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The right has Obama birth certificate conspiracies, the left has Russian election conspiracies. Different sides of the same stupid coin.

alehul 9y ago
True. The difference in scope, however, is critical. One was rather irrelevant, while the other will result in more distant relations with our Cold War rival, serious witch-hunting, and most importantly: further polarization of the U.S. political climate.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- macintux 9y ago
  You don't think the "you don't belong here" undertones (both of Mr. Obama personally and blacks in general) weren't polarizing? "You lie!" was such a telling moment.
  - macintux 9y ago
    And perhaps more pernicious than the disrespect to the man while in office is the way it has tainted everything he did. Obamacare, modeled after a Republican health care reform, must be repealed; the Iran deal must be torn up; hell, they didn't even let him put a Supreme Court Justice on the bench. The GOP basically decided that Kenyan-born interloper was illegitimate and thus everything he did was too.
    - akhilcacharya 9y ago
      And then they elected the guy that made those claims popular again! Remember, birtherism was relegated to the fringe (basically just Orly Taitz) until Trump revived it in 2011 and nearly started beating Romney in the polls. Sure enough, the same thing happened when he called Mexicans and illegal immigrants rapists and murderers. People are fooling themselves if they think a big part of Trumps ascendancy isn’t pure racial animus.
      - api 9y ago
        I still think his ascendancy is due to economic depression in the interior. This isn't mutually exclusive with your view though. Racism and xenophobia are always ascendant during times of economic stress, and the state sometimes encourages this as a place to direct the peoples' anger. Trump and Bannon are selling an old brand of opiate.
- akhilcacharya 9y ago
  When a foreign power attacks us the last thing I’ll worry about is “more distant relations with our rival”. If they wanted to keep decent relations they shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and shot down an airliner.
johnnyb9 9y ago
I don't think the Washington Post was posting 5 times a day about Obama birth certificates.
- kasey_junk 9y ago
  Fox News & Breitbart were...

alehul 9y ago

True. The difference in scope, however, is critical. One was rather irrelevant, while the other will result in more distant relations with our Cold War rival, serious witch-hunting, and most importantly: further polarization of the U.S. political climate.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
macintux 9y ago
You don't think the "you don't belong here" undertones (both of Mr. Obama personally and blacks in general) weren't polarizing? "You lie!" was such a telling moment.
- macintux 9y ago
  And perhaps more pernicious than the disrespect to the man while in office is the way it has tainted everything he did. Obamacare, modeled after a Republican health care reform, must be repealed; the Iran deal must be torn up; hell, they didn't even let him put a Supreme Court Justice on the bench. The GOP basically decided that Kenyan-born interloper was illegitimate and thus everything he did was too.
  - akhilcacharya 9y ago
    And then they elected the guy that made those claims popular again! Remember, birtherism was relegated to the fringe (basically just Orly Taitz) until Trump revived it in 2011 and nearly started beating Romney in the polls. Sure enough, the same thing happened when he called Mexicans and illegal immigrants rapists and murderers. People are fooling themselves if they think a big part of Trumps ascendancy isn’t pure racial animus.
    - api 9y ago
      I still think his ascendancy is due to economic depression in the interior. This isn't mutually exclusive with your view though. Racism and xenophobia are always ascendant during times of economic stress, and the state sometimes encourages this as a place to direct the peoples' anger. Trump and Bannon are selling an old brand of opiate.
akhilcacharya 9y ago
When a foreign power attacks us the last thing I’ll worry about is “more distant relations with our rival”. If they wanted to keep decent relations they shouldn’t have invaded Ukraine and shot down an airliner.

johnnyb9 9y ago

I don't think the Washington Post was posting 5 times a day about Obama birth certificates.

kasey_junk 9y ago
Fox News & Breitbart were...