Article by guest author Tony Nugent, retired religion professor and symbologist who has co-authored articles with me about origins of Mormonism and Christianity.
The current political alliance between President Trump and Roy Moore isn’t new – their collusion goes back at least to 2011.
It was then that the two teamed up to promote the “Birther Lie” that President Obama was not born in the USA. They served as active and vocal leaders of this racist cause over the five-year period from 2011 to 2016.
President Obama’s short form and long form birth certificates were released by the Dept. of Health of the State of Hawaii, in June 2008 and April 2011 respectively. The birth records show that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7:24 pm on August 4, 1961, in the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama and Barack Hussein Obama.
In the face of this documentary evidence, many early “Birthers” gave up the cause. But not Trump and Moore. They relentlessly promoted the lie, claiming in public speeches and interviews that they were privy to inside information that these birth certificates were forgeries.
Moore, who began his involvement in the cause in 2008, declared to World Net Daily in 2010 that there was “substantial evidence that Obama was not born in our country.” Trump, who didn’t publicly join the cause until 2011, tweeted on August 6, 2012 that “an ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.”
Moore’s “substantial evidence” and Trump’s “extremely credible source” never, of course, materialized.
Moore combined his birther claims with the Islamophobic lie that Obama was secretly a Muslim, while Trump cleverly used the lie in his Presidential campaigns of 2012 and 2016 to solidify the nationalist, racist, anti-Obama core of his base.
The political effectiveness of the Birther Lie can be seen in the results of the NBC poll of September 2016. In the responses by registered Republicans only 28% agreed with the statement that “Barack Obama was born in the United States.” Another 41% disagreed, and 31% stated that they didn’t know one way or the other. The Birther Lie appears to have sowed doubt about the President being born in the U.S., and thus the legitimacy of his Presidency, among nearly three-quarters of registered Republicans.
Trump officially gave up the “Birther Lie” on Sept. 16, 2016, with Moore doing so 3 months later. When Trump gave up the lie, however, he replaced it with another one – naming his opponent Hillary Clinton as the originator of the whole birther idea, again of course without any evidence. And now, in late 2017, Trump has apparently decided to revive the lie, letting people around him know that he still believes it.
The “Birther Lie” shows us that Trump and Moore are inveterate liars. So why should we believe them when they completely deny the credible testimonies of the more than 21 women who accuse one or the other of these men of sexual molesting them? Once again, these “birther buddies” would like us to ignore credible evidence and believe more of their big fat lies.
Guest author Tony Nugent is a symbologist, an expert in ancient symbols. He taught at Seattle University for fifteen years in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies and is an ordained Presbyterian minister.
AwayPoint 
Thank you for being tireless. These lies are so wearisome that its easy to throw your hands up and walk away. I hope you never do.
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The shocking thing is not that narcissists with no moral or ethical principles would be persistent liars, The shocking thing is that so many authoritarian followers, including conservative Christians, lay aside their professed beliefs for political votes on their pet social issues. Thanks for keeping this disgusting tactic public.
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Roy Moore, who preyed on teen girls, co-authored a book saying women shouldn’t be politicians with Doug Phillips the head of the evangelical organization Vision Forum that was shut down after it was revealed Phillips psychologically and sexually abused a 15-year-old girl. https://thinkprogress.org/moore-study-course-vison-forum-135402ed8816/
Of course, Moore continues to deny everything. And he challenged Jimmy Kimmel to prove him wrong, saying “that if the comedian “wants to mock our Christian values” he should come to Alabama “and do it man to man.”” https://www.salon.com/2017/11/30/roy-moore-picks-a-fight-with-jimmy-kimmel-after-comedian-crashes-alabama-rally/
Moore should know that if you’re going to challenge someone to a school yard fight behind the gym after school, you better show up or you’ll just look like the foolish bully you are. Jimmy called his bluff: “I accept the invitation. I will come down there….and we’ll talk about Christian values. … Kimmel explained that he happens to be a Christian as well … So if you’re open to it, when we sit down, I will share with you what I learned at my church,” Kimmel explained. “At my church, forcing yourself on underaged girls is a no-no. Some even consider it to be a sin. Not that you did that, of course. Allegedly.” https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/jimmy-kimmel-calls-roy-moores-bluff-best-possible-way
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Valuable, as always. So how do we find some realistic basis to believe that we’ll survive this combination of majority fear of becomiing minorities, plus the further disproportionate economic depression of all but the wealthy ? Allan Avery 253 720 9798. allanmerry@allanmerry.net
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That is a very good question, Allan. Well framed.
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The whole “birther” thing, and how so many people fell for it, is just incredibly bizarre to me. I attended high school w/ Barry Obama in Hawaii, where he was known as a “kamaaina,” meaning “child of the land,” i.e. born in Hawaii. And I know a reliable witness who met baby Barry when his mom brought him home from the hospital in Honolulu. What’s amazing is that otherwise seemingly sane, rational people (other than being Republicans) have refused to believe me, accusing me of being a “plant” or “troll.” One friend even said to me, “But nobody from his school days remembers him!” Um, hello, I do – I just told you. To this day there are still people who call me a liar because they’d rather believe fake news than a real person.
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That’s fascinating. The lengths to which people will go to defend a belief once it takes hold continue to impress me. I wish we understood more about circumstances under which people are capable of changing their minds and not.
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This new book, “The Enigma of Reason”, might have some explanations. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
“Stripped of a lot of what might be called cognitive-science-ese, Mercier and Sperber’s argument runs, more or less, as follows: Humans’ biggest advantage over other species is our ability to coöperate. Coöperation is difficult to establish and almost as difficult to sustain. For any individual, freeloading is always the best course of action. Reason developed not to enable us to solve abstract, logical problems or even to help us draw conclusions from unfamiliar data; rather, it developed to resolve the problems posed by living in collaborative groups.
“Reason is an adaptation to the hypersocial niche humans have evolved for themselves,” Mercier and Sperber write. Habits of mind that seem weird or goofy or just plain dumb from an “intellectualist” point of view prove shrewd when seen from a social “interactionist” perspective.
“Consider what’s become known as “confirmation bias,” the tendency people have to embrace information that supports their beliefs and reject information that contradicts them. Of the many forms of faulty thinking that have been identified, confirmation bias is among the best catalogued; it’s the subject of entire textbooks’ worth of experiments.”
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Fascinating. Thank you, Perry.
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