So, first off, let's start with this:
I have a fascination with American politics, in the same way that a car crash is horrifyingly mesmerising. Also, as the resident 800 pound gorilla of world politics, I find things make a little more sense if you pay attention (not much more mind).
So as some background for those who don't share my morbid curiosity, there has been a slowly percolating conspiracy surrounding Barak Obama's country of origin. This began as a fringe right-wing conspiracy but has slowly bloomed into something resembling an ideological front piece for the entire Republican movement. I'm not going to say that most, or even all Republicans support the idea - the less radicalised will certainly disavow belief in the matter if pressed in front of a camera. But the Republican party is certainly happy to embrace those who do subscribe to this kind of idiocy. And in recent days, the hairpiece of destruction, the living symbol of greed and callous arrogance that is Donald Trump, in courting the batshit fringe, has also decided to leap on this bandwagon.
Donald Trump has previously expressed admiration for Barak Obama - so I have little to no doubt that his belief in this kind of bollocks is nothing but the most heinous opportunism. But as one person now referred to as a presidential hopeful (and it gives me the jibblies just to say that) it shows how deeply infiltrated this idea has become.
Never mind that Juan McCain...sorry, John McCain...was actually born in Panama. Never mind that the law itself is a piece of archaic nonsense that even the dystopian future of Demolition Man had the good sense to do away with (although that was to make Arnold Schwarzenegger president, but I digress). Never mind the fact that no other president has ever been asked to parade the pieces of paper that prove his identity before a camera before. None of that matters to the bigots that perpetrate this nonsense.
And it is bigotry. The country of birth is ultimately immaterial - this is about delegitimising Barak Obama on the basis of his identity. The birth certificate is code for "race", as used by people who know well enough that they can't say the word "race" in reference to their objections, but nurture this ugly little worm within themselves anyway. It's a code, a nod and wink to all those other people who have this part of them that lurks in a sub-linguistic kind of way, that says a black man can't be the boss of me.
As soon as Obama was elected, I said "He is going to have to make the rivers of America run with gold if he's going to survive". The close of the Bush era, a remarkable slide into poverty for the most prosperous nation on earth, allowed him to get elected. But it had the feel of the little kid in the Shining reaching out, summoning the groundskeeper. And I see, with ever increasing anger and frustration that Barak Obama has become some kind of racialised stalking horse, a goat layed out for the howling masses to descend upon. Jack Nicholson, just out of frame in the hallway with an axe.
So finally, Obama drags the birth certificate forth. Donald Trump claims it as victory. Reince Prebus (yes, you read that correctly, a parent did inflict that name on a child), the RNC chair, has the gall to imply that somehow this whole saga is Obama's fault. From the article linked above:
''As I've repeatedly stated, this issue is a distraction,'' said Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
''The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy, working with Republicans and focusing on the long term sustainability of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
''Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our number one priority - our economy.''
YAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGH!
I actually screamed when I read that. Even now, it makes me inarticulate with rage - there's a basic simian part of me that wishes the truth was a rock so I could bash the enemies of reason and sense with it. 2001 style.
But this brings me to the collapse of hope. For contained in this statement is the thesis for the destruction of this planet - a fractal replica on the inanity and horror of the age we're living in. It's a purely political statement - no actual assessment of the situation could lead to the conclusion that in any way did Obama manufacture this situation, the doubt over his birth certificate. A reasonable person would perhaps take this moment that a fringe element within his party had propagated this, and to demand that they now shut the fuck up and go back to fucking their cousins or demanding the right to arm bears or whatever it is that abject lunatics do when there isn't a black man in charge to fixate on. But instead, it's simply an opportunity to bend Truth over the table and give it another solid rogering. It's "Politics as Usual".
Once it becomes apparent that no issue, no matter how transparently obvious, becomes simply another battleground for political grandstanding; that lies have no consequence whatsoever, that one can simply spew nonsense without one's credibility being impaired at all, that we have descended into some post-modernist nightmare.
I find it interesting that whilst the right-wing takes great joy in heaping scorn on postmodernism, they are ready and willing to adopt its fluid notions of objectivity. For a break in this disheartening diatribe, and general amusement, please watch the following:
Which brings me to the horror. Right now, we, the human race, have a giant freight train of objectivity bearing down on us. We are standing on the verge of a dose of almost Lovecraftian objective reality. Science isn't Santa Claus or the Boogeyman. Not believing in it won't stop it tearing you limb from limb (yes, Santa Claus does that, it's why our parents destroy our belief in him before we hit puberty and get too naughty. It's for our safety). But it's a big complicated issue, one you have to think carefully about, think about the real ramifications and what the real possibilities are. Something that requires a level of curiosity, but also a healthy respect for certain immutibilities. But the people who are in charge, the people who have tied us to the tracks cackling and twirling their moustaches, they have not even the most basic respect for factuality. They can't make a statement that agrees with itself from beginning to end.
So what hope is there for us?
I just hope that the beetloid race that succeeds us has a little more sense.
