Embracing the Crazy

Remember the Bush years? Yeah, yeah. I know -- you'd rather forget. But stay with me here, ace, because this is important. Throughout that post-9/11 Age of Darkness and Despair, a whole segment of the left wing slipped off the deep end and believed that the Bush administration caused 9/11. Hell, you're probably already familiar with the 9/11 Truth movement. Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, now enjoying his role as the scourge of Goldman Sachs, made an interesting comparison between the movement and the right-wing's swirly eyed Jesus freaks in his book The Great Derangement.

But Taibbi wrote that screed before the birthers. You're probably also already familiar with these folks -- the people who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, including birth certificate copies easily available all across the Internet, -- that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia or Mars or the Seventh Ring of Hell.

Now, the closest the 9/11 Truth movement ever got to mainstream media were a few one-sided, easily dismissed documentaries like Loose Change. But the birthers? Hell, they've got their own TV show in Glenn Beck's nightly "news" hour -- despite the man's insistence immediately after the presidential election that he wouldn't entertain speculation about Obama's birth certificate, the subject has come up numerous times on his Web site, radio show and TV show since then. And the crazy doesn't stop with Beck, though it certainly does reach illustrious heights there. No, even more mainstream quasi-journalists have embraced the birther cause. CNN's Lou Dobbs has hopped on the birther bandwagon, and, natch, Rush Limbaugh is all about it.

This is the precise equivalent of people like Keith Olbermann or Rachel Maddow declaring that maybe the 9/11 Truth movement has a point, or that "no one really knows" whether Bush had anything to do with 9/11. And yet, were any of the liberal mainstream media to make such a nutty statement, they'd be rightly excoriated by people from all walks of life, except the tiny group actually in the movement. Still, the declarations of Beck, Dobbs and Limbaugh come and go with only a bit of outrage by the people on the opposite side of the political fence. As always, IOKALAYAR.

But why? Why the warm embrace of the deeply insane? The only possible reason is that the insane has become the base. Teabaggers and birthers are now the mainstream of the Republican Party. It has lost so many moderate voices that this nuttery is all it has left. A couple months ago, back when there was a debate over who was the leader of the Republican Party, I wrote a post here at HuffPo saying that, among the major candidates, the leader was almost assuredly Rush Limbaugh. I was wrong. Like Beck and even Dobbs, Limbaugh is catering to his remaining audience. He works for them, not the other way around.

The scary truth is that this is the face of the Republican Party.

Batten down the hatches, ace. It's going to get a whole lot weirder.

Comments

[JustBNice]

WHY

HAVEN'T SOME DECENT REPUBLICANS SPOKEN OUT AGAINST THIS

ADBSURD ATTACK by THE BIGOTED BIRTHERS

??

[Jeff Cunningham]

Two theories:

A) There's no such thing as a decent Republican anymore, or

B) Any decent Republicans left are afraid of having to deal with Mr. Bouncey-Bounce should they speak out of turn. Right, Michael Steele?

[darkposter]

the evidence is overwhelming. and birthers are all crazies. SO WHY NOT JUST RELEASE THE ORIGINAL LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE?

[TardisJockey]

Because, if Hawaii is anything like the other states I've lived in, the ORIGINAL birth certificate is part of a big book with pages that don't come out. you can never release the ORIGINAL. you can only ever release CERTIFIED COPIES.

Those copies are everywhere! Try Googling it.

[nk007]

You have inverted the question! If birthers are not crazy why don't they provide proof that Obama was not born in Hawaii, USA? It is the accuser who must prove his case against the accused and not the other way around. So far, all I have seen is hatred, racism and convoluted theories offered as proof that Obama is not a citizen. If birthers can't produce proof that Obama was not born in the USA, they should shut up.

[RobHughey]

THIS!

THIS is what I have been saying all along!

And you say it perfectly.

[Bailey Reynolds]

I was a lifelong Republican; but saw the cukoo writing on the wall back in 2002 in the runup to the invasion of Iraq. At that point, I saw the party was demanding complete allegience - even over the constitution (which I swore to uphold and protect against enemies both foreign AND domestic). My ties dissolved and I became an independent - and critic of all NEO CON leeches and the criminal cabal (Neo Con host) that was the Bush administration.

I cannot believe how the Republican party has devolved into such an assortment of angrily deranged, bigoted and racist know-nothings. I suppose they have been there all along and I should've seen or known that; at least in the past, they did not control the party or the message. I think if Ronald Reagan were alive today, he'd quit the GOP just like he quit the rotted husk that the Democratic party had become (back then). Despite what his critics claim, Reagan was a pragmatist, not a racist (or know nothing).

