On Birtherism

I have some cousins. Their parents (my aunt and uncle, obviously) were both opthalmologists in the Air Force..."flight surgeons" if you will. At various points in my life, they've lived in the Philippines, Texas, Boston, Arlington VA, DC, and Germany (I am probably missing one). They have taking regular trips as a family to at least 5 other countries that I am aware of.
Yet, no one I can think of would ever accuse them of being foreign nationals. All three of them look about as anglo-saxon as can be; two are blondes, one a redhead, and all three are tall, pretty girls with blue eyes. They all went to Ivy League schools, did pretty well if I do say so myself (no bias intended, haha) and I think one worked for the CIA for a while. I'm serious.

Anyway the point is that no one has ever doubted their American citizenship, not even when the eldest sister married a British native. Their international travels as youth are just as varied, if not more than, Barack Obama's.

The reason birtherism remains in this country is because of racism. Barack Obama is at least half-black and it is really easy for racists to imply he "isn't from here" because in Lottery Ticket America the power is still almost entirely controlled by old, racist, white men. So "real" American citizens are white too. And when a 230-year-long white Presidential sentence ends with a black exclamation point, there's bound to be someone who doesn't like it. Now, they can't possibly just come out and say that its anathema to the establishment that a black boy from Chicago got elected. That'd be racist! No, its much better to just quietly encourage "the crazies" to undermine Obama's Presidency with this "birther" straw man. "All we want is to see the birth certificate." "Okay, here it is." "No wait, we meant the long form version, of course."

Everyone knows this but won't publicly acknowledge it. It's like now that Obama is President, America wants to be in this magical "post-racism" era...even though the racism is still right there in our faces every day.
So you have this situation, now, where Arizona might deem Barack Obama not white enough not native enough to be on their ballot. The question I have is: who cares? I see no good reason why Obama won't be reelected by a large majority; the GOP field is ridiculous at this point, and unless a better GOP candidate emerges...Obama doesn't need Arizona's electoral votes (which he almost certainly wouldn't get anyway) to be reelected by the rest of the (slightly less openly racist) US of A.


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