Viral Ignorance

A recent Pew Survey produced some pretty remarkable findings. Evidently, the number of people who believe that President Obama is a Muslim, or not a Christian, has been growing over the past few years. As well, and less surprising, those who buy the falsehood already have a poor opinion of the president.

What explains what must be willful ignorance, the insistence on believing the innuendo and misinformation? Given the correlation between people's opinion of President Obama and their belief regarding his religion, it must be that people feel the need dress up their dislike of him and his policies with spurious attributes. It's not enough to disagree, they must demonize. It's an embarrassing aspect of our political culture--that people would dress up a political leader they oppose in the robes of a Muslim or non-Christian because that somehow confirms his supposed vileness.

I can understand why people might oppose President Obama. It's depressing how some of them are framing that opposition in bigoted terms.

Birther Pangs

The other day at the grocery store I saw the National Enquirer headline proclaiming, once again, that Obama is not a US citizen. Politifact.com has examined three chain emails scurrying through cyberspace that deliver a similar fanciful story.

One makes the pitch that "Obama had to have been traveling on another country's passport in order to get into Pakistan" in 1981. Another hustles the rumor that "Obama's college transcripts reveal foreign citizenship." A third claims that the "Supreme Court has agreed to rule on Obama's citizenship."

One element in what makes films or novels successful is their ability to convince the audience to suspend disbelief. The Birther fiction has enjoyed that kind of success--the collective story-telling of a small but vocal minority of Americans trying to make their own peculiar sense of what may be a perfect political storm: economic hard times, warmaking without seeming end, a polarized polity, and a black President with an ambitious domestic agenda. An important difference, though, is that filmakers and writers know they are creating fictional, if plausible worlds (excepting those like Oliver Stone and Tim LaHaye). Birthers apparently really believe the narrative they're constructing, sustained by the sincere or cynical shout-outs from pundits like Lou Dobbs or politicians like Michele Bachman.

I could just dismiss Birthers as loonies, and remark that their "movement" will maybe get a line or two in a future text on US political history, another generation in the genealogy of paranoid politics. I could worry about the propensity of some to believe in "proofs" of conspiracy based on lame research. I could just be depressed by the anti-intellectualism and racism underlying Birther claims that President Obama is not really one of us. Or I can write to myself. It won't exorcise my dismay, but may help me understand it.