If anyone has actually become a regular reader, I’m sorry for the delay in posting today– it’s actually tomorrow, and I’ll end up doing two Friday posts, but Wednesday and Thursday of this week didn’t go so well. I did, on the plus side, get my picture taken for a website wearing my “I wanna be like Sheldon” Green Lantern T-shirt sitting in my batcave of an office (wherein the “new” person, apparently having a differing sense of humor from my own, decided to tear down my Chuck Norris Rules poster which was a fine example of memetics in action. Sigh).
At any rate, I want to talk about something I saw on campus today. I teach in Bessey Hall, on the Michigan State University campus. As a grad student, we have to park south of the river, which means that every single day I park either at Erickson Hall (the education building) or just across Shaw Avenue in what I guess we’d call “the in the middle of Shaw Avenue” lot. I walk to work along the side of Farm Lane opposite the Spirit Rock.
This is a place where student organizations often gather to hand out fliers about teaching kids to read (which I approve of, obviously), getting shoes for kids in poor countries (another thing I’m behind) and occasionally to offer their slant on politics.
Today– or technically yesterday since it’s almost 2 am– the fine folks that support the LaRouche PAC were set up to talk to people about the danger of Earthquakes and how “Obama” was removing a series of satellites from the sky that could help us avoid earthquake catastrophe.
I want to be really clear: I don’t like earthquakes. I am very much on the anti-earthquake team. If there was a stop earthquake movement similar to the stop snitchin’ movement, I’d be all over that. And while I’m not a fan of non-University related neo-conservative hate mongers setting up on campus, the LaRouche people also use our undergrad students. So when I passed by, a female student offered me a flier and asked me if I was interested in saving people from earthquakes.
Instant response: of course I am! Come on! I had a Green Lantern t-shirt on. I’ll save some people from an earthquake.
Only right next to the girl, and across from her– flanking me– were posters that looked just like this:
My gut reaction, each time I’ve seen these posters around campus, has been to accidentally lose control of my size 11 and a halfs and stumble into them. But I was there today, a rhetoric student and teacher in a decidedly sour mood, with a young student standing in front of me offering to persuade me to save these earthquake victims. I was interested. So I asked her to convince me.
She started by telling me that Obama had removed these special earthquake satellites from the sky, apparently because of some conspiracy that– I kid you not– had to do with him not being born here. I thought this might be a riff by the undergrad, but the neocon puppet master sitting behind the table– a guy who looked like Ed Norton after five drinks and a bad attempt at real-life fight club– was nodding in agreement.
I decided to propose a question, to start my side of the discussion. “So it’s Obama who “removed” these satellites?” The student said “yes, sir” and started to repeat her original claims. I interrupted, “Are you sure it wasn’t a hypothetical technology that was proposed but scrapped from the budget under the advisement of a panel, part of a number of sweeping cuts that had to be made to the budget because Republicans insisted on tax cuts during a period of economic downturn?”
She did not know, but her puppet master at the table flinched. She repeated that people would die.
So I had to do it. I asked my second question, “So the earthquake satellites… that’s why you have posters of Obama as Adolf Hitler?”
Her response, “Yes, because of all the people he has killed.”
I asked “How many people has Obama killed, exactly?”
I expected war numbers, or numbers of people who have lost medical care, or something. What I got was this:
“When California falls into the ocean, he will have killed all those people.”
Reality… I have lost track of you. Please come back. I respond.
“So we’re doing a Minority Report here, and we’re predicting future crimes so we can punish him now?”
She says to me “no, it happened.”
at this point, another older man– in his 3os like myself– starts to walk toward me. He looks shockingly similar to Punch Drunk Ed Norton. He has a camcorder. He hovers a bit, smiling.
I ignore him fora second and say “So you want to compare the lack of earthquake satellites to the Holocaust? You know what Hitler did, right?”
She says “Obama is the same.”
So I finally say something a little insulting “So it’s a ridiculous argument that *I nod to the table* that guy fed you to spout out while you hand out fliers?”
At this point, the camera holding guy chimes in. He pretends to be “like me” and to have tried to explain that the argument is ridiculous. What he apparently didn’t realize is that when I passed them going into the building to teach I saw him sharing a sandwich with Punch Drunk Ed Norton, so I know he’s in on their game. He then tells me about how he lost his job because he stood around arguing with them about the Obama Hitler poster.
My response: “Interesting, did you work for the university?”
He then informed he that he used to work in the porn industry. I guess that was supposed to embarrass me into stopping the discussion. He continued some sort of spiel, while Punch Drunk Ed Norton pretended to shoo him away because he didn’t want to “make a spectacle.”
I spoke to the student one last time before I went to my car. I said to her, “Listen, I think it’s good that you care about technologies that could save lives, and I think there’s probably actually something to arguing that after what happened in Japan we should look at this technology again. But please, take a second to learn history. Pretending that our President is at all like Hitler makes you, and these two guys, look like idiots, and no one who isn’t a hate monger is going to take you seriously.”
She insisted, as I walked away, that Obama was “worse” than Hitler.
I know we live in a day and age where people like Glen Beck are given credibility, and I recognize that freedom of speech means you can make an Obama Hitler poster and stick it somewhere if it makes you feel better. I just think that having the right to do something ridiculous doesn’t mean you should.
What I hope, and I know it’s a fool’s wish, is that maybe that student, or one of the ten or so who stopped during part of this exchange, will think about the rhetoric of what was going on.
I won’t lie– if there hadn’t been a claim that Obama had killed the state of California in a pre-destined holocaust sequel, and there wasn’t a stomach turning poster of Obama with Hitler ‘stashe, I could very easily have been swayed. Those satellites– which if I understand correctly never were in the sky– could be very, very useful and could save a number of lives.
But I hope that at least my students, and those my peers, elders, and associates teach, will grow to realize that variations on the Chewbacca Defense (best South Park bit ever) don’t really work.
Obama isn’t like Hitler because we cut something from the budget. That’s poorly planned smear rhetoric. It makes no sense.
And if you’re an MSU student who is down with LaRouche PAC reading this, I urge you to think about the reputation of your university and the quality of your education. There’s a smart, smart argument buried in the pile of manure that those two “local activists” brought along with them. Sift the good argument out and make it.
That might change people’s minds.
Comparing the President of the United States to modern history’s greatest monster based on perhaps the most flawed logic possible just makes you look like a doofus who isn’t learning anything at all at MSU. I mean sure, if you feel like that comparison is apt make it and defend it, but if you can’t defend it, don’t do something so blatantly pandering and ridiculous.
Be better than that. You might find that you can win people over.