Food is Good

Went to the Sharpton rally and after it fell behind schedule (as all liberal events tend to do), we headed down to the mall to try and pick up DC Vote shirts and engage in discourse with holders of differing views.

The heat and the walk led one of our party into a state of extreme hunger and we had to head to food. What luck!

On the way, we were discussing presidential birth certificates, and I loudly exclaimed that although I never saw any evidence of the former El Presidente’s place off birth, I believed that he was born in the U.S. (if not the Republic of Texas implied by his accent.)

A woman of a certain age mistook the subject of my comment and started agreeing that she thought it was wrong that “he never showed us his birth certificate.” Sensing her mistake, I informed her that I was discussing the former president Bush’s lack of disclosed birth certificate. I then asked her why she thought that President Obama was not born on US soil. She said that she had never seen his certificate. I said that I thought it had been displayed on most news channels and in several papers and on the internet. She responded: I don’t use the internet.

With my new Android-based smartphone in hand, I offered to pull up a copy and added that while I never saw Bush’s, I still believed that he was born in the States. She rejected my offer and walked quickly away.

Several minutes later, our paths crossed again, and I overheard her say “then he said that president Bush wasn’t a citizen; you just can’t argue with some people.” While I agree with the futile sentiment of her last statement, I didn’t let her misrepresentation of me stand. I politely told her and her companion that I thought no such thing, that president bush was a citizen born in the states (even though I had never seen any evidence of this), and that I had seen an electronic copy of president obama’s birth certificate as well as his birth announcements in the honolulu papers, clearly showing that he was born in our most recent state.

At this point, She pulled me away, and we continued on our way to founding farmers for a late lunch.

Sitting at the bar, I had the opportunity to enjoy a different style of disagreement. I spent most of lunch chatting with a former Annapolis student about the tea party, the wars Afghanistan and Iraq, religious tolerance (and the first amendment), civil liberties, and the upcoming bout U.F.C.

Although this young man and I disagreed about a lot of policies, we both recognized that the other genuinely wanted the US to thrive as a beacon and example of democracy and freedom.

Perhaps, as She posited at dinner, the contexts differed and this is an unfair comparison… Yet the first woman’s unwillingness to consider alternative views or proffered evidence was exactly the same as the people in the hot tub in San Diego: completely willing to state opinions as facts and closed to any contrary position, evidence, or thought.

My theories? Either few tea partiers are willing to engage in discourse, or massed tea partiers feed off of group-think and fear and close themselves off. Or a bit off both.