“And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead?” Isa 8:19
There were a couple of interesting things coming together in the last few weeks that seem to have a common thread. The thread is that some people find an idea so compelling that they become blind to any facts which undermine their position.
One is the ongoing Pro-Life opposition to the Obama election. The second is a report regarding the death penalty. The third is the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear a suit challenging President-Elect Obama’s citizenship.
One of the dominant themes of Senator McCain’s campaign was that you can’t trust President-Elect Obama. That point of view appealed to Pro-Lifers, Racists, Libertarians, Liberal-haters, Gay-haters, Free-Marketers, Isolationists, and many who legitimately questioned Senator Obama’s experience. McCain may have succeeded in sowing seeds of doubt regarding Obama, but he failed to convince a majority of voters that he was a better choice.
Of the whole spectrum of Obama opponents, the Pro-Lifers seemed most shocked by outcome. Many refuse to accept the election. Some predict the God will swiftly and decisively punish our country and all those who voted for Obama.
What is fascinating about this position is that, in practical terms, the past eight years of Pro-Life governance did not substantially restrict abortion rights in this country. It is also highly likely given the financial crisis that we are facing, that the next four to eight years won’t see substantial relaxation of abortion restrictions either. So the operative question is what motivates this reaction?
A group advocating changes in our death penalty laws released a report indicating that it now costs more to execute a prisoner than it does to incarcerate them for life. The rest of the report documents that far fewer capital cases are being brought in the courts because states recognize that it is both expensive to prosecute these cases and many convictions end up getting overturned as new evidence becomes available. So the operative question is why do we still have a death penalty?
The Supreme Court recently refused to take up a case claiming that Obama didn’t meet the constitutional citizenship requirements to be President. There is a second case of a similar nature also making its way to the Supreme Court. It will also likely also be rejected. The mainstream media including nonpartisan fact finding organizations have repudiated all of the claims surrounding this controversy. So the operative question is why does this controversy continue to flourish on the Internet even though it has no substance in fact?
The answer to all of the questions appears to be a conspiracy culture described in a Salon article on the citizenship controversy.
“There’s no amount of evidence or data that will change somebody’s mind,” says Michael Shermer, who is the publisher of Skeptic magazine and a columnist for Scientific American, and who holds an undergraduate and a master’s degree in psychology. “The more data you present a person, the more they doubt it … Once you’re committed, especially behaviorally committed or financially committed, the more impossible it becomes to change your mind.”
Any inconvenient facts are irrelevant. People who believe in a conspiracy theory “develop a selective perception, their mind refuses to accept contrary evidence,” Chip Berlet, a senior analyst with Political Research Associates who studies such theories, says. “As soon as you criticize a conspiracy theory, you become part of the conspiracy.”
Let’s examine each of these in the light of this evaluation.
The citizen conspirators are a classic example that requires little additional explanation. When confronted with Obama’s birth announcement in a HI newspaper, the citizen conspirators respond that the announcement doesn’t say where Obama was born, and even if it did, Obama’s parents could have lied, or Obama’s grandparents could have lied, to cover up the fact that he was born somewhere else. I’ve also read some who have suggested that Obama’s real purpose of returning to HI late in his campaign was to tie up the loose ends around this birth certificate cover-up rather than visit his dying grandmother. The reality is that a mountain of simple evidence supports the same simple conclusion that the Supreme Court action reflected. Obama was born in Hawaii and as a result, is a US citizen qualified to be elected President.
Those who support the death penalty have a similar myopia. They are fixated on punishment rather than practicality. As a result, they are willing to spend more money to kill someone rather than imprison them for life. And they are willing to run the fairly high risk that they may be killing an innocent man in order to make sure that they kill the guilty. At the end of the day it makes no difference that the death penalty may no longer be pursued by states attorneys. All that is important is that it is on the books and available for use when the public outrage demands it.
Finally, there is an aspect of this that is even reflected in the Pro-Life movement. That aspect is revealed when you talk with Pro-Lifers about the issue of reducing abortions. You would think on the surface, that this is something Pro-Lifers would welcome regardless of where it comes from. Even if I don’t agree with the premise that life begins at conception, if I’m willing to agree that abortion is bad social policy, shouldn’t that represent common ground?
What I’ve discovered is that, at least for some, the Pro-Life position has nothing to do with the number of abortions that are performed in this country and everything to do with eliminating abortion as choice. It is all about imposing a particular morality rather than addressing a social need. In the case of Barak Obama, this is manifested in the view that it doesn’t matter what Barak Obama does or doesn’t do to reduce the number of abortions in this country. As long as he persists in his view that a woman should have a right to choose an abortion, he is supporting a sinful act, is unqualified for the office, and those who support him are unqualified to call themselves Christians.
So just like the citizenship conspirators and the death penalty advocates, there is an aspect of irrationality in some Pro-lifers. It doesn’t matter that the number abortions in this country is going down at a fairly constant rate regardless of administration. It doesn’t matter that the best years of abortion reduction have occurred during the years when income for the poor rose. It doesn’t matter that good education and easy access to contraception have a direct affect on the birthrate among teenagers. All that matters is morality.
This is very similar to the conversations with the citizenship conspirators. They claim that they don’t oppose Obama politically. All that matters is the constitution. Or the death penalty advocates. For them all that matters is justice.
For all three groups, the world easily divides into believers and non believers and what’s worse, they don’t listen to anything a non-believer has to say. That’s because they prefer the peep and mutter of familiar spirits to any truth that may upset their world view.
I don’t know how a democracy effectively handles sections of the electorate who refuse to engage in a rational discussion. The last election proved that these groups are in the minority. Hopefully this minority will recognize that the issues which affect our suvival affect them too, and are far more serious and in need of their attention than those issues which seem to have them mesmerized.
