? No wonder he won’t release his birth certificate!
So, McCain is only 30 years older than Obama after all!
The last time this argument started in some thread a few months ago I got to thinking about this and came to the conclusion you might want to reconsider the idea this would never be an issue for a white candidate. Now, before you jump on me please hear me out. I am in complete agreement with the idea race is a primary motivation for many of the birthers out there, I just don’t think it is the only reason.
While reading the previous argument about this it occurred to me that today, for many people in the U.S., Muslims are the boogey man in a way Russians or communists were during the Cold War. As I thought about that the following “what if” scenario occurred to me:
In the early 1960’s Stanley Ann Dunham meets and marries a Russian exchange student named Boris Ostrovsky. They have a baby boy and name him Boris Ostrovsky II. They divorce and some time later she marries again, this time to a guy from China. They end up living in China for a few years and enroll little Boris in school for a few years before they also divorce and Ann and little Boris move back to the States. If this were the situation I honestly think most of the same people would be outraged about him being elected President. We are talking about people who are very much afraid of people and things that are different; their fears are not limited to race.
I realize the above may seem silly to some of you but I’m using it to illustrate a point, namely that the people who buy into this birther crap would likely have been just as vicious and hateful toward any Democrat who won in 2008. Look at how Clinton was endlessly investigated throughout his presidency; think about the Swift-boating of John Kerry and the nasty, snide comments about Hillary. If Hillary had been elected I feel certain there would have been some controversy manufactured to keep the looney fringe types occupied. The fact Barak Obama is of African heritage has undoubtedly upset some people. I just don’t think it can be stated with absolute certainty it is the only thing motivating the birthers.
No, it doesn’t.
A truther is not necessarily a birther.
This.
I am not a birther. I may not know what I am. (I was a philosophy major in college after all.) I do know what I’m not. I hate that guy. Birthers.
So I destoyed their argument using “Birther logic”. Which brings me to the question, however badly framed:
What is the appropriate way for a birther to argue with a Doper? Assuming no Doper is a birther. Or, how can you get bither to get the argument to the point where there is reductio ad absurdum and the birther (if he isn’t too stupid) must admit that the Doper is right?
Um, yes it does. Why is this a different breed of conspiracy theorist?
Yep. And neither is one necessarily a “moon landing hoaxer” either. Not getting your point. There’s scads of conspiracy theories. So?
What the hell are you talking about? You must see only what you want to see, because no rational, unbiased observer could reach the conclusion that tax protesters were “virtually unknown” prior to Obama inauguration.
From this very board, which should not be a welcome haven to irrationality:
Here’s a thread from 2003 that discusses tax protesters.
An Ask the girl who deals with tax protesters everyday! thread from 2007.
Another 2003 thread examining whether paying taxes is actually voluntary.
Here’s a 2007 thread about the Ed Brown raid in Virginia.
Paying income tax is illegal, from 2004.
I could add ten more examples easily.
Hypothesis contrary to fact. Those idiots have LONG been around, with a motive that has NOTHING to do with race.
I wasn’t arguing that all tax protesters were racist, or even that the majority of them were, just that the tax-protest movement was not entirely racist-neutral, as you had implied in your earlier post. I find it enlightening that Metzger found so many fellow travelers in the tax protest movement…it’s not a big movement, after all.
SO WHERE WERE THEY before Obama announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007? Why NOW do the idiots just seem to come out of the woodworks? Yeah, I know they’ve been around a long time. Some are in their mid-40s, others are in their early 20s.
I agree with you it has nothing do to with race. They don’t even know their motive. We don’t even understand their motive!
What’s wrong with the birthers?
For lack of a better word, anger.
It is the Republican plan. When you get in office spend like maniacs with the idea “deficits don’t matter”. You gut every program you possibly can that does not help your friends and the rich who support and direct your party.
Then when the Dems get in, you scream about deficits and the cost of everything. This is not new. It has been blatant since Reagan.
What is sad, is that some people still are dumb enough to buy it.
I think you’ve got a compelling point, when we add the observation that racism fills the similar sort of psychological need. So it shouldn’t be much surprise to find that people with a predisposition to accept absurd conspiracy theories also have a predisposition to accept absurd racial theories.
So I think racism and CTism are likely to have a very strong correlation–a racist is more likely to be a CTist than a non-racist, and a CTist is more likely to be a racist than a non-CTist.
In fact, it’s hard to find a really virulent racist who isn’t also a CTist, who thinks there groups of Jews, Blacks, Catholics, Muslims and/or Chinamen who are carrying out secret plans to undermine White America, and Quisling white race traitors who are assisting them.
Given Obama’s parentage, it shouldn’t be surprising to find that the particular Conspiracy Theory known as Birtherism has an even greater racial component than your garden variety CT. To take a parallel example, Truthers typically don’t seem very racist, while Birthers very often do. Hard to say which is the driving force–are they CTists first, who are drawn to Birtherism because they also happen to be racists, or are they racists who are drawn to Birtherism because they’re also CTists?
I linked to a whole slough of threads on this board from and about tax protesters that predate 2/10/2007.
I absolutely agree it’s not entirely race-neutral.
In the same way, I suspect there are tax protesters that hate opera and tax protesters that have type B+ blood. None of those characteristics are anything but coincidental, though.
I didn’t see mobs of right wingers carrying mispelled signs calling Bush a “socialist” or a “nazi,” carrying guns to venues where he was speaking and calling for “2nd amendment solutions” to the problem.
I didn’t either. Where were these jerks?
You may be right, though I’m not aware of any studies that show a correlation. But I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve heard some explanations regarding how “the white man is kept down” that seem to have all the characteristics of conspiracy theories–i.e., latching on to details that support the position, ignoring the ones that contradict it; clearly the sort of “tribalism” that is the hallmark; belief in elaborate and “secret” government schemes to carry out this evil; the need to find an explanation for powerlessness and a lack of success; etc. There are garden variety racists, and then there are the conspiracy guys.
Again, though, the racism seems secondary to the pathology common to conspiracy nuts. So, my answer to the OP (“What’s wrong with the birthers?”) is the same even if this is true–they’re nuts. It may be for some a minor pathology, one that permits them to function normally for the most part. But they’re nuts just the same.
Conspiracy theorists aren’t necessarily racists, but it’s undeniable that racists are always conspiracy theorists.
Klansmen and Neo-Nazis almost invariably believe that a shadowy cabal of Jews is trying to take over the world (or has already done so).
Unsurprisingly, white supremacists are deeply into the Birther theory.
That’s not to say, of course, that all Birthers are white supremacists - but the reverse is almost certainly true.