Local pub, discussing politics with friends. We’d never “gone there” before with this couple. Ah, to go where no Ken has gone before…
Suddenly we’re having a birther moment.
You may remember that at the end of every Inspection there’s a caveat; an announcement, regarding the history and the intent. Part of that statement is…
Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day.
This edition isn’t going to be a rag on Birthers moment. There are enough of those. This is going to be one of those odd moments in punditry where we look under a rock most don’t look under.
During the discussion we rapidly got to a soap box moment while my wife and I politely listened. No harm. No foul. I have my soapbox moments too, 90% Inspection driven, the rest reserved mostly for my wife: though I think Millie might be tempted to reverse those stats.
Hey, what are spouses for, if not for splattering them with drive by thoughts, rants and moments of raving lunacy? Oh, for that? Let’s not go there.
(As the doe said to the 10 point buck, “Not tonight, deer,” just before she led the hunter to him.)
To make Ken’s soapbox a bit shorter let’s just say we got into “why Barack won’t speak about…” certain “missing” times in his life and how it wasn’t really his birth certificate because it wasn’t dated and filled out like it should have been. I was polite and, to be honest, I don’t debate: mostly because I’m at my best when in front of a computer, or rummaging through either a library or my own mind for the best retort or answer for such queries. I may have read the answer to their point before, but I don’t take their issue seriously enough to store these answers in this always leaky vessel called a brain. Just as I’m sure they probably don’t take some of the topics I’m concerned with all that seriously.
There is no such thing as a true Everyman who knows everything about every issue, though I’ve had to suffer through far too many who think that’s who they are.
During this Birther moment, what did I do? I started to think back to issues I knew more about, like voting machines and related subjects: Ken Blackwell, the Bush aide riot and the recount that was never a recount at all, but an admittedly poor attempt to count all the votes. I paused, and realized, certainly there were those who were less concerned regarding that topic. I realized I was having the same glossed over look in my own eyes when supposed facts kept being tossed at me that “proved” he wasn’t a citizen that others have when I start pontificating on the voting issues I’m concerned with.
So let’s step back and assess. Whether Birther questions or voting machines/voting rights are the topic, two observations are rather obvious…
Fact: George the second became president. Those of us who thought the means suspicious were fighting a losing cause. The best thing to do was go on and limit whatever damage would, or might, be done in the future. Make sure what you think happened doesn’t happen again. Rewriting history really isn’t an option.
Fact: Barack Obama became president. Those who think the means suspicious are fighting a losing cause. The best thing to do was go on and limit whatever damage would, or might, be done. Make sure what you think happened doesn’t happen again. Rewriting history really isn’t an option.
The country moved on and, no matter how valid either was, or still is, we look like cranks when we keep flailing a dead issue: what happened and trying to correct it; erase historical facts. I’m not saying it’s fair and, as I suggested to her, I think if they are willing to go to courts: on their own dime, and do whatever to force the issue, then that’s what they should do. But proving such is up to them. And most likely a bloody waste of time and effort.
Again: I’m not claiming any of this is “fair.”
In some cases this puts an impossible load on those who question. For example: electronic voting machines. How exactly do you prove how bad they are when the software is proprietary? Proving Barack not a citizen should be easy in comparison. But that’s from someone who isn’t on that side, isn’t all that interested, and just wishes we would all move on, so my perspective may not be all that fair. People have a right to pursue any issue they want, even if it amounts to trying to catch a greased pig while wearing a coat made of Teflon, shoes and gloves covered with ice and drenched in motor oil.
Have at it! Good luck!
Some of the worst issues when it come to this dynamic are those related to core personality. She said she was more frightened by Obama than Bush, and it’s was more likely that he wanted to bring on socialism, or a fascistic state. I commented, that if you look at record alone, then promoting and signing an act that allows a president to put anyone in prison, without due process, for the rest of their lives certainly suggests otherwise. “Oh, I agree, but I think it was the times: 9/11 just happened, and he really thought it would protect the country.”
Now we get to true motive and intent.
Obama or Bush?
Prove it.
We can’t, no matter how many examples we offer because we’d have to be inside their heads for their entire lives. Just like we can be fairly sure that Adolph Hitler was an evil man, but did he start out thinking this was the best path for Germany and never really intended to go as far as he did, or even said he would? Or was his evil almost from the start? Is anyone born evil?
I suspect not, but I have been told of and seen very young children who very well may have been “born evil.” If you can be born Gay, or born with a defect that causes you to curse at people all the time, why can’t we be wired in a way that is so anti-social 99.9% of us would define our acts and words as “evil?”
And I suspect Hitler’s intent was evil from the start, but no one could ever prove he was evil from the start: unless someone finds a picture of baby Fuhrer with horns and a tail that were cut off after birth. Even then we’ve only proven he was a freak, in the less than hippie, more carnival, sense.
My apologies to carnival workers everywhere.
In the final analysis I think Birthers, voting machine/voting rights folks and 9/11 conspiracy speculators, which I may be a very mild example of, need to have a reality check. Are you spinning your wheels when you need to get back in the game and do whatever you can to prevent any of this from happening again, or the worst of our fears from coming true?
Maybe. Quite likely, in my opinion.
But I could be wrong. As Grandpa Carman used to say…
“I might be wrong. I was… once.”
