In a two part series for Esquire, writer John H. Richardson goes where few of us dare to tread - deep into the stronghold of the birthers, that group of people who are convinced that Hawaii is a foreign country and that Barack Obama is an illegitimate president. (Where these people were when Bush 43 was installed, I have no idea...)

But more frightening than their fractured logic is the not-quite-hidden undertone of the movement. As Richardson writes:

By focusing on the "news hook" about our president's birth certificate, we are ignoring the broader mixture of paranoid apocalyptic fantasies that feed this troubling - and growing, perhaps into the tens of millions - group of people. People who told me they're not just looking for the president's birth certificate. They're looking for his death certificate.

Richardson provides a list of scary events leading up to these events, including this now-notorious gem:

4. Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said she wanted her constituents "armed and dangerous" because Obama was planning "re-education camps for young people." She also said that "Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing.

These are the words of an elected official.

And of course, there's our buddy Glenn Beck, Mr. Healthcare-is-Secretly-Reparations:

But nobody vibrated with the new sense of alarm more vividly than Fox's new talk-show host, Glenn Beck. "The year is 2014. All the banks have been nationalized," he began one show. "Unemployment is about between 12 percent and 20 percent. Dow is trading at 2,800. The real-estate market has collapsed. Government and unions control most of business, and America's credit rating has been downgraded."

In another, he sounded exactly like a militia member from the backwoods of Montana: "They'll take away guns, they'll take way our sovereignty, they'll take away our currency, our money. They're already starting to put all the global framework in with this bullcrap called global warming. This is an effort to globalize, to tie together everybody on the planet!"

So, in review - suddenly, the banks are nationalized instead of pissing away money, unemployment for the nation is on par with unemployment for the black community, global warming is "bullcrap" even though I'm wondering why LA was colder than DC when I visited last week; and the fact that most of our goods come from other areas around the globe and most of the internet is a multi-national space is not tying people together. No, it's all a commie plot!

Glenn, it's time to stop watching Falling Down on repeat in your 1984-era VCR (which is made in the US, dammit!).

Richardson also peers into the under currents of racism that ebb and flow around the movement:

In the first open tent, I heard an air-gun salesman named Sam Kravets selling toy monkeys that reminded him of the president. "They even sound like him," he said, urging his customers to give them a squeeze.

"Everyone who voted for him ought to leave the country," a customer said.

Because nothing's more patriotic than racism and stifling dissent!

But even worse is the blatant celebration of racist tropes:

An hour later, I found the "birther" booth behind the cafeteria. A big sign loomed above it:

URGENT: CALLING ALL PATRIOTS
Barry Soetoro AKA Barack Obama is SHREDDING THE CONSTITUTION

Behind the table, a man named Carl Swensson passed out flyers that were still warm from running through the photocopier. "If you agree with this," he called out, "we need you to sign up."

"String him up," said a man passing by.

I'm waiting for someone to try to play this off as a joke, as they did with all those noose incidents in 2007.

"Do you know his mother did pornography?" said a woman sitting on the bleachers.

Okay, I'm going to break this one down. Now, on the surface, this seems like a strange comment to make. What would make someone think Obama's mother did porn? Regular Crappy Hour readers might remember one chat where I told Megan we had some heightened white supremacist activity on Racialicious in reference to the pictures we posted of Gisele Bunchden posing with ripped black models.

Many of the comments there asked how Gisele would "lower" or "defile" herself by placing herself in a sexual position with a black man. In white supremacist thinking, there is nothing worse than a white woman who would lay with a black man. She is the lowest of the low, asking to be disrespected, a whore. The same references to being a whore or acting in pornography were aimed at Gisele by these people based on the view of some photos done for her modeling portfolio. Imagine what they think of Dr. Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, for having the nerve to sire children with a black man!

But back to the birthers.

Another man stopped to look over the flyer. "What are you demanding?"

"We're just looking for his birth certificate."

"Or his death certificate," said a third man.

"The media's not going to report it."

"That's why you got to listen to Rush Limbaugh."

Swensson chuckled. "If you cut off the head of the snake, the rest of the serpent is pretty much gon' die."

The thinly veiled death threats take on a more sinister tone when you consider that there were two people outside of the town halls yesterday packing heat. Richardson agrees:

Let me be clear: I have no problem with guns (that's me with the M-4), and I love blowing stuff up - as long as we agree to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals and crazies. And Jesus is just fine with me - as long as you keep the Morality Police out of my bedroom.

