Slow News Day, Edition. Birthers, Normalizing the Insane, GOP Racists, and Ann Althouse.
I am not even going to link it, but Ms. Althouse is proving she is as least the 'mess' part of my description of her as a hot mess, by a post regarding birthers . . . as not being as crazy as troofers. Let me explain a bit more. Some poll recently released is saying a bare majority of GOPers are birthers. (I call the phenomenon of this absurdity,"Normalizing the Insane." To borrow and warp the commercial slogan, this isn't your father's GOP. It's the crazy shit version of the GOP.)
Now her lead in, her post title is,"Birthers aren't like Truthers," and to an albeit, tiny degree, I agree. But her argument is so shallow, vapid, ill informed, and ill supported that in the end, she is so mostly wrong she's just plain wrong, even when accidentally right. First, the accidentally right part.
Ya, there is a big difference (and perhaps some minor ones) between birthers and troofers, but the similarity is that both approach their fantasy conclusions from what ever bias they had, before the issue in interest became an issue of the day. I would say that troofers are 'don't trust the government generally,' folk. That's their gig.
However, there are at least two lines of bias behind the birthers. Firstly, in the GOP there is a lot of hate for anyone who resembles the label "liberal." So P. Obama has that going against him (remember how bat fucking crazy the loony Right Wing went when Clinton was elected?) But above and beyond that, is the racism factor. And accuse me of doing a high wire act without a net, but honestly. Has the birth certificate issue ever come up, before it was a black man? I wish that were enough, but I think I need to flesh out my (informed, actually) speculation. Here in 2011 America has evolved as (meaning only) far that most white GOPers get this much; being called a racist is bad, and one can not longer disparage a "nigger" merely for being a "nigger," anymore, save in the company of admitted racists. (I am not saying most GOPers only get that much. Too many only get that much. Or, too few get more than that.) So where does that not yet eliminated racism go? It goes into proxy complaints. It goes into such criticisms as disparaging "multi culturalism," and/or "urban people," and/or strange foreign religions, and anti-immigrant sentiment (some shit never changes,) and it goes into the birther's crazy arguments.
You can not directly say you are unhappy that the POTUS is a black man. But (if you are that self delusional or generally delusional not to know you really are not fooling the rest of us) you can take ass-holey shots at his foreign name, and whine that he wasn't born in the USA.
Now as far at Althouse goes, she seems to have missed even considering any of that. She instead argues that the birthers have one issue and one question. Excuse me? Talk about assumes facts not in evidence. This is the very same kind of self serving, shallow, borderline magical thinking that makes people believe and say stupid shit like celebrities die in threes. (Dummy! They don't die in threes. You are counting in threes!)If you narrow down the entire universe of motivation and causes of the birther's insanity to one cause, you are editing things to suit your argument. That's not only intellectually lazy, and intellectually dishonest, it's pure bullshit.
After that, Ms. Althouse goes truly off the deep end, by quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 37. For you non lawyers out there, it's one of the rules regarding discovery of evidence. Her citation of that is likely more unhinged than either what the birthers believe, or even trying to defend the birthers, as a general matter. The reason it is unhinged is as follows:
Court's have jurisdiction over matters as granted under the US and various state constitutions and laws. And they are honor bound to follow precedent and applicable rules. Doubting birthers are totally without restraint. To make an analogy between a court of law and the birthers . . . to equate the two is to raise the rules of a simple and silly child's playground game to the holding of a per curiam (by the court, as an institution, speaking in one unified voice) decision of the US Supreme Court. (Gawd, I so fucking hate idiotic, far off analogies.)
But sure. People can decide for themselves what is good evidence and what isn't. But when people depart reason and rationality and substitute crazy shit instead? Well we should call that crazy shit. I have gone long, here, but again, this is a mere example of the deevolution of the GOP or if one prefers, the Conservative Movement. The more crazy shit they accept, the crazier they seem. It might not be the paranoid flavor of crazy, so much. Ms. Althouse makes a sorta marginally, yet likely less than half accurate point there (cause let's be real. Racism is the product of irrational thoughts and beliefs, often including paranoia.)But it is crazy shit, and it is an offense not only to reality and reason to define down normal in that way, but like all bullshit, it is dangerous to all of us and all of society.
