Will the right be satisfied now that Obama has finally released the long form birth certificate a lot of them have been clamoring for to prove he was born in Hawaii and isn't a Muslim etc.?
No.
Because it isn't about facts and never is, it's about ideology. Those on the right who have recently backed off the whole "birther" thing—because they saw the writing on the wall and/or wanted to undermine Donald Trump who was eclipsing them and their usual distortions and misinformation and lies—still cling to other non-facts to bolster their extreme rightwing positions, like insisting that cutting taxes even further for the wealthiest among us will somehow "create jobs" when all the charts and graphs and historical records show that not to be true at the level they are at now.
The right is not interested in facts or even in best policies, they're interested in power—getting it and maintaining it and overthrowing those who have it who aren't them. Trump isn't a true rightwinger, he's just an opportunist jumping on the right's bandwagon because it'll get him the news coverage to increase the value of his "brand" and if he does decide to run for the Republican nomination it'll get him the rightwing majority base in the primaries where polls show most in that category still believe Obama is a Muslim born in a foreign country and no amount of proof saying otherwise will sway them from their need to ascribe some form of otherness to this smart black man who somehow became president of "their" country.
But it's a smart move on Obama's part to throw the long form birth certificate into the fray at this point, because it will weaken Trump's position with independents but not with the hardcore rightwing base of the Republican party therefore leveling the Republican-nomination playing field a little and keeping the competition divided and fighting among themselves.
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Half a lifetime ago I would have guessed that anyone who manipulates the political system and by extension the country's well-being, for the sake of his tv ratings and vanity would have been shunned by everyone.
But now it seems to be built into the nation's psyche that this kind of behavior is acceptable.
Other than that, it'll be interesting to see if anyone comes forward and says "okay, I was wrong. He really was born here."
"Never argue with a fool" - or Donald Trump. I think that Obama's just going to fire up the Birthers up by responding to them. Now they will get air time to respond to his response. And after questioning the authenticity of the long form birth certificate, they will move on to: yeh, but you're still a Muslim. Yeh, but you're still a terrorist. Yeh, but you're still a socialist, communist, nazi, racist, pot-smoker...
Maybe his plan is not to debunk Trump, but actually to give Trump a boost. Because that's what he just did.
In my travels around this country, and outside of it as well, I am frequently pleasantly surprised and encouraged by the reality that many people, of all ages including students as young as grade school age, see through the bullshit and have genuine, humanitarian, mindful perspectives, and are not carried away by the media mayhem and, as an actor I once worked with called them, "pontificating putzes."
On the lighter side, I've seen a couple humorous responses online. One Huffingtonpost headline read: "Why Won't Hawaii Produce Documents Proving It's a State?". And at the Onion the headline read: "Trump Unable to Produce Certificate Proving He's Not a Festering Pile of Sh*t". Both got me to laugh a little.
Also, my word verification letters spell "unione". Hmmm......
The biggest threat the right wingers and tea party people are threatened by at this point is that their rhetoric is starting to resemble the mindless rantings of Charlie Sheen - like boring re-runs that people either turn off, or in some cases delete ...
With respect to the larger issues at hand, their conspiracy theories, environmental denials, trumped-up facts, and policy proposals at best appear as the entertainment and at worst reflect the narcissism (see Tuesday's post) of self-serving ambition ...
I look forward to the day when books are written that fully expose the trails of corporate money influencing the G.O.P., the right wing media, and the hopelessly stupid they manipulate to legislate their version of government.
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