But that night, back at my motel, the TV news was all about a man named Richard Poplawski, a gun collector who had just killed three police officers because he believed that the cops were no longer able to protect society as a result of the economic collapse. Later it came out that he was also a regular visitor to the Stormfront white-power site, where he posted a clip of Glenn Beck raving about the "FEMA camps" that Obama was supposedly building to lock up patriots come the revolution.

This drove home a scary truth: Ideas can have a body count.

Ideas can and do have body counts. That's why we may mock those calls for revolution from pampered folks who can afford their own healthcare, but we should not lose sight of the fact that many of these people are not necessarily rational. Check out this exchange, when the Birthers (led by Orly Taitz, grand poobah of cray-cray) decide to confront the state attorney general about opening an investigation.

Finally Wilding held up a hand. "Let me just stop you right there. What applies to Kentucky?"

One of the citizens starts showing him documents. "This is clearly his school record that shows that he was a citizen of Indonesia..."

"I don't understand what that has to do with the Kentucky attorney general's office," Wilding repeated.

"He was on the ballot here in Kentucky," Taitz said.

"That was a federal election. There are federal-election laws. The FBI investigates those. So I believe that your best venue and jurisdiction lies with the U.S. district court and the FBI."

That's when Taitz lost it. "I can see that you are hell-bent on doing absolutely nothing," she said, eyes flaring. "You want to pass the buck."

"No ma'am. I'm trying to follow the law."

"I'm going to the FBI and not only reporting Obama, I'm going to report you for refusing to investigate crimes. You have a duty to investigate those crimes! Why are people paying salary for this whole office of attorney general of Kentucky? To do nothing?"

"I think we're finished," Foster said.

I think we're all finished with Birther shenanigans.

But as Richardson's articles report, the fanatical fringe is out in full effect. As they are being stoked by the Republicans looking for political relevancy, and cultural bombasts like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly, it is up to us to make sure their declarations of hatred and intolerence don't turn deadly.

When Did Americans Turn Into A Bunch Of Raving Lunatics? [Esquire]
What Really Happens When You Demand The President Produce His Birth Certificate? [Esquire]

Related: The Destruction Of The Black Middle Class [Barbara's Blog]
Falling Down [Wikipedia]
Nooses Are Racial Threats, Not Pranks [Racialicious]Gisele Bündchen's Photo Shoot Is A Study In Interpreting Racially Charged Images [Racialicious]
Man Arrested Outside Obama Event Had Loaded Gun [Raw Story]

Earlier:
They Think They're Mad About Healthcare?

MEGAN: Hey, there, what's up?
MOE: I'm getting coffee. I'll be online in 5. I really feel like its the seventies today. Even the good news on the front of the Times about the natural gas in Louisiana is kind of dark.
MEGAN: Sure, no worries
MOE: Well the good news is that former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle is in on some Kurdish oil deal. That is bound to make him a lot of money and he sure deserves it having had the foresight to liberate The Iraq and also suck up to Bill Clinton's friend that dictator guy across the border in Kazakhstan, even as Seymour Hersh and his cabal of elite treason-loving freedom haters were knocking that for being a "conflict of interest" or whatever. Thanks to Wikipedia, we know Richard Perle explained back in 2003 that Sy Hersh was basically a terrorist, so we probably don't need to spend much more time on his smears. Especially with such other positive energy deals in the works as this one that is making everyone in De Soto Parish, Louisiana, suddenly a card carrying Cadillac owning rich person! And that makes 1 place GM might make a profit this year.
MEGAN: Well, unless they bought it outright, I'd say GMAC bought a bunch of Caddies more than people in DeSoto did, but no matter.
By the way, Bush has signed off on the first military execution since 1961. It's also the first actively-pursued execution since then. Can we all take a moment to be unsurprised that the soon-to-be executed man is black?
MOE: There are six other men on military death row. Are you saying that's why he got to go first? Incidentally, I never thought much about the death penalty before The Idiot wherein the lead character is this charismatic Christ figure named Mishkin, which happens to be the name of the retiring Federal Reserve board governor who apparently wants to set inflation targets, something I don't have much of an opinion on today, although I read somewhere else that only about a third of jobless are receiving unemployment benefits these days, down from 44% in 2001 and 52% when all "social safety net" stuff was actually taken seriously, before the breakdown of the family made us all stupid and neighbors started locking their doors at night and buying homes in ever farther-flung suburbs, a trend no one thought would ever ever end but boy were they wrong, but hey, on the bright side, it's a good thing we didn't turn out Berlin, right? All opera and free education and cheap rent and richly endowed cultural institutions and SO LITTLE GDP GROWTH??? Anyway, we were supposed to "weigh in" on that Tennessee guy. Um, he sucks is my opinion.
Because all the drawbacks of breakneck economic growth are so easily reversible! Oh wait.
MEGAN: Yeah, I'm sort of all like, meh, whatever, another crazy person went on another crazy shooting and we're supposed to go, ohhhh, it's because he hated liberals? Well, maybe he just hated Unitarians, it's not like he went to the local Democratic Party offices. Why would anyone expect that the guy's homicidal/suicidal rantings would make sense? It was like 4 pages long. I haven't written a letter that long since my best friend in junior high moved to Canada, not even the one time that I got a letter from a guy I'd been dating in college 3 weeks after the school year ended telling me what a stupid, slutty, vicious cunt I was but that he was only writing to make sure that he hadn't knocked me up so then he really wouldn't have to have speak to me again. God, damn, I wonder if I still have that letter somewhere. Anyway, even he didn't merit a 4 page reply. But God knows what Mr. Crazypants in Tennessee will write when he learns GOP hero Dan Quayle is about to turn Mr. Fancypants and is in talks to join Dancing With the Stars.
MOE: Yeah, oh god, Dan Quayle, it's the nineties again all right. Except insofar as the pollution in China is hella worse.
MEGAN: They're even still defending their human rights record. Seems like it would've been easier to try harder not to be human-rights violators in the last 20 years or whatever, but whatever.
MOE: Pitchfork crapsters: previous link contains JARVIS COCKER, J MASCIS, SEBADOH, LIZ PHAIR, BUILT TO SPILL, MISSION OF BURMA annnnnnnd Flava Flav, referencing his popular reality TV show! To get us back on the Dan Quayle angle. Lou Barlow does not sound like he held up too well, but we'll forgive him because his cover of Ratt's "Round And Round" was such a sparkling contribution to the culture. Okay, and also, pollution. because it's kind of a really good story with implications for the whole next century.

