Do you know what I find sad?
It's not otherwise good conservatives believing that Obama's birth certificate is a fake, or that he was born in Kenya, or that even if born in Hawaii he is not a natural born citizen, and is therefore ineligible to be President.
It's not even basing beliefs, in some cases, on flimsy evidence.
It's not even debating the evidence. You learn a lot through debate.
Some of these things are simply opinions, and some are based on the knowledge a person has, which may not be complete. None of us can keep up with everything. And we can disagree on a lot of things and still agree 95% of the time.
What I find sad is when conservatives base beliefs on flimsy or invalid or ridiculous evidence, and then when fellow conservatives say, um, actually, that doesn't make any sense and here's why, and present very valid reasons, and then the conspiracy believers turn on those of us who are really just trying to inject some reality and truth, and accuse their fellow conservatives of being liberals, obamabots, liars, trolls, on and on it goes.
That's the part that I think is sad.
I think it is sad when the government goes to such illegal lengths to hide information from the governed and I don’t hear many conservatives squaking about it or even wondering why and what they are hiding. The government is failing in their duties and needs to be made to perform them.
Yes, I saw how you were treated on some of these threads by the conspiracy mongers. And you even actually got down in the weeds with them and tried to have a rational discussion and got called all sorts of names for your efforts.
These people do not want to have a discussion where they might have to concede to having been wrong. They are die hard conspiracy theorists. Just look at the craziness some of them are buying into now. It's gotten so pathetic that they believe there are smiley faces and secret codes in the "fake" birth certificate now. You just can't reason with this sort of lunacy. What you can do is be voice of reason and denounce this stuff and make it clear to anyone reading threads on FR that we are not a bunch loopy conspiracy theorists. Hard core birthers are a loud minority, that is all. Just like any loud minority, you have to counter them or they will try to shout everyone down and dominate the discussion.