I had a "conversation" with a Birther. It was a little surreal and a lot shitty.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Let me preface my remarks by saying I'm suspicious of anecdotes so I will provide as much detail as possible. I was at the sauna at the L A Fitness in Woodland Hills. There's this Deplorable who comes in the sauna around the same time I'm in there. I usually ignore him . Any way I'm talking to this guy about two Christmas parties I attended. One was corporate and one was a Christmas /retirement party for a friend of my girlfriend who is from the Philippines. The guy I'm talking to told me he just get back from a trip to Bali, Singapore, and Cebu. We started talking about the problems the Philippines has with Islamic irredentists in the south. I mentioned, as always, Muslims are just like everybody else, some good and some not so good, and some are in between . I mentioned that my girlfriend went to college in the Philippines with some of them and counted them as friends.

Out of the blue, the Deplorable said Barack Obama's mother belonged to the Cebu sect of islam. WTF ? Cebu is a province in the Philippines. I said Barack's mom was a Christian and his father was a Muslim who became an atheist. He then went on to say that a Muslim lady In the Hawaii Bureau of Health forged Barack Obama's birth certificate and was killed in a plane crash. You can't make this shit up ! Well, you can.

Right after the election he said "I voted for Trump and I'm not a racist", smh. Thank god most folks in the Valley are anti-Trump. We ain't Alabama.

Long story short, if you see a Deplorable ignore him or her.

[Ilsa]

1. That made my stomach more acidic just reading it.

I can't imagine having to deal with it with someone I know.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. He's an idiot.

The guy I was initially talking to you was egging him on. I'm reasonably but not absolutely certain he was being sarcastic.


Back to the Deplorable he said he didn't vote for Hillary because she's corrupt, smh.

[3catwoman3]

3. I have never talked to a birther. I'm guessing...

...it must be a lot like trying to talk to anti-vaxxers at the pediatric office - an exercise in futility.

[Bibluca]

4. It's not a new phenomenon though

There have been crazy people here all along, going back to conspiratorial people who spouted all sorts of crazy things about G. Washington.

It's just that now, they are comfortable letting everyone else know how nutty they are. These are the children born of Fox News.

[Nevernose]

5. On an almost-but-not-completely-unrelated note:

Duterte has recently cancelled all negotiations with the Filipino communists AND declared them an illegal organization. They're better organized, better funded, and better supported than the Muslim insurgency. I have no doubt that Duterte can "win," but not without incredible cost for the nation.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

6. I have friends who live in the Philippines who despise him.

Last edited Mon Dec 11, 2017, 11:31 PM - Edit history (1)

That being said he is popular with some.

[Beakybird]

7. My brother professed birther thoughts

I asked him who put a birth announcement in the Honolulu Times on the day he was born. He said that his parents wanted him to be someday the US President, so they might have done this from Indonesia. I asked him if he thought they would jump through this hoop if they knew that they would also have to forge a birth certificate, insert it in the Hawaii government records and get the government of Hawaii to someday certify that this was a legitimate official birth certificate.

He was kind of stumped.

[Orangepeel]

8. Not to mention that if his mother was that concerned about him being president one day

Why the fuck would she go give birth in Kenya? Oh, well. Can’t argue with crazy.

[cannabis_flower]

29. Why would it even matter

since John McCainn and Ted Cruz weren't born in the United States either!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

9. Imagine thinking "your" baby will be president, smh

[kimbutgar]

13. Or how about did two poor college students afford a flight from Hawaii to Kenya and

Fly back in time to put the ad in the paper. I mean that was a lot of money back then and a pregnant 18 year would not fly to Kenya in her last month. The whole Birther thing is so prosperous to even imagine.

[cilla4progress]

10. Been through this

Unsettled me for a few days. Never going there again!!

[gratuitous]

11. Hmmm

I probably would have turned to Mr. Deplorable and, with my best withering glare (I've owned several cats and been taught by the best), said, "Would you mind? This conversation does not concern you."

[DemocratSinceBirth]

19. It's a relatively small space so people often join in.

One guy dismissed it as an internet conspiracy theory. The Deplorables said some conspiracy theories are true.

[bigbrother05]

31. That's when you ask him about the Trump/Russia conspiracy

Which would be easier, a couple of college kids faking their child's birth records to get him elected Prez 45 years later or an ex-KGB Russian leader working with his billionaire cronies to swing the election to the corrupt US billionaire he's had in his back pocket for a decade?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

32. Interesting you bring up Russia.

Last edited Tue Dec 12, 2017, 05:23 PM - Edit history (1)

There are a lot of Russian ex pats at the gym. They must like SoCal. Most but not all of them are enamored with Trump as he reminds them of Putin. I feel like asking them if they feel that way why they left.

[struggle4progress]

12. I really believe some conversations can lower my IQ and so avoid them

[Xolodno]

14. Next time on gay pride day....

....you should tell him to take a walk over to the insurance company next door and see what flags are flying.

[Mariana]

15. My father isn't usually that so far out there to be a birther

but one time, not too long ago, he said just kinda out of the blue,

"You know, there's no evidence that Obama ever went to Harvard."
"You can't be serious. Have you tried Google?"
"Anything online can be faked. There's no evidence he was born in Hawaii, either."
"Those Hawaii officials said his birth record is there, same as yours is in Providence and mine is in Boston."
"That could be faked too."
"Do you really think someone slipped a forged birth certificate in the Hawaii vital records? Who did that?"
"Do you think no one has ever planted a fake record anywhere?"

