Birther Of A Nation

David Weigel at the Washington Independent has an excellent article documenting the most recent insanity of the Birther movement. It's getting bigger, and it's getting worse:(emphasis mine):

The urban legend has become too pervasive for Republicans to avoid. In February, Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced a much-mocked bill that would require presidential campaigns to provide “a copy of the candidate’s birth certificate.” While Posey initially said that he disbelieved conspiracy theories about the president’s birth, he told the host of an Internet radio show that he’d discussed the possibility of Obama being removed from office over “the eligibility issue” with “high-ranking members of our Judiciary Committee.” As of July 15, nine fellow Republican members of Congress were backing the bill. While Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) has said that he supports the bill because he didn’t know whether Obama was a citizen, other sponsors say that they weighed in to pour cold water on the conspiracy theories.

“It’s a good idea,” said John Donnelly, a spokesman for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who became one of the bill’s co-sponsors this month. “If candidates provided that information to the Federal Election Commission you wouldn’t have all this hullaballoo. You don’t want to needlessly expose presidents to crazy conspiracy theories.”

Are you kidding me? Republicans have signed onto a crazy conspiracy theory to protect the President from...crazy conspiracy theories? You might as well sponsor a bill to have candidates for federal office sign a pledge that they have never beaten their spouses, or never smoked a joint, or never murdered anyone.

What has always bothered me the most about this birther stupidity is how transparently racist it is as a ploy to get Obama disqualified as President. This brings me back to the Five D's theory of what wingers like to do to their opponents:

• Declare the criteria you don't like about Group X that makes them different.
• Divide the people into Us Versus Them.
• Demonize the other group as the Enemy.
• Dehumanize them by classifying their actions as something horrific.
• Destroy them with the people cheering you on.

The birther movement represents a coordinated effort to single out our nation's first African-American president for the honor of this treatment, and it's being done by people who despise the idea of a black man in the White House so much that they have lost the ability to produce rational thoughts. It's some sort of mass hysteria, a snapping point that has led to an inability to deal with the truth of where America is in 2009.

Ahh, but it gets worse.

At the state level, “birther” conspiracy theorists have made headway in getting Republican lawmakers interested in legislation like Posey’s. At least four Republican members of Missouri’s state legislature have looked into introducing a similar bill. State Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-Okla.) who is running for governor of Oklahoma in 2010, said that he’d co-sponsor birth certificate legislation if it made it out of the state senate and would “definitely” sign the bill if he won the governorship.

“You bet I’d sign it,” said Brodgon. “I know I’d have no problem showing my birth certificate.”

The Republicans who appear to be willing to listen to “birthers,” even to debunk them, have to walk a tightrope. In April, freshman Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) held a town hall meeting at her old high school in Cheyenne, Wyo., and got a question about the president’s citizenship. Lummis challenged the skeptic to “please send” evidence that the president was not a natural-born citizen. “I’m not questioning your concern,” Lummis said. “I am questioning whether there is credible evidence.” In early July, a small group of “birthers” walked the halls of Congress handing “grand jury presentments” over to the confused front desk assistants of members of Congress; the activists rushed online to report the latest member who had been “handed” the information. After “birthers” provided some of their papers to Michael Schwartz, the chief of staff to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), they rushed online to report that Schwartz had been won over to the cause and was about to get in touch with Orly Taitz, a California lawyer who has filed several unsuccessful challenges to the president’s citizenship.

“It is possible to mistake politeness for agreement,” Schwartz told TWI, “and I make every effort to be polite.” He did have a “brief conversation with Dr. Taitz,” but challenged the way online “birthers” had hyped their contact with Coburn’s office. “An observer would not report it quite like this,” said Schwartz.

I've already mentioned Orly Taitz, Queen of the Birthers before. The woman's madness is a thing of exquisite and frightening beauty, like the play of sunlight off the custom paint job on a $200,000 sportscar bearing down on you with a raging drunk behind the wheel.

She's friggin' nuts. She's also represents the endemic problem with the GOP: they just can't quit her or the millions of slavering GOP zerglings she represents.

Taitz’s lawsuits and the pressure of conservative talkers like Limbaugh have made it increasingly difficult for Republicans to avoid the “birthers.” On June 16, after Limbaugh joked about the president’s citizenship, WorldNetDaily editor-in-chief Joseph Farah appeared on the Web-based Recharge Radio to thank the host for spreading the “birther” message. “What that did is beyond Rush’s impact,” said Farah. “It also gives other talk show hosts license to talk about this issue … Rush is kind of the standard of talk show hosts. A lot of people emulate what he does. He crossed the Rubicon on that show, and I’m very proud of him for doing it.”

Farah’s instincts have been borne out by conservative media. This week, Taitz represented Maj. Stefan F. Cook, a reservist who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan, then demanded to be released from the commitment unless the president proved that he was a U.S. citizen. “I did not volunteer with the intent of becoming a conscientious objector,” Cook told TWI in an email. On Wednesday Cook’s deployment was cancelled, and a spokesman for Centcom took issue with Taitz’s claim, made in a WorldNetDaily story, that this decision verified conspiracy theories about the president’s birth. Later that night, Sean Hannity cited the story on his Fox News show and used Taitz’s version of the facts, not Centcom’s.

“Major Cook and his lawyer expressed joy at this outcome,” said Hannity. “And they took it as an admission on the part of the military that the president is not in fact a legitimate citizen by birth.”

And that lawsuit was tossed this morning by the way. But as I've said, this keeps getting worse. The effort to demonize and dehumanize Obama is gaining steam, exposure, and power. This is not something to ignore in the hopes it will go away. It's an effort to play up the worst fears and most base racial prejudices that America suffers from socially, all in an effort to focus on one man as The Enemy.

When, I wonder, will somebody decide to take it to the destroy stage? When will somebody take this call of "Will nobody rid me of this troublesome President?" and take it seriously? How will the GOP ever recover should anything horrific indeed come to pass? You would think they would be the first to squash this kind of behavior. But all they do is encourage it. They find it useful. It's not just playing with fire, it's playing with fire in a thermite factory next to an orphanage and a kitten farm.

Worst job in America? Obama's Secret Service detail. Those men and women deserve a round in any bar in the planet should nothing blessedly happen to the man. Pray I'm wrong. Pray this stupidity dies out, and America says "enough of this crap."

I don't think it will until we get to the logical endpoint of this chaotic insanity.