When Did Americans Turn into a Bunch of Raving Lunatics?

Media Platforms Design Team

This is the most frightening thing I have heard in a very long time: According to a poll conducted by the Daily Kos, which I fervently hope is wrong, 28 percent of Republicans believe that President Obama is not an American citizen. Another 30 percent are undecided. A wider survey to be released tomorrow takes that 58 percent of potential "birthers" nationwide up to nearly 70 in Virginia alone. And this is not in dispute: Ten Republican congressmen have now signed on to a bill demanding that Obama prove his citizenship.

If a majority of our conservative population and that much of its elected leadership think that even some of this "birther" stuff is remotely possible, some very dark times may be heading to this country. Early this spring, I spent two very long days traveling around Kentucky with Orly Taitz, one of the leading "birthers" in a nation full of them. So I can tell you with confidence and show you later in this week's column and next that this is much, much crazier than most people imagine and alarmingly in sync with the "tea parties" and wild accusations of socialism that seem to define the current "conservative" opposition.

Of course, if you've been following this on CNN and Fox, where folks like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity have been offering "birther" commentaries at a fever pitch, you might think the whole thing boils down to a simple demand that Obama produce his birth certificate. Even Andrew Sullivan of the liberal Atlantic magazine asked for that much on his usually excellent blog:

So many readers are furious that I have dared to ask the president to show the original copy of his birth certificate. The reason for demanding it is the same reason for demanding basic medical records proving Sarah Palin is the biological mother of Trig. Because it would make it go away and it's easily done.

Others argue that the whole thing is getting overblown because it's August the "silly season" for news and because the more reasonable and mainstream Republicans don't want to take a stand that will further alienate part of their base. This is probably true. But it also obscures a troubling truth: 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.

Bear with me before I introduce you to them, because the litany of events that got us to this point in American history should give anyone with a conscience cause for concern or at least a moment's pause.

The Revolution Will Be Televised: 10 Malicious Moments and the Cult of Glenn Beck

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Almost immediately following the election, a rash of extreme but nonetheless important statements about Obama and his agenda started appearing in the media. Here's a small but representative sample, lest we allow the latest Dobbsian rhetoric (or Chuck Norris) to obfuscate the chorus:

1. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said the bailout was the start of America's downfall. "To abandon a market-oriented society and transfer it to a Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart of freedom in this country."

2. Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas said that Obama intended "to inflict damage and hardship on the free enterprise system, if not kill it."

3. Congressman Ron Paul of Texas said that "socialism" was too mild a word for what Obama was doing because taking over corporations "adds a fascistic aspect to socialism."

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."

5. Ambassador Alan Keyes called Obama a communist who is trying to establish "an American KGB."

6. Rush Limbaugh Show guest host Mark Davis told a joke about a soldier who has only two bullets in his gun when he meets Osama Bin Laden, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi and uses both bullets on Pelosi before strangling the other two.

7. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama put his considerable weight behind the "birther" movement: "His father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven't seen any birth certificate."

8. Legislators in thirty states filed Tenth Amendment "sovereignty" laws as a symbolic gesture of defiance to Washington.

9. Tens of thousands of YouTubers watched a video called "Revolution Now," in which a masked man claiming to be a soldier and an "anonymous American patriot" warned of growing resistance within the military. "There's a revolution brewing," he said. "We have allowed the tyrants to take over this country."

10. Seven percent of the country thought, at a time when the Republicans were almost unanimously resistant to everything the Democrats proposed, that the GOP was being too cooperative. That's roughly 21 million seriously alienated people.

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!"

Beck called for resistance and talked about storming Washington, selling T-shirts blazed with the pitchfork of an angry mob and all of this led to startling success. Debuting last January in a weak 5 P.M. time slot, Beck shot to the No. 3 cable-news slot overnight, right behind Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity with 2.5 million viewers.

And all of this was nothing compared to the alarmed citizens raging away on his Web site:

* Obamacare meant that "bureaucrats are going to decide who lives and dies," one said.

* The new pro-union card check law was "possibly the greatest threat against American free enterprise ever," said another.

* People were "better off trusting their mattresses" than the greedy bankers, said another.

* There were "35 terrorist training camps spread across the U.S.A." that were run by Sheikh Gilani from Pakistan, said another.

* Homeland Security "deliberately ignores the border and the redistribution of wealth is NOT constitutional," said another.

* Others solicited signatures for a new "martial law early alert" system and suggested that people download a video that "completely destroys the myth that Barack Obama is working for the best interests of the American people."

* "GET YOURSELVES HUNKERED DOWN WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS," one woman advised. "GET PASSPORTS AND START LOOKING NOW FOR INEXPENSIVES SAFE PLACES TO GO THE U.S.A. IS OVER AS WE HAVE KNOWN IT."

"Prepare Yourself for the Worst": When the Neighbors Started Scaring Me

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It was difficult not to remain skeptical about all of this. Despite the participation of some prominent figures, it just seemed like the usual lunatic fringe. I didn't want to be alarmist (or maybe I didn't want to be alarmed), but it still seemed like a phenomenon, and I continued to take notes.

