The Schrug

I am more worried today about this November’s election than ever before. Because today I got a glimpse into the mind of the anti-Obama voter.

There’s a woman I know from a very red state. She’s a small business IT consultant like me. I’ve met her at several conferences and exchanged a lot of e-mail with her. I have tremendous respect for her business talents and she probably works three or four times harder than I do. She’s educated, she’s intelligent, she’s a model American citizen. And politically, she scares the crap out of me.

I posted a status message on Facebook challenging any of my Facebook friends who did not plan to vote for Obama to explain why. My red state friend responded by comparing Obama to Hitler (seriously!) and pointing to Jeremiah Wright and James Cone as the kind of philosophy we could expect from a President Obama. I challenged her to provide a little more evidence that Obama actually shared any of the radical and inflammatory views espoused by Wright and Cone. She promised to “email [me] some good reading and hopefully [I] will at least investigate the facts for [myself].”

Here is the first bit of “good reading” she sent me:

• “Obama’s Non-Citizen Military Dream” and “Uganda Citizens as United States Soldiers? Feel Safe Yet?”

These two blog posts are commentary on a column by Judi McLeod, a conservative Canadian writer. The column reports — accurately, as far as I can tell — that the United States military was actively recruiting Ugandan citizens at a recent conference in Orlando. Here is McLeod’s take on the situation:

Will Ugandans in the US military feel loyalty to the United States of America or to a president they see as a radical agent of change?

 

Most know about Obama’s ties to Kenya and that co-President Raila Odinga has claimed a tribal kinship with the Illinois senator. 

 

Few realize the fever pitch of Obama support in Uganda, home of UFOs–Ugandans for Obama.

 

Part of the Eastern African region that could some day be included in the United States of Africa, some Ugandans and Kenyans see Obama as much the president of the United States of Africa as he would be the president of the United States of America. 

Wow. First of all, the McLeod column fails to mention that there are already 30,000 non-citizens in uniform, and that hundreds of non-citizens have fought and died for our country. What’s really weird, thought, is that somehow she links these recruiting efforts — devised by the Bush administration!! — to part of some Obama-led conspiracy to merge the United States with Africa.

I wish I could just laugh this stuff off. But this kind of nonsense is actually influencing votes.

Next up: how a slip of the tongue “proves” that Obama is a Muslim.