Said simply, if every point of view is sorta equal, all sorta valid, than all are equally meaningless.
Now her lead in, her post title is,"Birthers aren't like Truthers," and to an albeit, tiny degree, I agree. But her argument is so shallow, vapid, ill informed, and ill supported that in the end, she is so mostly wrong she's just plain wrong, even when accidentally right. First, the accidentally right part.
Ya, there is a big difference (and perhaps some minor ones) between birthers and troofers, but the similarity is that both approach their fantasy conclusions from what ever bias they had, before the issue in interest became an issue of the day. I would say that troofers are 'don't trust the government generally,' folk. That's their gig.
However, there are at least two lines of bias behind the birthers. Firstly, in the GOP there is a lot of hate for anyone who resembles the label "liberal." So P. Obama has that going against him (remember how bat fucking crazy the loony Right Wing went when Clinton was elected?) But above and beyond that, is the racism factor. And accuse me of doing a high wire act without a net, but honestly. Has the birth certificate issue ever come up, before it was a black man? I wish that were enough, but I think I need to flesh out my (informed, actually) speculation. Here in 2011 America has evolved as (meaning only) far that most white GOPers get this much; being called a racist is bad, and one can not longer disparage a "nigger" merely for being a "nigger," anymore, save in the company of admitted racists. (I am not saying most GOPers only get that much. Too many only get that much. Or, too few get more than that.) So where does that not yet eliminated racism go? It goes into proxy complaints. It goes into such criticisms as disparaging "multi culturalism," and/or "urban people," and/or strange foreign religions, and anti-immigrant sentiment (some shit never changes,) and it goes into the birther's crazy arguments.
You can not directly say you are unhappy that the POTUS is a black man. But (if you are that self delusional or generally delusional not to know you really are not fooling the rest of us) you can take ass-holey shots at his foreign name, and whine that he wasn't born in the USA.
Now as far at Althouse goes, she seems to have missed even considering any of that. She instead argues that the birthers have one issue and one question. Excuse me? Talk about assumes facts not in evidence. This is the very same kind of self serving, shallow, borderline magical thinking that makes people believe and say stupid shit like celebrities die in threes. (Dummy! They don't die in threes. You are counting in threes!)If you narrow down the entire universe of motivation and causes of the birther's insanity to one cause, you are editing things to suit your argument. That's not only intellectually lazy, and intellectually dishonest, it's pure bullshit.
After that, Ms. Althouse goes truly off the deep end, by quoting Fed.R.Civ.P. 37. For you non lawyers out there, it's one of the rules regarding discovery of evidence. Her citation of that is likely more unhinged than either what the birthers believe, or even trying to defend the birthers, as a general matter. The reason it is unhinged is as follows:
Court's have jurisdiction over matters as granted under the US and various state constitutions and laws. And they are honor bound to follow precedent and applicable rules. Doubting birthers are totally without restraint. To make an analogy between a court of law and the birthers . . . to equate the two is to raise the rules of a simple and silly child's playground game to the holding of a per curiam (by the court, as an institution, speaking in one unified voice) decision of the US Supreme Court. (Gawd, I so fucking hate idiotic, far off analogies.)
But sure. People can decide for themselves what is good evidence and what isn't. But when people depart reason and rationality and substitute crazy shit instead? Well we should call that crazy shit. I have gone long, here, but again, this is a mere example of the deevolution of the GOP or if one prefers, the Conservative Movement. The more crazy shit they accept, the crazier they seem. It might not be the paranoid flavor of crazy, so much. Ms. Althouse makes a sorta marginally, yet likely less than half accurate point there (cause let's be real. Racism is the product of irrational thoughts and beliefs, often including paranoia.)But it is crazy shit, and it is an offense not only to reality and reason to define down normal in that way, but like all bullshit, it is dangerous to all of us and all of society.
Said simply, if every point of view is sorta equal, all sorta valid, than all are equally meaningless.
Get it?
* Note: I found the graphix after finishing the composition. Now I am not going to say that the mere fact the majority of GOP birthers are from the south = proof of racism. But I am not in the least fucking bit surprised by those metrics.
Labels: ann althouse, bad analogies, birthers, bullshit, crazy shit, gop racists, magical thinking, Normalizing the Insane
posted by Abstentus at 4:03 PM
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