just got into a verbal fight with a birther
He is a black male, about 50, served as an M.P. in the Army back in the mid-late '70s, is pretty much homeless and is sorta employed down at an automotive shop, where he sleeps at night.
He is not a stupid person and luckily slow to offend, (i know it took some doing but I DID anger him).
I thought it ok to chide him on being a republican which set the whole discussion/argument/shouting match off. I asked him if I could say a few minutes worth on why I felt that republicans were anti democracy which he agreed to listen to. I informed him that democracy requires an informed electorate, that the republicans want instead to diminish the electorate and furthermore to divide and propagandize the electorate.
He stopped me from expanding on this by pointing out that we do not have a democracy, that we instead have a republic. (Typical quote of the propagandized...democracy sounds too much like democrat for their tastes I guess).
I tried to go on with voter fraud vs election fraud and who was actually doing what...that ACORN was a a means to get the elderly and the impoverished to vote when he stopped me again and claimed that both sides were equally guilty of voter fraud. I tried to explain the difference between the two forms of fraud and who has been busted for what historically when he stopped me again to inform me that Chicago Dems were notorious for having the dead vote for Dems.
At this point I was agitated enough to ask if he could back up his assertions when he decided to change the whole discussion to his problem with President Obama-that he is not even an American! Ok so now I see that I am dealing with a birther. I think I can maybe set him straight on this....boy was I wrong.
So I ask him what evidence does he have to back up that President Obama was not born in Hawaii. He claimed that if he is asked by the police for his I-D, he shows it but the President when asked to show his longform birth certificate refused to do so. My counter to this was to ask where in the Constitution did it say that a specific document was required to be presented and to whom as a prerequisite to be POTUS. (I knew already the requirements, producing any documentation is not one of the three listed requirements).
This is where our argument stalled out. He being angry that I refused to budge in my reasoning that it was NOT listed that a potential candidate is required to prove ANYTHING, he required that the president did indeed need to provide the longform birth certificate, that the reason President Obama refused to do so was because he was born elsewhere than in America.
He was quite angry at this time and I was shaking with frustration. I even went to a webpage with my cell phone and physically showed him the three requirements. When he saw the requirement of being born an American he treated
that as proof that I was wrong....I of course pointed out that there was nowhere a fourth requirement that President Obama was required to provide ANY proof-that the burden of disproving his citizenship was squarely on those who said he was not a citizen.
I eventually left, our debate an angry shouting match, and he feeling that I was the propagandized idiot. He promised to vote for Romney because Democrats have done nothing to help him and who knows, maybe the republicans will serve him better.
Later I researched an anti birther site, (thanks to DUs antipropaganda subforum) and discovered the real reason that President Obama can not produce this longform birth certificate-it being the sole property of the records department of the hospital where he was born and not the property of the mother, father or the person born there. Not even the President of The United States can get it released! They gladly will provide a certificate of birth and by Hawaiian law they do not have to provide more than that. They don't even have to provide a photocopy of the original.
So I have access to a hardcopy of the birther debunk page which refutes my poor propagandized friend but at this point I am not sure the debate is worth pursueing. I have read studies that show that the conservative brain shuts out facts and data which conflict with their reality. I have even complained to them about their conscious ignoring of the facts but my complaints just fall on deaf ears.
I guess I've nothing further to say, outside of how angry I am at those who have so fucked up this guy's head. This poor soul is so lost to America and our democracy....and he is legion in numbers. I suppose I now understand why the Vietnameese government decided to send much of its citizenry to mandatory deprogramming after the fiasco that we called the VietNam war. Like the Germans who were made to see those death camps, we have our section of the population who refuse to face the facts until they get forced to face them. For those poor lost souls, I am truly confounded that I know not how to help them and that just sucks!
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hang in there with us for awhile. 
Until today, I too thought birtherism to be a subset of teapartyism and definitely the racist subset. The man I argued with today was not racist nor does he see me as racist either. We have been casual friends for about a year. Truth be told one of his stories from his Army days is ...well...just dang cool: He did a tour of duty over in Germany and while there rode a tricked out Harley everywhere he could while checking out Bavaria. Seeing a black guy on a Harley is no rarity here in the states, but those bikes are never seen much on the streets of Germany and ridden by a black American? It just doesn't get more cooler than that! (Btw, this was back in the mid '70s I was there too then and having spent 9 years there I can tell you I did not see a single Harley anywhere...I am sure there were a few around but they were rare to none in my neck of the woods at that time.)
