St Knick wrote:Neutral123, you've been calm, collected and made respectful arguments this whole time... yet somehow you get labeled "racist/dog whistler/xxxxphobe/bad person" because you challenge ideas/policies of the left. It's there main play.
So just because somebody says repugnant, ignorant sht in a "respectful" manner, it's all good? How the hell does that work?
Take the birther nonsense. That was flagrantly, unequivocally racist, based on nothing other than the fact that Obama was a biracial dude born with a non-traditional (i.e. white-sounding) name. That's it.
Hawaii is an American state, no different for legal purposes than Maine or Montana or New Mexico. There is nothing strange or unusual about that. His mother was an American citizen. His dad was foreign. There is nothing strange or unusual than that. If his dad had been, say, English or French or Dutch -- every bit a non-American as somebody from Kenya -- named William Allen instead of Barack Hussein, it would have been total a non-issue.
(Side note: It reminds me of a poster a while back on the CA board who tried to downplay studies that showed people with ethnic-sounding names were granted interviews and hired at a lower rate than white people not because of racism -- it can never be racism -- but because all the Dontrells and Shaniquas who came before them were bad employees who poisoned the well.)
But of course it was an issue, because the usual conservative shtbags took the same opportunity to blow the dog whistle that Nixon did with law and order, Reagan did with welfare queens, Bush did with prison furloughs, Trump did with immigration and on and on and on. It's fundamentally baked into the cake that is conservatism, especially the American variety. This is what they do.
If they had been legitimately asking questions instead of the usual JAQing off variety, the release of his birth certificate in 08 would have been the end of it. It continued to drag on, driven by Trump and idiot conspiracy theorists like Jerome Corsi, who among a vast array of other nonsense is a 9/11 truther, argued that the U.S. is secretly aiding Iran's nuclear program and wrote a book that Hitler actually escaped the Allies (Roger Stone loved it).
When Obama left office in 16, almost 3/4s of Republicans still doubted his citizenship despite zero tangible evidence to the contrary. Very similar to how almost 3/4s of Republicans still doubt Biden's election win despite zero tangible evidence to the contrary. This is who they are, and this is what they do.
