Donald Trump is at it again. Essentially, he knows he has no way of winning a campaign on the issues, so he is appealing to anger, ignorance, fear, prejudice, and other good things. Maybe he realizes he has no way of winning regardless of what he says, and he is just trying to get a few more minutes in the spotlight. Either way, now he has said: "I want him to show his birth certificate. There's something on that birth certificate that he doesn't like." He also said: “If you go back to my first grade, my kindergarten, people remember me. Nobody from those early years remembers him."
There is no evidence at all that President Obama was born outside the United States. There is plenty of evidence he was born in Hawaii. For that matter, he was elected President and no credible challenge has been mounted to his eligibility to serve as President, so it is pretty unlikely that he wasn’t born in Hawaii. What isn’t clear, is how to make this nonsense go away. I really wish there was a trump card (pun intended) that sane and logical human beings could play to end this ridiculous debate. I don’t think there is such a card, but here are the options that come closest.
We could simply ignore people who think this way and those who appeal to them. We who believe in reason and logic could simply stop responding. Let these folks talk to themselves. Maybe they would go away.
Even better, the press could stop reporting this nonsense. This is an old story. Not a shred of evidence has been presented in years, if ever. Other folks with hate and paranoia filled agendas don’t get this much press. They certainly don’t get recognition, however overt, from most candidates for high office from one of the two major political parties. Haley Barbour isn’t giving covert shout outs to the Klan, at least not that many. We’ve entered this realm of reporting where everyone who has an opinion gets equal time. It used to be that people with no real argument didn’t get equal coverage. Impartial coverage of a story doesn’t require giving equal time to every side of a story or taking permanent leave of our senses.
Here’s another option … we could say who cares? We could point out that this kind of gambit is usually a characteristic of third world politics. I’m more accustomed to seeing these sorts of challenges in places like Ivory Coast or Chicago (just kidding, although …). They are usually challenges meant to exclude someone of a rival ethnicity. Come to think of it, that is exactly what happened in Chicago (let’s try to keep out the white boy) and almost certainly what is happening with Obama (except he ain't white … which is the problem). So, anyway, we could just tell these people that the only ones who fixate on these sorts of issues are racists, who are usually unfamiliar with the workings of democracy.
The other option would be to mercilessly hound any elected official or reputable person who does anything less than condemn this nonsense. There should be a list of people who refuse to say something along the lines of: “Obama is an American. End of story. My disagreements with him are over our vision for the future of the country. We don’t disagree on whether we are both Americans who love our country and want the best for it, we just disagree on what is best for it. And those issues, issues of substance, are what we ought to be talking about.” Anyone on this list shouldn’t be elected to any office, from President right through dog catcher.
Maybe we should be pursuing all of these strategies, and not just on this issue. This is a real problem. People are refusing to use logic and reason to tackle the problems facing our country. We don’t have to agree, but we all need to be willing to utilize reason and logic. The world was not created in six days. Evolution is clearly part of the reality, and should be taught in classrooms without any religious add ons. All Americans aren’t Christians. It makes no sense to say that abortion is wrong because it takes a human life. It is clear that in some circumstances it is justifiable to take life. Abortion may not be one of those circumstances, but you need to provide real logical reasons as to why it isn’t. The list goes on and on. We need to be able to agree that logic is a good thing. We need to be able to agree that discussion and compromise are necessary, if not good. We need to be able to agree that Obama is eligible to be President, so we can move on to talking about what he’s been doing as President.
No comments:
Post a Comment