Losing Touch With Reality

[chris_gerrib]

There are days that I think America has a real problem, namely that its citizens are loosing touch with reality. A few examples:

The Food and Drug Administration

I had a conversation via email with a PhD in economics and professor at a prestigious university. At the end of the conversation, he told me, in all seriousness, that the Food and Drug Administration was not the reason we had safe food in America. I asked about Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and was assured that, if I took the good Professor's courses, I would be enlightened about why the FDA was "corporatism."

I declined the offer. I will continue to "proudly flaunt my ignorance" as he suggested in his email.

Birthers

"Birthers" is the derogatory term for people who claim that Obama wasn't born in the US or otherwise isn't a natural-born citizen. It's easily disproved bullshit. What I found most interesting, though, was the graph below, showing the concentration of this bullshit in certain regions of the country. (Source = Political Animal blog)



In the South, the last bastion of the Republican Party, this idea is approaching common knowledge. In the rest of the country, it's lunatic fringe.

The bottom line is that it's real hard to have a rational discussion with irrational people. Maybe I should stop trying? Or is that too rational? ;-)

Comments

[stonekettle.com (from livejournal.com)]

Interesting graph regarding the Birthers, Chris. I wonder how accurate the data is, not that I have any reason, or even inclination, to doubt its accuracy. Based on my own recent experience, I'd say it's damned close.

I've often harbored the suspicion that America would have been better off to let the South secede from the Union - this graph only reinforces that. ;)

Then again, I suspect that my own state of Alaska would show pretty much the same results as the South.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

It's a Daily Kos-commissioned poll. I should say that my little corner of Illinois (DuPage county, full of Chicago suburbs) is heavily Republican but I personally haven't met a Birther.

Republican and stupid are not yet ENTIRELY the same thing.

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

p>America would have been better off to let the South secede from the Union - yes, she would have, for a number of interlocking reasons, not least of which being that the States were allowed to do that, on paper anyway. This is not taught in schools today, but it's quite true: It was a voluntary union of States. Until someone decided to test that idea.