And Donald Trump makes it an accomplishment. Is Trump the biggest tool in America? Hard to say, given the plethora of tools on the right. But he has to be close.
I loved Obama's admonishment at the end about carnival shows; about how he's trying to pass real policy and have a debate, and we can't because we have to deal with this silliness. He even called it silliness. I got maybe a half-chub off of that.
He also mentioned in hi speech that there will be a segment of people who, no matter what he releases, will still not be satisfied and that the media should ignore them.
when a conspiracy theory is wrong, they release the evidence to prove that the conspiracy theorists are wrong. But when the conspiracy theorists are right, they pretend not to listen to those theorists at all... Obama is a good man anyways, he seems to be the only president with least number of skeletons in the closet.
Well, I think we can assume, eagle, that in this case (Obama's birth certificate) the conspiracy theorists were wrong.
I don't really agree with the 2nd sentence. For a while, Obama let this one go because it was too stupid and silly to take seriously. But when far-right racists in a few states start trying to pass birth certificate laws, and the idiot media actually reports on what birthers say, (thus giving them credibility) Obama had to come out and tell people to grow up.
The "twin towers" fell because they were smacked-into by two jets moving in excess of 300 mph. There are conspiracy theorists who claim the government, specifically the military, blew the towers up at their bases. These people are wrong, silly, and totally fucking nuts. Nobody needs to prove them wrong.
Just because a conspiracy theory exists doesn't mean it's legitimate at all. It means a lot of people a crazy, have time on their hands, and have found that nothing exists on the internet to keep them from saying their piece.
There is an excellent article at Volokh that talks about how irrational and stupid a significant number of voters are. The problem we face now is the ease of which this idiocy can travel.
I had to go hunting, but I found this from 4/23 and this from last year.
From last year:
The truth is that voter ignorance and irrationality are general shortcomings of modern democracy, not pathologies that afflict only the dim-witted rubes on one side of the political spectrum... [V]oters have incentives to be “rationally ignorant” about politics because the extremely low chance that any one vote will be decisive means that there is little payoff to acquiring additional knowledge.
From this week:
Finally, it’s worth noting that political leaders and activists face a collective action problem of their own here. If they refuse to exploit conspiracy theories that favor their own side, they risk defeat at the hands of less scrupulous opponents. For that reason, it’s not surprising that most successful politicians and activists routinely exploit political ignorance and irrationality whenever it’s in their interest to do so.
Thanks Leighton. Those were the articles I was talking about. One other problem I saw with this birther issue that didn't seem to be around with the 9-11 issue was the media adding some level of legitimacy. Why did they keep asking politicians about the birth certificate?
8 comments:
Just posted the same on ATK.
I loved Obama's admonishment at the end about carnival shows; about how he's trying to pass real policy and have a debate, and we can't because we have to deal with this silliness. He even called it silliness. I got maybe a half-chub off of that.
He also mentioned in hi speech that there will be a segment of people who, no matter what he releases, will still not be satisfied and that the media should ignore them.
when a conspiracy theory is wrong, they release the evidence to prove that the conspiracy theorists are wrong. But when the conspiracy theorists are right, they pretend not to listen to those theorists at all...
Obama is a good man anyways, he seems to be the only president with least number of skeletons in the closet.
Eagle
http://eseaf.com/blog/author/aureagle
Well, I think we can assume, eagle, that in this case (Obama's birth certificate) the conspiracy theorists were wrong.
I don't really agree with the 2nd sentence. For a while, Obama let this one go because it was too stupid and silly to take seriously. But when far-right racists in a few states start trying to pass birth certificate laws, and the idiot media actually reports on what birthers say, (thus giving them credibility) Obama had to come out and tell people to grow up.
The "twin towers" fell because they were smacked-into by two jets moving in excess of 300 mph. There are conspiracy theorists who claim the government, specifically the military, blew the towers up at their bases. These people are wrong, silly, and totally fucking nuts. Nobody needs to prove them wrong.
Just because a conspiracy theory exists doesn't mean it's legitimate at all. It means a lot of people a crazy, have time on their hands, and have found that nothing exists on the internet to keep them from saying their piece.
There is an excellent article at Volokh that talks about how irrational and stupid a significant number of voters are. The problem we face now is the ease of which this idiocy can travel.
Link it, steve. Please.
I had to go hunting, but I found this from 4/23 and this from last year.
From last year:
The truth is that voter ignorance and irrationality are general shortcomings of modern democracy, not pathologies that afflict only the dim-witted rubes on one side of the political spectrum... [V]oters have incentives to be “rationally ignorant” about politics because the extremely low chance that any one vote will be decisive means that there is little payoff to acquiring additional knowledge.
From this week:
Finally, it’s worth noting that political leaders and activists face a collective action problem of their own here. If they refuse to exploit conspiracy theories that favor their own side, they risk defeat at the hands of less scrupulous opponents. For that reason, it’s not surprising that most successful politicians and activists routinely exploit political ignorance and irrationality whenever it’s in their interest to do so.
Thanks Leighton. Those were the articles I was talking about. One other problem I saw with this birther issue that didn't seem to be around with the 9-11 issue was the media adding some level of legitimacy. Why did they keep asking politicians about the birth certificate?
now that the President has released the LONG form
(since the one he released in June 2007, which looks EXACTLY like the ones my kids have wasn't acceptable for a black guy with a funny name)
The Birthers are still (predictably) not happy, and now we will have to call them, the AfterBirthers...
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