How Do We Deal With This?
Dave Weigel at the Washington Independent breaks down the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll even further and finds this startling bit of news:
So what proportion of Southern whites doubt that Obama is an American citizen? While Ali did not release the racial breakdowns for the the South, and cautioned that the margin of error in the smaller sample of 720 people would be larger than the national margin of error (2 percent), the proportion of white Southern voters with doubts about their president’s citizenship may be higher than 70 percent. More than 30 percent of the people polled in the South were non-white, and very few of them told pollsters that they had questions about Obama’s citizenship. In order for white voters to drive the South’s “don’t know” number to 30 percent and it’s “born outside the United States” number to 23 percent, as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn’t know where Obama was born.
What do we do about this? I think we need to do more than just make fun of them. There’s a serious issue here – a significant number of people are not recognizing reality. How do we get them back on the right track? All attempts by Republican leaders to do anything results in them being called RINOs and chased out of the party. Is there someone they trust who can change things?
I grew up in Kentucky, which is a beautiful place full of extremely smart and talented people but I felt like I was pushed out of the area. It’s not like people told me to leave, but I felt extremely stifled by the rigid authoritarianism of the area. It was very difficult to be even slightly deviated from normal there (like be a liberal or be a female scientist).
Tags: Birthers, Republican Crazy
I think the problem may only be solved by people in white coats. Bet the percentage of people who don’t believe Obama was born here lines up with those who don’t believe in evolution, global warming, etc. This group wallows in willful ignorance.
I posted a chart in UI’s post about this the other day and the thing that strikes me is the outsized influence these southern repubs have. They are driving the message and ideology of the entire repub party AND they’ve gotten an astonishing amount of media attention. For a group of people absolutely in the minority in terms of numbers and political beliefs.
It seems that not legitimizing their idiocy is probably a good step in the right direction.
One way to deal with these zealots is to push back continuously regarding their political positions, while leaving the religious part alone.
Regarding compromise, forget it, as these folks are absolutists, based on their religious beliefs. Short of giving up on their religion, I don’t see them changing, ever!
Like I mentioned here the other day, I observe that there is a lingering anger in the South, where many of these folks live, over the Sherman ‘March to the Sea’, a slash and burn maneuver that was allegedly pretty brutal, for which an apology was never offered.
“This perspective remains powerful after the passage of more than a century.”
http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/myth/myth.htm
So both fundamentalist religion and this anger continue to be a powerfully divisive element in our national politic.
That said, this political segment will never be a majority, so their political influence, if continuously pushed back, can be limited, as is happening as we speak on the birther movement. They end up appearing to be unbelievably silly.
If there was any doubt about the citizenship of Obama, the snoops tied to the Hillary campaign (Terry Lenzer, “Dirty Larry” Potts) would have used it in the primary. This ‘pseudo-issue’ may excite some conspiracy theorists but it is more of a diversion than a political ace in the hole.
Perhaps a ‘bar sinister’ might be found but that is not a disqualifying factor.
Right, nemski, the inconsistencies on their “pro-life” position are outrageous. One is either pro-life, all the way, or cherry picking who should live and who should die. They cherry pick!
I choose to be pro-life all the way; you name it, I have a pro-life alternative.
My wife is from the South, not of the fundamentalist tribe (Thank god! 🙂 ), but she does strongly respond negatively to the Sherman episode.
I’m from that part of the country and there are certainly a lot of neo-Confederates. I hate to say “get over it,” but seriously, no one who lives in the South today was alive then, nor were their grandparents. If they didn’t like losing the war, they shouldn’t have started it.
I don’t think Sherman is to blame for the fundamentalism or the anti-science (anti-reality) bent there. It’s something else. I don’t really think you can address some of the problems unless you address the religion thing.