Public Comment

The regrettable emergence of the “Birthers” movement, in which a desperate and disenfranchised neoconservative fringe is attempting against all evidence to prove President Obama was not born on U.S. soil (and therefore has no right to office), shows once again the power of conspiracy theory to palliate those not content to live with reality.  

Right now the perpetrators of this harebrained fabrication are trying to figure out how to rationalize the Obama birth announcements that appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers back in August 1961—maybe the Islamic Conspiracy to Takeover America perfected time travel to place their “Manchurian Candidate” in the Aloha State when, according to the Birthers, he was actually delivered in Kenya…or was it Saudi Arabia? Iran? Texas? “It’s another country.” On the moon? This little exercise in Orwellian revisionist history also demonstrates how far the radical right would go to unseat a popular president legally elected by a huge majority, rather than “selected” by a compromised Supreme Court hectored by neocon power brokers. 

The poor free-market Republicans. First they get us into an unnecessary and un-winnable war in Iraq, trashing the Constitution and limiting our civil rights along the way, then they ruin the American economy, taking down most of the rest of the world with us. Or maybe it was those unprincipled, namby-pamby liberals who did that (stay tuned). One would think with all that Yale-groomed brain power going for them that they’d be able to come up with more creative fear-mongering fictions of how liberals and their wretched policies are the repositories of all evil. So, you want conspiracies? I’ll give you conspiracies: 

1. Universal public education is a liberal plot to establish socialism in America. Proof of this is the insistence by liberal educators that algebra be taught in our schools. Now every properly informed neoconservative knows that algebra is the product of the “al Gebra” terrorist movement. Why just recently a high school teacher was apprehended at SFO by the TSA trying to board an airliner with a protractor, compass, and ruler in her possession—weapons of math instruction! Just how far will these evil educators go to turn our innocent children away from true ‘Merican values? 

2. Bush really went to Vietnam! Yes, unconscionable leftists have perpetrated the myth that George W. Bush avoided military service in Vietnam by serving in the Texas Air National Guard, from which he ultimately went AWOL.  (Work with me here.) Now, the truth is that Bush actually joined the Navy, was commissioned, and captained a swift boat in the Mekong Delta where he served with valor. During the presidential campaign of 2004, the liberal-dominated press flipped Bush’s Vietnam service, attributing it to Democrat candidate John Kerry, who actually avoided Vietnam service in the Massachusetts Air Guard—from which he is still AWOL! And furthermore, it has been recently discovered that Kerry’s rich elitist liberal friends used their influence to cover this up. 

3. Science is a liberal plot to prove that global warming exists—and to establish socialism in America. Everyone knows these cowardly eggheads are all a bunch of libs on the payroll of wussy European commie pinko socialists. Like algebra, what do we need science for anyway? 

4. Community organizing is a liberal plot to establish socialism in America. As that great American hero Rudi Giuliani said at the ‘08 Republican Convention, “Barak Obama was a community organizer!” Need we say more? 

5. The nation of Canada was established as a liberal plot to force socialized medicine on the U.S.  This can’t be any crazier than the Birthers’ theory, eh? 

6. Obama’s health plan is evil and will convene “death panels” to determine who will live and who will die. Uh, wait a minute, that one’s just too far over the edge. Right, Sarah? 

7. Trees cause pollution. Whoops, ditto—and thank you, Ronnie. 

Conspiracy theorists believe that Berkeley writer David Esler was sent to earth from the planet Zeon to corrupt our youth and establish socialism in America.