Shougang Steel Group, the giant steelmaker whose name translates as "Capital Steel," was ordered to relocate most of its operations hundreds of miles away to a partly manmade island. Xiang Dong, who worked at the company for 16 years, says he cried when his unit was shut down on March 31. Most of his 600 or so colleagues were transferred to the new facility. "Of course I was sad. A lot of coworkers cried when it stopped," says Mr. Xiang, who continues to work as a caretaker at the mothballed production line. "But this is for the Olympic dream. We do some sacrifices for that."

MEGAN: Speaking of human rights records, did you know the American Medical Association didn't support the 1964 Civil Rights Act? That they deliberately shut down black medical colleges, understaffed black hospitals while forcing the segregation issues, allowed affiliates to keep black doctors out and are only just now apologizing? Because I didn't.
MOE: Oh God, I looked at that story and had no idea what it was about, other than I didn't feel like I needed another reason to disrespect doctors this week. Holy shit.
MEGAN: Ahem. I'm feeling a little disrespectful to the medical establishment this morning, though, but I will change the subject before I rage out for the 2nd time in as many days and so we can talk about the Doha talks in which they're still debating the same fucking issues they did 2 years ago when I got my writing start authoring a "humorous" round-up of the week's events in the WTO negotiations. No, for real.
MOE: Oh, great last graf:

Consider this statistic: In 1910, when Abraham Flexner published his report on medical education, African-Americans made up 2.5 percent of the number of physicians in the United States. Today, they make up 2.2 percent.

MEGAN: Yeah, that was the best kicker I'd read all day.
MOE: Anyway, I have to go sort of. But the buzz today is Obama closing in maybe on Tim Kaine for VP. Do you think Obama could win your state? Maybe I could go home and vote there since Philly seems to have forgotten I existed. Garry Kasparov thinks O needs to go hard on Russia, not a shock, the Ataturk Thought Association is worried the country is turning into Iran following a raid on their headquarters. And I'm still hung up on China, because at some point the world needs to figure out how to make the whole green collar jobs thing work, and just to spite the fucking Republicans I hope they do it in Berlin.
MEGAN: One of my friends just took a green collar job! He mostly took it, though as a third job because his former employer outsourced a bunch of their work and his second job as a tattoo apprentice doesn't pay the bills either so now he's working at a recycling plant. He says he doesn't feel very green except on the really hot days and then he does, but only around the gills.
As for Virginia, polls show it's tight, so who knows. The Washington Post keeps running stories I'm too lazy to find at the moment that Obama's operation in the state just keeps expanding and expanding so maybe? I don't think Kerry was within a point or two of Bush, like, ever in 2004.