[politik] By way of example

[mangosteen]

In another forum, someone asked for an explanation of birther behavior that didn't fall under "crazy" and/or "paranoid." This is what I came up with:

When I was in sixth grade, I was on a soccer team. We ended up losing the game 2-1 in the last seconds on what seemed like a very questionable goal. I was angry at the referees, the other team, the league board, etc. I spent the next two months telling anyone who'd listen about how the rules clearly showed that that couldn't have possibly been a goal. I was sure I was right, but no one listened and/or brushed it off as unimportant, which clearly meant that the league board has been bought off. I wrote a Strongly Worded Letter to the league board showing them the specific rules, with diagrams and arrows, showing why that goal shouldn't have been allowed, and I was ignored. Even my team didn't actually care, and said I should just move on.

I was just about as angry as a sixth grader could get because my team lost. I hated the guys on the other team for winning, and I refused to believe it. I threw an inordinate amount of energy into thinking that it Just Wasn't True, brought as many justifications to the table as I could, until I finally gave up two months later because it was in the history books and we were supposed to be playing soccer.

I think it might be something like that.

Comments

[debsquared.livejournal.com]

Fantastic analogy. Add to that situation that it isn't one sixth grader howling into the wind, but thousands of people who reinforce each other in inventing deeper and deeper conspiracy theories.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

A bit like that, and they never actually get around to playing soccer...

[dsrtao]

You can't win all the time.

In a nominal healthy democracy, there are three or more sides to any issue raised for debate, and a relatively strong coalition will keep a significant minority from winning for quite a while.

The US doesn't do coalitions? Nay. The Republicans and the Democrats are both coalition parties. On the Republican side, there are at least two religious factions, a big-business faction, a fiscal conservative faction, pro-gun-rights and an anti-tax faction. On the Democrat side, there are factions which are pro-union, civil liberties, bread-and-circus, social welfare and anti-war.

The Teabaggers are a Know-Nothing break in the coalitions, drawn about 80% from former Republican and Libertarian allies. Their fundamental point appears to be anger at not winning. Few leaders have emerged, possibly because the party doesn't have much in the way of agreement on what they want to accomplish. The birthers are a particularly angry section of these folk.

Meanwhile, you have a choice of lizards to vote for, and you'd better vote for a lizard, because otherwise the wrong lizard might win.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty good analogy. I think it probably captures the emotions well. Although it might be better if there were a couple of other people on the soccer team who worked with you to disprove the goal, and between the several of you, you created larger and larger conspiracies as to why the goal was allowed.