I gave up on it then.

At least he's been quiet about Trump, since a few months after the inauguration. I don't know if he's embarrassed to have voted for him or what, but whatever the reason, I'll take it.

[pnwmom]

17. There's as much evidence that DT is the son of Adolph Hitler as that Obama

wasn't born in the U.S.

Where's the proof that DT was born in the US? Documents can be faked.
Where's the proof that Fred and Mary Trump were his birth parents? Maybe they secretly adopted him.
How do we know DT was born in June 1946? How do we know he wasn't conceived shortly before Hitler died, and that the authorities didn't fudge his birthdate by 6 months so that he'd be adoptable?

All this seems just as possible as the idea that Barack Obama wasn't born in Hawaii to his parents.

[Doodley]

16. I married into a Repub family. I have learned to just keep asking for evidence. It never comes.

[maxrandb]

18. NO! Please DON'T "ignore" them

Confront the fuckers forcefully every chance you get. Tell them how fucking stupid they are. Shame them for their ignorance at EVERY opportunity.

I like to use this verse from Proverbs and say; "you know, in the Book of Proverbs it's said that 'As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness'"

When that doesn't shut them up, I refer to another verse from Proverbs; "No matter how hard you beat a fool, you can’t pound out the foolishness"

BUT, I'm willing to try!

[DemocratSinceBirth]

20. As a kid my best friend's mom was a Jehovah's Witness.

She was super nice to me. That being said I would politely point out to things in her own Bible such as a literal Hell which contradicts their own teaching. It didn't budge her. I suspect using facts on Deplorables would yield the same results.

[dembotoz]

21. damn straight....maybe it will sink in maybe not but it might shut em up

[HughBeaumont]

22. Moore has a birfer speaking for him.

Loathsome pile of a woman, she is . . .

[DemocratSinceBirth]

23. I saw her on CNN with Anderson Cooper. It got pretty heated.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2017/12/07/janet-porter-roy-moore-spokeswoman-anderson-cooper-full-interview-ac.cnn

[HughBeaumont]

24. Well, naturally. She's an insufferable pig who also writes for World Nut Daily.

She's like a less-educated Dolores Umbridge.

[Jim Lane]

25. The nugget of truth in all that is the plane crash

Because of all the silliness about Obama's birth, Hawaii's state health director herself was involved in the release of his birth certificate, and then the poor woman did actually die: "Official who OK'd Obama birth papers dies in crash".

Of course, to the birthers this was all the proof they needed.

I'll bet a lot of them are now saying that all the direct accusations against Moore, and before that against Trump, are insufficient evidence, but one accidental death is conclusive proof of a vast conspiracy.

Whenever I hear about loons like this I remember a comment by Bertrand Russell. I can't quickly find his original but this paraphrase of it accords with my memory:

In one of Bertrand Russell's essays he says there are two sects, one
that believes the English are the ten lost tribes of Israel, the other,
stricter sect believes the English are only the tribes of Ephraim and
Manasseh. Apparently whenever Russell would come across someone from one
of the sects, he would claim to be an adherent of the other. Much
pleasant argumentation would then ensue.

Equivalent here? I think some of the nutjobs think that Obama's father wasn't actually Barack Obama Sr., but was rather a Honolulu resident named Frank Marshall Davis, who was alleged to have been a closet member of the Communist Party. Maybe you could argue that the President was in fact a citizen, even if born in Kenya, because in light of this adulterous affair by his mother, both his parents were citizens.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

26. Not that it matter but was she a Muslim ?

That seemed to be a key component of the conspiracy.

[Jim Lane]

34. Sorry, that I don't know

I descended into the pit of birtherism to get information for the Wikipedia article about it, but I haven't revisited the article in a few years.

She probably wasn't a Muslim. Even if she wasn't, I'm sure the birthers would have no trouble saying that she was paid a lot of money and/or that her life was threatened. Then, of course, after she'd done Obama's evil bidding, she was no further use to the conspirators, and they killed her so she could never reveal the truth.

With people like that, the problem, as your OP indicates, is that there's pretty much no evidence you could possibly adduce that would convince them to change their minds. It was falsified, doncha know. As for the absence of evidence supporting their view, that's just proof of how vast and effective the cover-up has been.

[The Wielding Truth]

28. Ok. Let's say he wasn't born here and he is a Muslim, he served as an American in the best

most responsible constitutionally manner. He was honest astute in his dealings respectful in his manners and steadfastly loyal to the values of the best of the US.
It proves more than anything that can be misrepresented in the lies of any birther that he is through and through an American citizen.

Despite their hurtful propaganda Barack Obama is truly a Christian American.

[diva77]

27. I would have asked him where he gets his "news" !!

Probably Faux, Limburger, and the rest 'o the gang.

So sorry you had to have your sauna time violated by wingnut noise pollution

[DemocratSinceBirth]

30. From the "internets"

"So sorry you had to have your sauna time violated by wingnut noise pollution."

It gave me something to write about.

[malaise]

33. No birther will have a conversation with me

You mention Obama as foreigner - I say fuck you and I'm off. I do not entertain racist fuck'ry!