Quick, which one of these statements contains the most wrong?
18 percent of Americans Americans believe President Obama is secretly a Muslim.
40 percent of Americans doubt Obama was born in the U.S.
61 percent of Americans believe Muslims have the right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan.
All three statements are accurate -- well, that is to say, they are all true results of actual polling done by actual people, of actual people. I made none of those stats up, is what I'm struggling to say here.
(None is exactly as flashy as the typical "EDUKATION KRISIS: 135 percent of Mississippi High school graduates can't find Chile on a world map" or "77 percent of Oklahoma students can't name the first President of the United States." Both of those statements are false, although one was published as truth as part of a commissioned study last year. Pardon the usual digression.)
But yeah, it's that third figure that irks me the most. Its flipside, really, is the problem.
39 percent of Americans either don't give a hoot about religious freedom, don't give a hoot about Muslims' religious freedom, don't know squat (12 squats = 1 hoot; 1 hoot = 6 goshdarns) about the Bill of Rites, or don't want to answer.
Breaking it down, it's actually 34 percent who claim the mosque would be illegal. The no opinion/don't know crowd is 5 percent. More on this in a minute, after a short detour.
And then there's the fake controversy over Barack Obama's birth certificate. As you might have noticed, many individuals slog through the day, less than enchanted with the prospect of BHO as our 44th President. So before he was even nominated in '08, they began circulating a theory that he is not a "natural born" citizen. Instead of calling them "morons," how dare you suggest that, bite your tongue, we should term them "Flat Birthers," in honor of these splendid citizens.
The problem with Flat Birthers is that their beliefs stretch the boundary of reasonable doubt. To hold on to their beliefs, they have to actively ignore verifiable facts. So I call b.s. -- not on their beliefs, but that we use the excellent term "belief" at all in this instance. Consider, first, some fact-type-items.
Plus all this.
And the third paragraph of this.
Nobody disproves these facts. Even if you subscribe to the theory that Young Barack gave up his citizenship or accepted dual citizenship at some point, renouncing his American passport in the process, you still are left with the verifiable truth that Obama was born on U.S. soil from an American mother. That's your starting point.
Even if you reject that fact and instead subscribe to the theory that Obama's mom delivered him in Kenya then flew across the globe with a newborn to convince authorities to help fake his birth on U.S. soil -- and this is precisely where you ought to question, "where's the motive?" -- then you're still left with the indisputable fact that Ann Dunham was an American citizen herself. Hence her child is a natural-born citizen (i.e., my brother, born in Paris, France to an American mother), as opposed to a naturalized one (i.e., Arnold Schwarzenegger, who became an U.S. citizen at age 36 after immigrating and applying and waiting and passing a test.)
So yeah, I think I sprained my left brainkle on one of those logical leaps. And when Glenn Beck is calling you out on his show for being crazy, well, that should tell you SOMETHING.
But my point isn't actually to point out that Flat Birthers are wrong. People have been doing that for two solid years now. (It's fun, but it's not my goal.)
No, my aim here is to alter the semantics involved. I'm tired of the cheapening of the word "belief." A belief needs to be beyond proving AND disproving. When we say the Birthers "believe" Obama to be ineligible for the presidency, we're abusing a perfectly good word, employing the wrong one altogether, really. You can believe in God, Lucifer, angels, Fate, karma -- all unprovable and undisprovable. The facts of everyday existence don't directly contradict an underlying karmic power at play.
What we need is a whole new word for what it is the FB'ers have convinced themselves of.
"Blindly persuaded" ... too clunky
"BeLIEve" ... too clever
"Deaflieve" ... better already
"Beleave?" "Faithgnore?" "Manifest Density?" "Wreckon" ...
"Misspeculate" ... too kind
"Speculame" ... too lame
"Except" ... but only if misused in place of "accept"
"Lalalalalalalalaican'thearyou" ... already taken
I do like "wreckon." It fits, as in: "I wreckon I can buy lots more ammo at Walmart with forty bucks, rather than fifty." Not to pick on Walmart shoppers. Go here for that. (Laughing and crying happens to that site's visitors.)
When 34 percent of Americans say they "believe" Muslims have no right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan, what they're really saying is they've chosen to disregard the Bill of Rights in this instance. Yeah, that's not belief. That's something else altogether.
That's: "I wreckon they can build mosks anywhere they want. Accept right next to Ground Zero. That's not OK."
So give me my word back!
Allow me to throw some addition fuel on the logic fire. If Obama was not a natural born U.s. Citizen, would the Secret Service under a Republican president have handled this as part of the background check that is done on ANYONE who files as a candidate.
ReplyDeleteAnd to answer the Conspiracy theorists, if they were holding that knowledge for a good day wouldn't that same Republican president hand that information to the Republican candidate before the election or call the nomination void at that point.
I take this moment to apologize for the parrots in my party. Thank you.
To be somewhat fair, it's not like Democrats are blameless in this mess. (Which we shall NOT call Beliefgate.) There were Clinton supporters banging the Flat Birthers' drum in '08; the crosstabs in the Faux poll show that plenty of lefties are willing to wipe their dirty bottoms with the Constitution.
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