A Confluence of Conspiracy (Theories)

First, we hear that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen; a conspiracy perpetrated on American citizens, and a theory whose greatest proponent is the intrepid Donald Trump. Mr. Trump, it seems, can’t help periodically roiling the conspiracy waters of the extreme right, even though the President has produced his birth certificate more than once, proving he was born in Hawaii (part of the United States, folks).   

Then we are told that he is a closet Muslim secretly planning on converting our democracy to Sharia,  the strict set of laws set forth by Muhammad and subverting all that we Americans hold dear. Of course the fact that he has been a Christian all his life, even attending the notorious Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church of Christ (“Christ” should be a dead giveaway that he’s Muslim) was also a conspiracy and likewise under suspicion.

Next, we’re told Obama’s social security number is a fraud. I learned this from a fantastic website @ www.obamaconspiracy.org. 


The attack on the U. S. Counsulate in Benghazy Lybia was the result of a planned terrorist attack and not caused by the anti-Muslim movie, made from a small studio in Hollywood. Of course we KNOW that now, but no one knew for certain why the attacks occurred at first and rather than blame elements of the Libyan revolution, Susan Rice cautioned against jumping to conclusions on all the Sunday morning talk shows.  This was interpreted as a conspiracy to withhold information from the American public, thus placing blame on the administration for being TOO careful, TOO cautious and TOO conspiratorial.
    

Now, the conspiracy theorists believe that the jobs report figures, released on Friday by the Department of Labor (which at 7.8 were mildly better than they’ve been in the last few years) were “manipulated” by the WH one month before the election in order to squelch those on the right whose main political mantra has been the President has not been able to bring the economy back. The major proponent of this particular theory is the owlie Jack Welch, former CEO of GE (which used to own NBC) who tweeted the day after our first presidential debate the following:


 "Unbelievable jobs numbers ... these Chicago guys will do anything ... can't debate so change numbers." 


All of these conspiracy theories point to the same thing: hatred.  It doesn’t matter what Obama does or does not do – he is somehow illegitimate.  And why is he illegitimate?  It pains me to say this, but he's black, he had a father from Kenya, he's not a red-neck good ol' boy, he's professorial, he's different.  And being different is a reason for suspicion.

Don’t let hatred take over our country.  We are bigger than this.