I’m not the man I used to be—birthers don’t get me excited as much any more. There’s a hint to the reason in my recent article, The Fixer. A story just isn’t as interesting without the suspense of not knowing the ending. The ending of the birther story was revealed January 20th of this year, when President Obama began his second, and by law his last, term as President of the United States.
In an attempt to drum up some interest, I checked out the latest book from the local library on conspiracy theories. EBSCO is a distributor of journal articles, and they have a series of books in “The Reference Shelf” series that collect published articles on various topics. Conspiracy Theories was published in 2012, and so is recent enough to cover the release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011, with an article, “Citing ‘Sideshow,’ Obama Offers Full Birth Certificate” by Susan Page and Jackie Kucinich of USA Today, from April 28, 2011. Using University of Utah historian Robert Goldberg as a source, the article says:
Such controversies are stoked by the skepticism about information from the government and other institutions, the vitriol and polarization in American politics, the echo chamber of cable news and the Internet, and even the profusion of movies and TV shows that depict governmental and global conspiracies.
The quote that I noticed particularly, one that is the thumb in the eye of birthers, is:
The release of official documents or reports by commissions rarely settle such issues for everyone.
Or as President Obama put it:
I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.
I mainly got the book for the chapter on chemtrails.
I don’t want you to be sad doc….
“Such controversies are stoked by the skepticism about information from the government and other institutions, the vitriol and polarization in American politics, the echo chamber of cable news and the Internet, and even the profusion of movies and TV shows that depict governmental and global conspiracies.”
I’m inclined to believe that before the birther movement, most of its current adherents were already caught up in anti-government conspiracy theories, especially those having to do with 9/11. When questions about Obama’s birth began to circulate through right-wing websites, they had a new conspiracy to feed their hate and phobias.
So far, I haven’t actually found anything on chemtrails. The book, however, looks promising as it focuses as much on how and why as it does on the conspiracies themselves.
The bottom line: You can’t fix crazy.
I’m having a hard time finding this book. Could you post any more citation info?
Here’s the link at WorldCat (for interlibrary loan):
http://www.worldcat.org/title/conspiracy-theories/oclc/768607290&referer=brief_results
Amazon.com sells it:
http://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Theories-Reference-Shelf-Mccaffrey/dp/0824211154/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374637436&sr=8-1&keywords=The+reference+shelf+conspiracy+theories
and you can get it from the publisher’s web site here:
http://salempress.com/Store/pages/reference_shelf.htm