Believers in Anything
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G.K. Chesterton never did say that the problem with atheism is not that it leads men to believe in nothing but that it leads them to believe in anything. That’s just as well, because the truth in that cliche is broader than the words themselves (in any permutation) denote. A more general statement might be: when you have abandoned trust in established authorities, you have not thereby ceased to trust authorities; instead, you may be placing your trust in new, possibly worse ones.
The birthers are a good illustration. Commenter Delmar Jackson writes in response to Daniel Larison’s post on birthers and nationalism, “I am not a Birther, but I have lost my trust of the media. Can you tell me why it took the National Enquirer to break the story on John Edwarrds cheating on his wife during the primaries?. The mainstram nedia ignored the story while Edwards continued to take votes from Hillary allowing Obama to win.” There’s a valid point here: “responsible” news outlets chose not to report on Edwards’s affair, just as in earlier days they chose not to report Kennedy’s affairs or Franklin Roosevelt’s physical disability (or his affairs, for that matter). The “privilege” politicians receive for their embarrassing personal secrets may extend to Republicans as well — The State newspaper in South Carolina knew about Gov. Mark Sanford’s indiscretions months before his disappearing act prompted them to expose him. These are just a few instances of news the reading public might care about that the media refuses to report. The litany of things that the media does report that aren’t true — see Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Janet Cook, for starters; you might add, on a slightly different note, Judith Miller and Mike Wallace — is too long to recite. Skepticism toward the mainstream media is well warranted. As is distrust in public officials, who have been lying to Americans about elections, wars, and the economy for a couple of centuries now.
But skepticism about media and political authorities doesn’t logically entail belief in wildly improbable notions like Barack Obama’s Kenyan nativity. That doesn’t follow logically, but for a lot of right-wingers, it does follow psychologically.
I’m skeptical of claims that all human beings have a more or less equally powerful need for faith. Clearly some people are more superstitious than others. Among religious believers, some are theologically inclined and others are mystically and emotionally inclined. Among nonbelievers, some buy into parascientific New Age mumbo-jumbo or imbue science with a religious aura, and others are more epistemically humble. Some number of people do, however, have a compelling need indeed to believe in improbable things that conform to ideological preferences. The toppling of corrupt authorities doesn’t do anything to decrease the credulous and authoritarian tendencies of this subset — it only unleashes those tendencies to find wilder, more ideologically satisfying objects.
Stalin is an example of the ideological true believer. He was both a committed ideological Marxist and a very paranoid man. He suppressed traditional religion in the Soviet Union. And when empirical science contradicted his ideology– as genetics certainly contradicted the belief in human equality — Stalin promoted the nonscientific but “politically correct” ideas of Trofim Lysenko. The birthers are not Stalinists, but they do subscribe to a kind of right-wing Lysenkoism. The ideology that insists the mainstream media and government cannot be trusted (and it’s true, they very often can’t) also positively affirms the “truth” of preposterous claims that fit the believer’s paranoia. In other words, ideology efficiently turns skepticism into belief. And that’s only putting the problem in epistemological terms. In political terms, it converts skepticism of government power into affirmation of government power — from conspiracy theories about Clinton (there were plenty of those) and Obama to dogmatic support for, say, George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. The ideological impulse is primary, however, and its object is secondary. Thus Bush or even Palin could conceivably be subjected to the skeptical phase of the ideology, which would then find a new object for its affirmative phase. If Bush or Palin aren’t sufficiently devoted, the ideological authority will descend upon Alan Keyes or Orly Taitz.
There may be a vicious circle here where distrust of flawed mainstream authorities leads to trust in flawed fringe authorities, which in turn produces more alienation from the mainstream (I’m not just talking about the center-left media and government here, but mainstream as in ordinary, non-ideological people). The way out of this cycle of paranoia would be to burnish some less flawed, more-or-less mainstream authorities — a church? disinterested scholarship? anything could do the trick. But once you’ve sunk deep enough into the belief that you can’t trust anyone who questions an anti-mainstream belief, you can only trust people whom nobody else trusts, getting out of the hole becomes impossible. At that point, your ideology has redefined up as down, so that attempting to climb out means only digging deeper.
Filed under: Ideology
[...] McCarthy warns about the logical consequences of the “Birther” [...]
One major aspect of the “Birther” controversy that is carefully not addressed in this article is why Obama is stonewalling. If there’s nothing wrong with his documents, why not show them? If he’s not hiding his citizenship status, what IS he hiding? He is obviously hiding something. What is so embarrassing in the documents that he allows the controversy to continue?
Who is this controversy hurting? By choosing not to release the original of his birth certificate, Obama can keep this controversy going, distracting his critics from his policies, making them look foolish to ordinary Americans, and causing political damage to Republicans like Mike Castle who (terrible though he is) can actually win in blue states. Obama will keep this thing going as long as he can because it’s only helping him.