One day, I decided to join one of the hundreds of "viewing parties" for Beck's "We Surround Them" special. After driving the back roads of the Catskill Mountains to a resort hotel just a few miles from the original site of the Woodstock Music Festival, I found well over a hundred of my neighbors sitting elbow-to-elbow at long tables arranged around a pair of giant flat-screen TVs. They seemed like friendly, down-to-earth, everyday people.

The show was pure propaganda in the old, sneaky, manipulative sense: Beck flashed a picture of Obama over a line about "the liars who said we could have it all" and flashed a picture of Bush over "the eternal principles that made America the world's beacon of freedom." Then he faked some blubbery tears: "I'm sorry," he said, wiping the tears away exactly on cue. "I just love my country, and I fear for it..."

After the show ended, the event sponsor passed around a microphone. "Prepare yourself for the worst," warned a nice-looking young mother named Andi. "Stock up on water. Conserve. Start your own garden. There won't be enough food to go around."

A bearded man named Jim worried about all the companies that were about to leave New York, like Exxon and the Royal Bank of Scotland. That's what he heard on the Internet, anyway. "You don't hear this stuff on NBC or CBS. You barely hear it on Fox. Take a look a the FEMA camps there are concentration camps in the U.S. today!"

A man with long hair and a black leather vest said we had gone back to taxation without representation. "Keep up the spirit of 1776! Bring that revolution back!"

And a prison guard named Steve said he knew what to do if the feds showed up at his door to take away guns. "I'll meet them me and my arsenal."

At another viewing party down in Texas, Chuck Norris suggested that Texas secede from the nation. In the following week, Texas governor Rick Perry said he was open to the idea and 50 percent of Texas Republicans said they were for it, too. A few weeks later, ditto for 50 percent of Georgia Republicans.

Around the same time, a Florida congressman named Bill Posey submitted a bill demanding that Obama prove his citizenship by producing his birth certificate the first official action to endorse the movement. Shortly afterward, I learned that Orly Taitz had scheduled an appearance to promote the "birther" agenda at the Knob Creek Gun Show in Kentucky, the largest military and machine-gun show in the world.

"Where Do You Think All This Ammunition Is Going?": What Real Gun Nuts Told Me

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On a misty morning at the beginning of April, I arrived at Knob Creek and found a horde of men in camouflage selling a dizzying variety of guns and ammo and paraphernalia in a long series of tents and sheds. I saw a T-shirt that read I'LL KEEP MY GUNS, MONEY AND FREEDOM YOU KEEP THE CHANGE. And another: IN A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT. And a bumper sticker on a truck outside one tent: 9 OUT OF 10 TERRORISTS SUPPORT OBAMA.

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.

Near the cafeteria, a man named Ernie was passing out free copies of a video called The Obama Deception. Produced by a Texas radio host named Alex Jones, it argues that the Wall Street elite created the economic crisis in order to cause a panic that would grease the skids to fascism. (Jones also believes that 9/11 was an inside job.) In the first two weeks after The Obama Deception's release on YouTube in March, more than a million people watched it. Ernie drove all the way from Minnesota to get the message out. "The economy is collapsing and we're being lied to on the federal-reserve system," he said.

Near a stand of bleachers, a prominent militia leader named Mark Gregory Koernke was passing out flyers. Under the name "Mark From Michigan," he was one of the first people to raise the alarm about black helicopters back in the '90s. Briefly a suspect in the Timothy McVeigh bombing that killed 166 people in Oklahoma City, Koernke was later arrested after a car chase and spent six years in prison on charges of resisting arrest and assaulting police. He's also a former 94B20 Intel analyst or so he told me, quite cheerfully, as his equally cheerful wife handed out flyers beside him who helped put together the first FEMA camps in the days of the old Rex 84 Program, back before the government was destroyed from within. "If you're pro-patriot," he said, "the military doesn't want you. Same with federal agencies. They're after any American resistance to what's happening with the globalists."

Resistance?

"Where do you think all this ammunition is going?" he said.

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.

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

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."

Another man stopped to talk up the tea parties. "You know what the Patriot said: Trust in God and keep the powder dry."

"I'm getting a lot of that," Swensson said.

Swensson was a tall man with a long, earnest face. The sole proprietor of a computer store in the suburbs of Atlanta, he told me he was just a regular John McCain supporter pro-choice, not very religious, working on his third marriage until he discovered on the Internet that the government was lying about the oil crisis. There was plenty of oil, but they just didn't drill for it because of environmentalists and their spotted owls. Eventually, that led him to the "birther" movement.

Swensson was an amiable guy. I liked him. He told me about growing up in Florida, poking around lagoons with his dad and marveling at all the beautiful coral fish. But now his father was dead and the ocean off the Florida coast was like I-95 and it all felt like the end. Obama was breaking the bank. Soon China would stop buying T-bills. Food shortages were sure to follow. He expected martial law by September.

In walked Orly Taitz, "birther" extraordinaire, with stiletto heels and a spectacular pair of Tammy Faye Baker eyelashes.