Maine, Oh, Maine!

The dangers of delusion can be profound. This Maine man believes wrongly that Obamacare will take spousal benefits from his sick wife, so he posted a picture of President Obama on Facebook with the caption, "Shoot the n----r."

He also defends his use of the word n----r.

Sometimes I think this blog should be called "What the Hell Is Wrong with People?" But we know what's wrong with Mr. Marsters. He's a racists whose hate for black people has left him completely cracked. It has poisoned his soul and his mind to the point that he thinks assassinating his President is the way to go.

Never mind that President Obama was elected TWICE by significant majorities. Never mind that President Obama is the first President in US history to be required to publicly show his papers, not that it did anything to convince the birther nuts. Never mind that Mr. Marsters' delusions about Obamacare are completely untrue.

Sadly, Mr. Marsters is not alone. I have had to block, unfriend, and unfollow a number of people in my own social media world who pray for, hope for, wish for, and encourage the murder of President Obama. These are people who claim to be Christians.

People have the right to be racist. It's a free country. But it never ceases to sicken me when I witness the vitriol this ignorant poison fuels. Get Above Your Raisin', Mr. Marsters - and all you birthers, racists, and fear-mongers. Practically every aspect of American life has improved since Barack Obama was elected. Instead of campaigning for his demise, how about opening your eyes and minds and start to see your fear for what it is: psychopathy.

I Don't Want to Go Back. Why Do You?

The United States of America has always been a special place relative to other countries. I admit to being biased here, given that I am an American. But who can doubt the unique convergence of people, time, and events that led to America shrugging off the rule of England at a time when England was the strongest navy and arguably the strongest military power in the world. That was special.

And who would question the special leader that was Abraham Lincoln, a man who pursued the seemingly inconsistent goals of ending slavery AND keeping the US united. He prioritized these goals above the rule of law and even over his own life. We lost hundreds of thousands of Americans, brothers fighting brothers, but Lincoln elevated the nation's survival and soul over the lives and souls of Americans themselves. That has been judged the correct decision by most, but it was certainly a courageous and rare type of leadership. He was not defending a throne. Telling people to arm themselves to defend their sovereign was nothing new. He was defending a collective and that community's shared (if contentious) ideas of elected government. The result was a bruised but living United States with an end to slavery. But it would be another century before real progress was made for the descendants of those slaves to approach real equality.

And women were not "given" the right to vote until the 20th century. (Rights exist, they are not "given." In effect, the government stopped denying women the right to vote.) But the struggle for women to obtain equality has continued as well.

And in more recent decades, the fight for equality for LGBTQ Americans has marched forward as well.

Women and minorities always struggle to obtain and maintain equal status. The open society we live in allows those struggles to continue, to grow, and to gain ground. This is why we are special relative to other countries. But we are far from perfect.

In the last hundred years of our country, we have seen women get the right to vote, laws passed to protect people from lynchings and other forms of persecution for their race, laws passed to protect women from violence, divorce become obtainable to anyone, electricity in every home, indoor plumbing in every home, cars in every drive-way (mostly), air conditioning for those who want it, air planes for average people to travel by, interstate highways connecting the country, the Internet connecting the world, cable TV (causing us to waste hours of our lives), a ruling that same-sex marriages cannot be treated as a lower class of family,  vaccines for previously deadly and debilitating illnesses, and thousands of other advancements to improve the quality and length of life. So with all this progress, WHY IN THE HOT HOLY HELL WOULD SOMEONE THINK THIS?

What's so great about Polio? Why would you long for segregation and lynchings? Who wants to live without electricity, indoor plumbing, air conditioning, and the Internet? Who could possible be nostalgic for outhouses, prohibition, and food poisoning from crappy refrigeration?

Ignorant people, that's who! It's people who cannot stand to see "others" getting an equal footing: African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQ individuals are growing in numbers and in stature, and that makes some white men (and some white women) very nervous. Maybe it's the same reason a dirty cop never wants to go to prison. People who abuse power, then lose it, are reasonably fearful that the new people in power will enforce retribution. We'll see.

There will always be nostalgia for olden times, but America has never been a country that looks back; it has always faced the future and moved into it with grit and determination even if not always undaunted. These folks need to get Above Their Raisin' and stop dwelling in the fantasy past that they imagine existed. The past sucked. It sucked more for women and minorities, but it sucked for white men too. No one in this country, least of all that white dude on the tractor, has any reason to lament the future. You can still get your farm subsidy while decrying "welfare queens" and go home to your air conditioned home with your big-screen and watch satellite TV while simultaneously playing with your iPad using your WiFi Internet service. The big, scary Black man in the White House isn't going to take any of that away from you.

