Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Gnostic sense of humour

Ariz House: Check Obama's Citizenship - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix
PHOENIX -- The Arizona House on Monday voted for a provision that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate if he hopes to be on the state's ballot when he runs for reelection.

The House voted 31-22 to add the provision to a separate bill. The measure still faces a formal vote.

It would require U.S. presidential candidates who want to appear on the ballot in Arizona to submit documents proving they meet the constitutional requirements to be president.

Phoenix Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema said the bill is one of several measures that are making Arizona "the laughing stock of the nation."
What's so funny about asking a supposed reality merely to confirm itself?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well nothing quite kills a joke like explaining it...

There is something comical in a state legislature playing to the paranoia of the birther movement. Not ‘ha ha’ funny in the same way we laugh at the punch-line of a Newfie joke. More the ‘ha ha….we’re doomed’ nervousness we get when realizing that large chunks of the American political establishment feel the need to cater to the deranged conspiracies of America’s "Obama’s a Sekrit Muzlim" constituency. There you have it, from a card carrying Gnostic (yeah, we have cards).

na

truepeers said...

But wouldn't the best course of action to put all the birther talk to rest be just what Arizona is doing? At the risk of belaboring the point, why is common sense laughable?

truepeers said...

By the way, the claim some make that Obama is a Muslim is simply based on the fact that his father was, and so according to Islamic law so was Obama (though now presumably he is apostate). Nothing secret about it. At this blog, when we chat up the question why doesn't he put all this fuss to an end by simply producing his birth certificate, we don't think the most likely answer is that he wasn't born in Hawaii. Seems pretty clar he was. Perhaps there is some other information he doesn't want known. Maybe the secret is that he never was a Muslim...

Anonymous said...

“But wouldn't the best course of action to put all the birther talk to rest be just what Arizona is doing?”

No, it is for responsible people to quit playing to paranoid fantasies. The birth certificate was produced a long time ago. For political and psychological reasons, some people just don’t want to believe it. Politicians and those normally not detached from reality keep feeding the fire with this ‘just asking questions’ BS. I suspect a good chunk of the politicians supporting this nonsense know birtherism is a non-issue. Right-wing crazies are a great voting base though, so might as well play along.

Eventually, I think I might as well join the crazy train though. Why fight paranoia with basic responsibility? So here is my first salvo: PROVE to me that the Republican Party DID NOT plan and carry out 9/11. And by the way, you aren’t allowed to use evidence that I chose not to believe.

na

truepeers said...

Well i think you should have more sympathy for right-wing crazies. You've gotta understand that for many people it's really hard to understand - and i mean this sincerely - why, in face of huge difficulties in economic and foreign policy, American culture responded by electing a President whose only serious credentials were 1)that he is "historic", a first in the service of a progressive narrative more interested in tokens than in defining a serious self-identity in response to an unprecedented and potentially ruinous debt crisis, declining global power and threats that in some cases one cannot even be named (lest one offend); and 2) he is not George Bush and was in fact the best at demonizing Bush. And in office the man bows to thugs, pushes away his country's erstwhile friends in Europe and the far east, scapegoats Israel for the Arab problem, thinks he is growing the economy by spending 1.5 trillion a year and growing the national debt far faster than any foreseeable capacity to service same. It really isn't clear to right-wing crazies that they are the ones taking a vacation from history. They aren't merely paranoid but genuinely incapable of understanding why their country is acting the way it is. If I talk a lot about Gnosticism it's because I think that's part of understanding the puzzle; no doubt I could do a better job of explaining the Gnostic mind.