An Insult to Conspiracy Theories

I’m going to tick some people off here, but so be it.

To say that the theory that President Obama was not born in Hawaii is a conspiracy theory is an insult to conspiracy theorists.

The JFK assassination theorists at least have some probable explanation to cover most of their bases. People who challenged whether the death of Vince Foster was a suicide had some serious forensics questions about the matter. Now, most of the people asking the questions may have been amateurs, but there was at least some rhyme and reason to the questions. A good conspiracy theorist has got a story to tell that is endowed with some, at least, superficial plausibility.

What we’re presented with the questions about the President’s birth certificate doesn’t even rise to the level of hypothesis. There is no story of how this supposed conspiracy went down.  I see two possibilities. Note that I’m not saying these stories are true. What I’m saying is that these are the only two scenarios under which the President could have been born outside the United States and his Hawaiian birth certificate could be a forgery:

Theory #1: The Truly Anointed One

Barack Obama was destined by shadowy individuals to become President of the United States from the day he was born. Every step of Obama’s life has been orchestrated to lead him to the Presidency.

“They” arrnaged everything from Obama’s education to the life experiences that would form him. Their only problem? Obama had been born in Kenya, so that required creating the myth of  Obama being born in Hawaii.

The birth certificate was fabricated in 1961, a small bribe paid to an insignificant hospital official who had no idea why “they” wanted to create a false birth certificate for a child named Barack Obama. However, the official got good money for it.  Newspaper reports would be easy enough to fabricate.

Of course, one might ask how such a tentacle-like conspiracy could have allowed the birthplace of Obama to occur in Kenya. Here, we can perhaps credit Mau Mau fanaticism with wanting to stick a finger in the eye of the U.S. Constitution.

So, all we needed was a wealthy shadowy benefactor with Mau Mau sympathies who orchestrated a massive cover-up.

Theory #2: The Benefactor

Rather than the conspiracy from birth, perhaps more promising is the idea of a benefactor who saw in a young Obama, the potential to be president of the U.S. and funded Obama’s education, pointed his political career in the right direction, and took care of this little matter of the birth certificate by getting a forged record of live birth.

The reason then that the original long form birth certificate has never been released is that its a forgery that if exposed to careful analysis would become apparent as happened in the Rathergate story in 2004. Here again, we have to depend on a sophisticated bribed official who planted the forged information.

The  benefactor would also have to had the foresight  to have altered copies of the two newspapers that had Obamas birth annnouncement as well as to ensure that no microfiche version of the papers existed without the fraudulent birth announcements planted.

If either one of these stories were true, then the stories of President Obama’s being born in Kenya would be plausible. However, neither story is all that credible.

Perhaps, it would be slightly  more believable if we had actual names. Even Jim Garrison’s silly JFK theories had some credibility because real names were used. But even with real names, the theory seems a little silly.

And to be honest, I’m more apt to believe Louisiana Drag Queens plotted the JFK than in the global conspiracy that managed to rig the state of Hawaii’s records.

It is popular among the movement that challenges the validity of President Obama’s birthplace to demand, “Where’s the birth certificate?”  This question assumes that the President is under some burden of proof to provide his original long-form birth certificate.

The President is under no such burden. The certificate of live birth from the state of Hawaii that President Obama has provided would be acceptable anywhere that a birth certificate is required. It would be good enough to get him a U.S. passport. The burden of proof is on those who insist there’s not a birth certificate to provide that undermines the credibility of the President’s claim to being born in the United States.

The real question then must be directed at those who insist the President was not born in the United States and that question is, “Where’s the evidence?” The best “evidence” I’ve seen so far? A confused statement from an elderly woman who doesn’t speak English and was asked a leading question through a translator.  The rest doesn’t even rise above the level of political gossip.

The biggest problem may be that we have no proof whatsoever that Obama’s parents flew to Kenya.  And there are some very good reasons to suggest they wouldn’t have.

Flights to Kenya are very expensive and that didn’t change. How would two college students get the money for such a trip?

Secondly, let’s remember that Obama’s mother was pregnant before any supposed flight to Kenya. Given that Obama Sr. was still in school, they would have had to flown out together during the third trimester of pregnancy. So we’re to believe that a very pregnant woman undertook the rigors of international flight, and stayed in Kenya until the time she was going to be deliver the child, knowing that she would be giving birth in a third world country where both her life and the life of her baby would be at a greater risk of death. And for what purpose would she undertake this?

That behavior doesn’t make sense. Of course, human behavior doesn’t always make sense, but before I’m going to believe something so nonsensical occurred, I’d need a little thing called evidence. And wishful supposition is not evidence.

Read more at Adam’s Blog