Implicit in the discussion of the Birthers is the amusing democratic delusion that everyone with a complaint to make or a rumor to share deserves public acknowledgment and some kind of answer. Frankly, were I President Obama, I’d not even politely acknowledge the existence of the Birthers, finding their imbecile concerns beneath my dignity not as President but as a grownup and a man who chooses what caliber of human being he will and will not engage in discussion. To the extent he also stonewalls the Birthers for political gain, and plays them for the colossal jackasses they are collectively and singly, down to the humblest among them, he has earns from this non-Obamaphile a residual measure of the respect due to shrewd operators in any low trade.
I’ve dealt in like manner with questions from colleagues I did not wish to dignify, and found in the howls of wounded outrage, cold shoulders, and broken friendships resulting not side-effects but dividends, and fortification for my self-respect as a gentleman of honor. That, and enough belly laughs in private, and especially in public before my interrogators’ newly-murderous faces to ride out a year without cable. My residual regrets, from proverbial Monday hindsight, came in the form of wistful hopes foregone that I had failed to stonewall the creeps sooner, and not played the patrician quite so much in the attempted masking of my Olympian, almost otherworldy, even (thank you, Snagglespuss, that will be all, already), disdain.
The reason President Obama is not showing you or me his birht certificate is HE DOES NOT HAVE TO! He was a seated senator swarn in by the big dick himself Vice-President Richard Cheney. Now you have shades of people accusing Marshall of being a communist.
He showed the Hawaiian State-issued certification of live birth – which is all anyone is allowed to request in his position, is it not? It’s all that’s required in a court of law for proof, is it not? Wasn’t the so-called original, Ur-paperwork destroyed anyway, in the digitalisation of records? I’ve been issued a birth cert twice – neither is more “original”, and I believe my “original” paperwork is not a cert but an entry in a book.
Were I he, I’d let these people make all the rope they want too. Politically, personally, he has absolutely nothing to lose from ignoring them.
Interesting View…
Just as interesting, all of the comments to-date deal with the “birthers” or the substance of their particular delusion, so I heartily agree with your point:
“Some number of people do, however, have a compelling need indeed to believe in improbable things that conform to ideological preferences.”
My concern is this. How have our admittedly flawed media, and other institutions of civil society been so overwhelmed by the rants of those whose ideology and belief system has overtaken their reason?
“The way out of this cycle of paranoia would be to burnish some less flawed, more-or-less mainstream authorities — a church? disinterested scholarship? anything could do the trick.”
I hope you’re right, but I fear that too many dollars and political gains are cynically tied up in fostering, amplifying and exploiting fringe memes for this to stop of its own volition. What would happen at FOX, CNN and MSNBC if all they had were verifiable news stories and honest, informed comment? How would they fill the remaining 20 hours each day?
Excellent post; the point that “ideology efficiently turns skepticism into belief” is quite true, I think. Those who demand a birth certificate for Constitutional reasons are picking and choosing what suits their prejudices, and non-racial at that. (It is too bad that one must often qualify this word). Pressed to support other clauses in the Constitution which counter their ideology, their cognitive machinery halts.
I have stated for some time now that the birth certificate issue – regardless of merit – acts as a smokescreen for the genuine legal question regarding Obama’s birth as a Great British citizen – a fact he openly admits is true. (The issue of whether Obama is currently a citizen/subject of Great Britain and/or other nations is the subject of a forthcoming report I will soon publish.)
- Whether Obama was not born in Hawaii is a conspiracy theory which would include the acquiescence of a long cast of characters.
- Whether a person who was a citizen of a foreign nation – at the time of his birth – can be President and Commander In Chief of the US armed forces is a legal question, not a conspiracy theory.
It’s been very convenient for Obama’s protectors to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater by lumping this genuine legal question in with the conspiracy theory. When my case was being litigated, virtually every main stream media source other than the Washington Times – where Tom Ramstack interviewed me and checked everything before publishing an accurate story – mentioned my case as a conspiracy theory concerning Obama’s BC despite all of my efforts to keep the issues separate.
http://naturalborncitizen.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/major-cooks-pleadings-waived-obamas-british-birth-issue-so-judge-lazzaras-holding-is-technically-accurate/
The ideological conservatives who instill baseless fear, and smear adversaries with ignorant rants, harm the conservative cause. Conservatives are now labeled as “Birthers & Deathers” (Palin’s igorant death panel comment) who viciously attack Obama by yelling “Natzi!” The “Birther” movement was a dead issue that backfired just as the “Death Panel” will backfire. As the informed electorate should know, Obama’s birth certificate had been confirmed when he was sworn in as a Senator by former Vice President Dick Cheney, and when a “certified” copy of it was made available for all to see.