How do you relate to a group of people who willfully choose to disbelieve incontrovertible fact? There is no basis for anything like an epistemology. To what would you appeal to make your case? Reason? Authority? Evidence? You would be wasting your effort, like so many in America are doing when confronted with the growing trend of explicit denial, as is the case with birthers, literal creationists, and climate-change deniers, to name a few.
Nobody knows how to respond to these people adequately. This week, Obama released his full, long-form birth certificate, caving to the demands of birthers, who insist that the president is not a U.S. citizen, and therefore ineligible to be the president. It was a silly move on the administration’s part, because it acknowledges their concerns which are not likely to go away no matter what sort of evidence is released. Obama could release a photo of his mom and dad leaving a Hawaii hospital, signed and dated by the attending physician, recently discovered in a time capsule vault buried in the volcanic soil of Hawaii, and it would not matter.
The birthers are not looking for evidence. They are just raising questions. It is their purpose. They do not want answers, simply distraction. If Obama had a been a lecherous old scoundrel like Bill Clinton, we would just be hearing about his sexual partners, but he is either too discreet, or too committed to Michelle for anyone to have turned up that dirt. The point is, and the wealthy people who fund the birther controversy know this, is that if you say something over and over again, and deny all evidence to the contrary, you create a distraction for the American people, a certain segment of whom are just going to believe things if they heard them on Sean Hannity. And you create a distraction for the president who has to respond, and for the nut-jobs in Congress who try to curry favor by bringing these things up as issues. And for the governor’s and state congress people, who have to pass extra laws to determine the legitimacy of a candidates citizenship, in order for him to be placed on the ballot in the future.
The point is that the birthers cater to a rabidly racist lot, and those who say birther things that aren’t racist, are just using the zeitgeist to further some personal, political agenda. Obama is not a white guy, and that’s his first problem to many people, and probably his only real problem to most of the birthers. If he were some “obviously” white guy with white parents and maybe a southern accent, none of this would ever have come up. It didn’t for Clinton, but he had enough other distraction worthy skeleton’s in his closet. I’m sure Sue Tibbs, the aged, white Republican representative from Tulsa probably harbors fears of a black man in her house, so despite her protestations that her bill to require certified proof of citizenship in Oklahoma elections has nothing to do with Obama, the fact that he is in the White House is probably a bit too much for her psyche to handle.
If you show a literal creationist a fossil record, or carbon dating, or sedimentary layers or what have you, they will begin from a position of not believing you and tell you how the evidence is flawed, because they don’t believe in evidence first. They believe in faith in the Bible first, and any evidence that fits that is ok. They would have been on the side of the Catholics disparaging Galileo for repositioning the earth in the cosmic map. But don’t bother arguing with them, because you will never convince them otherwise.
If you show a climate-change denier the evidence of 1,000 scientists demonstrating increasing global temperatures, or increased CO2, or the record from the ice cores, they will also begin from a position of not believing you and tell you how the evidence is flawed, because they don’t believe in evidence first. They believe in the free market. They believe in unimpeded economic growth. They believe in short term gains over long term prudence. And again, don’t bother arguing with them, because you will never convince them either.
We should also be clear that all of these positions are not invented and held by individual people, and have grown to be major issues through some sort of organic process. Birthers, literal creationists, and climate-change deniers are all funded by giant business concerns and far-right think tanks, who donate million’s of dollars to these organization, each of who’s purpose is to deny, deny, deny. If your conversation does not begin with fact and reason, but rather with money-fueled blind faith, on what basis can you have a conversation?
In part, this is what makes the administration, evolutionists, and climate scientists so cute. They keep appealing to reason when talking to unreasonable people. I think we should talk about something else.
Don Quixote: Dost not see? A monstrous giant of infamous repute whom I intend to encounter.
Sancho Panza: It’s a windmill.
Don Quixote: A giant. Canst thou not see the four great arms whirling at his back?
Sancho Panza: A giant?
Don Quixote: Exactly.
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