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Republican party went the way of the Whigs. They've sure earned its complete destruction. Folks in the birther movement are absolutely unhinged; and those in the media who cover it are just as bad. It's no wonder the MSM is irrelevant.

[nylibgrrl]

Well spoken and I agree with you except on the idea that Reagan was some kind of shining conservative god. I hardly think most people, other than the very neocons we both abhor, consider Reagan's trickle-down economics to have been/be, very "pragmatic."

[AlwaysRightLeftist]

I'm not a 'Truther' but there are plenty of holes and inconsistencies surrounding 9/11 to allow for a lot of speculation, even if it does end up being wrong. The birth certificate thing is in no way comparable. It's just blind hat.red.

[nylibgrrl]

I agree. At the very least, Bush was responsible for ignoring intelligence info about ObL.

[AlwaysRightLeftist]

Most Truthers are Libertarian. Left-wing?

[doug108]

But Taibbi wrote that screed before the birthers. You're probably also already familiar with these folks -- the people who believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, including birth certificate copies easily available all across the Internet,...


This a human problem, not just a Republican problem, as Sweeney rightly noted. The fact that people can maintain beliefs, in spite of the evidence or lack thereof, is a major psychological flaw. It is truly the root of all evil.

[GrafZeppelin127]

" 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though if its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control,' they called it; in Newspeak, 'doublethink.'.
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety, consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed."

- 1984, Signet Classic ed., pp. 34-35; (c) 1949 by George Orwell.

[Dosadi]

These birthers are really just prejudiced people who cannot face the fact that a Black man is now President. They will grasp at any straw thrown to them for they cannot bring themselves around to thinking rationally. They are prejudiced and afraid. They need mental help. If Obama's health care bills pass we can then begin to get them the help they so desperately need. I pray for these lost souls nightly.

[JustBNice]

Let's all pray they don't get violent.

[MDCambridge]

Do notice that the powers-that-be in the Republican party have made no effort to right this situation; they like their constituency irrational, emotional, and foaming at a problem, even if the problem is non-existent. Their constituency is highly controllable (mob mentality) as long as they don't think as individuals.

[Dosadi]

Its not just the Republican party that does this. This is basic propaganda. It has worked for centuries and will cintinue to work. People as individuals are smart and somewhat hard to fool. Once you get them to think as a group they become docile and stupid. That is why we hear so much about being patriotic and American, it allows the government to control us. Time to wake up.

[ScottEdgey]

Dan,

I'd like to know how much research you put into finding out what the 9/11 Truth Movement is saying and what they're asking for. Have you done any actual research?

This article is a blatant example of an uninformed person writing about a topic that they have no clue about. You're attempting to associate groups based on your opinion of them. Are you a paid reporter, or are you a volunteer for HuffPo?

There's a mountain of evidence that points to a grand conspiracy involving the powers-that-be of the time 9/11 occurred. If you'd take the time to research this subject, then you'd likely not be writing articles like this.

I challenge you to do some actual research about what really happened on 9/11. Let me know if you need help, and I'll gladly get you pointed in the right direction. I've spent hundreds of hours studying the evidence that's available, and have compared what each side is saying/claiming. Be warned though...knowing this stuff isn't fun.

[TardisJockey]

If I were to spend hours studying the collective works of Dr. Seuss, I, too, could come up with some scary mountains of evidence that proves Betsy Ross was the Queen of the Cat People and she accidentally created the American Flag while playing with some string.

Be warned....knowing this stuff makes me borderline disfunctional.

[ScottEdgey]

What a perfectly appropriate rebuttal for a serious topic. Your statement here makes so much sense. Why did I think of that? (sarcasm)

So TJ, how much time have you spent studying the evidence? Are you satisfied with the official story handed down via the 9/11 Commission?

[SuesW]

for example ... reading the posts below mine ... I'm feeling a whole lot saner

[SuesW]

I think we like to embrace the deeply insane cause it makes us feel ... sane. And smug. Smug and sane. lol

[Ljoe]

Or, the more than 700 architects and engineers who have put their reputations on the line by signing the petition for a new 9/11 investigation. http://ae911truth.org, or the fighter pilots, generals and other military officers who question the government version, also available at http://patriotsquestion911.com Sweeney seems to be suggesting the 9/11 truth movement is waning. Nothing could be further from the truth.

[AlanMiller22]

Mr. Sweeney blithely dismisses the entire 9/11 Truth Movement by referring to a low-budget online documentary.

Yet he ignores the hundreds of experienced U.S. government veterans who challenge the official account of 9/11. For example, see:

41 U.S. Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence Agency Veterans Challenge the Official Account of 9/11 – Official Account of 9/11: “Terribly Flawed,” “Laced with Contradictions,” “a Joke,” “a Cover-up” http://patriotsquestion911.com/#Articles