Iowa Is Not a Field of Dreams, but a Land of Delusion

As the early stages of the 2012 Presidential election campaign begin to churn, pollsters are busy, busy, busy. My last blog was about a Mississippi poll. This time, Iowa gets the limelight.

Again, the polling is of "usual Republican primary voters."

Of those polled 48% do not believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, and another 26% "are unsure" where he was born.

(This is actually pretty close to the national data on GOP members: 51% believing he was not born in the US and another 21% being "unsure." So maybe, I'm being unfair to Iowa and I should just be mocking 72%-74% of the GOP.)

One of my colleagues at work (who I hope was playing devil's advocate) reminded me that anyone can get a forged birth certificate (as if no one had suggested that before).

Snopes
and Factcheck.org have both debunked the forgery allegations and document the many verifications and corroborating facts that prove the President's Hawaiian birth. People who persist in raising their shoulders and eyebrows and fake-innocently asking, "Why doesn't he just provide his Birth Certificate?" are either being patently dishonest (*cough Donald Trump cough*) or are suffering from some kind of FoxNews induced delusion.

I suppose you can create conspiracies in your cray-cray head dismissing every piece of evidence - like the TWO newspaper reports in Honolulu papers announcing his birth within weeks of his birthday (It's on the factcheck.org link.) - and just persist in claiming that "no one really knows." By this logic (illogic?), I don't know if my parents are US citizens, or for that matter, if I am. I mean, for all I know, I was born in Moscow and planted here as a sleeper agent and could be awakened by a phone call any day to wreak havoc on the imperialist corporatists that oppress the workers of the world!

Can we get down to the itty bitty nitty gritty? Barack Obama is "other," "different," "black." He's got a weird name and he's black. He's young and calm and cool and black. And also, he's black. A lot of this stems from a lot of white people being really out of sorts because their president is black. I mean, they hated Bill Clinton, but no one ever asked for his birth certificate. Have you ever seen it?

Early on, strong Hillary Clinton supporters got on the birther bandwagon, but they grudgingly concede Barry's Americanness when faced with the facts. But not 72% of the GOP. Facts will not interfere with their convictions and commitment to the foreignness of the black man in the white house.

In 2004, there were 55 million registered republicans in the US. That means at least 39.6 million Americans (I mean, I'm only assuming they are Americans. Anyone can get a forged birth certificate.) think the government of the state of Hawaii, two newspapers from 1961, and the federal government are (or may be) participating in a vast 50-year conspiracy to trick everyone into thinking Barack Obama was born in Hawaii in August, 1961 (when in fact he was born somewhere else) so he could be elected President of the United States in 2010. To these 39.6 million people, this absurd and completely implausible conspiracy fiction is more reasonable - or at least as reasonable - as relying on an officially issued, sealed, signed, certified Certificate of Live Birth.

America has always had problems. But have we always been this ridiculous?

I Was Right. I Hate That!

Think back to my first blog post here. Remember my saying that the only difference between one place or another is the "redneck-to-normal-person ratio?" Today's lucky winner in "Places To Be Ashamed Of" is ................

Salmon Creek (Vancouver), Washington.

As I was heading out of Vancouver to drive back home to Utah, I stopped at the Salmon Creek 7-11 to buy a bag of ice and some snacks. While I was struggling to decide between SlimJim and Jerky, I overheard the female clerk talking to a male customer.

"First, we gotta get rid of that thing in the White House," she said.

"What?" he responded on his way out.

She repeated, loudly, "First, we gotta get rid of that thing in the White House!"

Several thought ran through my head along with the disgust and shock. Snappy comebacks like "racist much?" or "got racism?" occurred to me, but I decided the irony of getting shot by a clerk in a 7-11 was too much, and not the way I wanted to go.

As much as I disliked W, it never occurred to me to hate him that much, to objectify him as an object of disgust and offense. And I wonder if she said the same thing about Bill Clinton. I'm sure she didn't like him, but did she call him a "thing?"

The vitriol and ugliness that I have seen out of some of my fellow Americans since Barack Obama was elected is both alarming and depressing. I'm not suggesting everyone has to love him or agree with him, but a basic level of human respect and some dignity afforded the office maybe? He has, overall, conducted himself in a respectful and respectable manner, I think. And while you might disagree with him and hate his policies, I see no reason to hate him, or call him a thing.

To summarize: There is at least one really hateful, racist beee-otch in Salmon Creek, Washington. And she works at the 7-11 on Highway 99 near the freeway ramp for I-5.

I know I've said before that Obama's election is like turning on the lights in the kitchen at night - you see the cockroaches run. Well, I'm actually getting a little tired of the cockroaches. Can't the cockroaches just stay in the metaphorical garbage can where they belong?