The nature of extraordinary evidence.

Looking a little more into this Major Stefan Frederick Cook character and the conspiracy theory behind his cowardice has led me down a very deep, very stupid rabbit hole. It’s not that people are picking on the man I voted for in November. It’s not the inherent bigotry in the disbelief that a black man with a weird name could be a U.S. citizen. It’s that the entire basis for the argument amounts to people putting their fingers into their ears and going “la la la la la not listening la la la la la.”

So the story is pretty much this: a bunch of petty racists got 100% butthurt when their old white dude wasn’t elected president and, lacking any sort of real criticism of the librul soshulist what did win, they decided to start crying about how he’s unable to be president because he wasn’t born on U.S. soil. They’re demanding he produce a valid birth certificate to prove he was, in fact, born in Honolulu as he claims.

Fair enough. Except, he already produced this evidence last summer during the previous bout of “you weren’t born a U.S. citizen so you can’t be president” idiotry. Which makes this second round even stupider than the first, because the new blood has to willfully ignore facts that have already been laid down.

The burden of proof lay on the people making the claim. Before, I suppose, one could argue that the prez-to-be was claiming to be a citizen so he could be the prez. When asked to back that claim, his people released a copy of his birth certificate. Standard claim, standard evidence. Good to go.

Now, though, other people are claiming that the original birth certificate was a forgery. Or that it doesn’t exist. Or that there’s some big cover-up, or who-knows-what-else. This is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence. The onus is up to those people to show why the original evidence wasn’t good enough, or to give us the smoking gun that holds the whole conspiracy together.

Like Holocaust deniers and Flat-Earthers and 9/11 Truthers before them, they’ll probably scream into the void just long enough to perk a few heads, then fade into irrelevence. Expect to see bumper stickers proclaiming who ain’t there [sic] president within the next couple months.

The “born on U.S. soil” requirement is dumb anyway. As far as I’m concerned, if you love this country and are willing to renounce whatever other country you may have been born in to live and work here as a citizen, you’re qualified to run. Even if you’re black and have a weird name.

In other news, I refuse to see Harry Potter and the Incredibly Long Movie. I’m just kind of over summer blockbusters that run three hours for no reason other than to stroke the director’s ego. When you guys are ready to make some more 90-minute brain candy where cars explode if you look at them funny, give me a call and you can have my $8.

5 comments to The nature of extraordinary evidence.

  • My coworker has a “Where’s the birth certificate?” bumper sticker. They already exist. This guy’s an MIT grad and programs great software, so he’s not dumb… and yet, here he is.

  • Egarwaen

    Want to know what’s really dumb about all this?

    McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone. IE, not on US soil. Soil the US was occupying at the time, but not US soil. If Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen, McCain wasn’t either.

  • must be nice to pay only $8 for a movie… I have to pay $10. Speaking of way too long movies… Remember when long movies had breaks in them? I think they were called interludes. Long plays still have them. But, epic ass long movies don’t for some reason. You could get up and go to the bathroom, walk a little and not miss anything? What happened to those? I assumed they went away when movies shrunk to a reasonable length… But now it seems every movie gets longer and longer except now we sit there with a gallon of liquid pressing down on our bladder and our feet numb from lack of circulation…

  • I’m split on the being born in America issue, though who is to say that someone born in the USA is actually more loyal to the country than someone from somewhere else.

    I’m still debating whether to go see HP or not.

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