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved
Okay, I realize your post was about not making this an issue, but I have to say this — what ‘missing times’ in Obama’s life were these people talking about? His entire life has been accounted for pretty thoroughly by the media. Perhaps they meant Bush’s missing times in the Air National Guard. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
As far as the BC, it is dated and filled out just as every other birth certificate I’ve ever seen is dated and filled out. Have your friends ever taken the trouble to actually look at Obama’s BC?
The voting machines and Florida recount crowd are different animals — actual proof exists that the machines have been hacked, the GOP committed vote fraud in other ways (see BlackBoxVoting and BradBlog), and the ‘average guy’ Florida recount crowd of 2000 were verified as being Washington staffers of Republican pols.
Meanwhile, the multiple lawsuits of Birthers such as Orly Taitz and Philip Berg have been regularly tossed out of court for insufficient evidence, including by Republican-appointed judges.
I understand the point of your story in trying to equate these things but, IMO, they don’t equate – the BC scam is completely delusional while the others have a basis in factual reality.
See if this posts:
@ RS Janes:
I wouldn’t really say, “equate,” just help everyone understand a little perspective. No matter how valid we think either is, I think they both are losing causes. Society moves on. Kind of like the kennedy assassination, or Bush letting bin Laden go. I think there’s a reason why they wait so long to piddle out what most of us already knew: they know that it won’t create the stink it would have and they can always sya, “Hey, look! Tiger Woods is having an affair!” If it had been given even just the small bit of coverage it was just given when he abandoned one conflict for the war he wanted the reaction would have been a hell of the lot stronger. The corporate owned media: MSM, is, I believe, knowingly helping.
In regard to the conversation, I wish I could remember. As I mentioned, my eyes glazed over. I think it’s bogus. I know the first things she said; the wife being the soapboxer, was that it was a “facsimile.” I said that I certainally wouldn’t give my worst enemies the original. (Which the State usually does not hand over. It’s always a copy of some kind.) Avoiding that she got into something about how dates didn’t match and she said she had been a nurse (or something like that) and a birth certificate was never filled out like that. I really don’t recall.
These are really nice people. We see them often. I was trying to keep it civil, and so was she. I even said, “More later,” and she agreed. Her husband was trying to ge her off the topic.
Looking at what you’ve posted… I have seen it before… I’m wondering if the date thing was that date of birth vs. date filed. She claimed, whatever it was, “That never happens.” Anytime someone makes that kind of claim about almost anything, I’m always at least a bit suspicious. “Never?”
To me the concept that this all could have been tricked out from the beginning is odd at best. Because… they wanted him to be president even back then? Because their congenital liars? Because… who hell knows… and somehow this conspiracy has led up to today, kept hush, hush by so many: uncovered except by the likes of Right Wingers… It’s all whacked.
But I have argued with those who believe everything the government says about 9/11 has to be 100% gospel truth and nothing else is to be tolerated, who consider my mild suspicions “whacked,” like maybe they knew something (somewhat undefined) might be coming and decided to do nothing. (See New American Century.) And these are the same folks who turn around and in the next breath say you can’t trust the government.
Huh??????
@ RS Janes:
Curious sidebar. Why is it I never hear “Junior” applied to Barack since he’s II? Or have I just forgotten hearing it?
As to your first question, I think both the GOP and Dems don’t want Obama confused with Junior Bush, for different reasons, naturally.
I know what you mean about having friends who are decent people, except they have a political blind spot. I have a friend who is a good guy, but he’s still stubbornly conservative over many things. (The ingrained habit of a lifetime.) We’ve had long arguments in the past that went nowhere, so now we either joke about our political differences or we avoid talking politics altogether. (But I have to say that after 8 years of Bush his positions have ‘softened’ on some issues, although he’s loathe to admit it.)
I understand the thrust of your article, and I agree with some of it, but I’d add that many of these issues are not dead — torture and vote fraud, for instance, have no statute of limitations and continuing to gather evidence to prosecute cases at some point in the future is not, to my mind, a waste of time and effort, although arguing the fine points of such in a restaurant may be.
BTW, I also think your nurse friend is wrong. The DOB is plainly marked and when the registrar files the BC is immaterial. (It might have been a long weekend, for example, when the state offices were closed, or it might have been mailed to the registrar’s office, so the BC could not be filed the next day.) A nurse friend who worked in a maternity ward once told me they commonly put the weekend BC’s in the safe and filed them Monday when the state offices were open. Also, I checked on Google images for other Hawaii BC copies of the period issued: The forms and the way they are made out are identical to Obama’s BC copy. One of the Birther tricks is to demand the original BC — I don’t know of any state in the union that will hand over the original — certainly not my birth state, nor any I’ve ever heard of — everyone gets a copy and, in my case, a crude and splotchy photocopy on white paper with a blurry stamp. (I wonder what the Birthers would make of that!)
The thing that irks me about the Birther nonsense is that not a scrap of valid evidence supports it and, IMO, the Birthers really don’t think they’ll force Obama from office — but they are trying to undermine support for him with this smear, just like the fatuous Swift Boat lies undermined Kerry. This kind of thing has no place in our political conversations — they are just ugly distractions from important matters but, like celebrity gossip, they always seem to get more attention than they deserve.
That said, to ignore them, as Kerry did initially with the Swift Boat BS, only seems to convince many they must be true.