Birther Refuses to Obey President as Commander-in-Chief

Army Captain Connie Rhodes, represented by "birther" attorney Orly Taitz, is refusing deployment on the grounds that Barack Obama is not legitimately president. A suit filed in this case was thrown out of court on September 16.

Regardless of the dismissal of the case, that a military officer rejects the authority of the Commander-in-Chief at all is a troubling sign and symptom of the systematic delegitimization of Barack Obama. It is easy to dismiss this as more fringe "birther" activity, but even baseless claims repeated long enough have a destabilizing effect over time, as well as persuading uncritical thinkers that "where there's smoke, there's fire." The birther phenomenon is insidious and continues to gain momentum with a certain segment of the population.

Of much greater concern here than one person's lawsuit is the damage these ongoing claims and actions do to the office of the President. Birthers traffic in delegitimacy. Their tactics, and indeed, the core of their argument with Obama, has one goal: to delegitimize authority.

With the hysterical right-wing reaction to having a black man as president, that office has become something attack-worthy in a way that is not partisan (which revolves around "we're right, you're wrong") but rather assails the actual authority of the office of President itself.[1]

Rhodes' brief was thrown out of U.S. District Court by Judge Clay Land, who levied a stinging rebuke to Taitz. Judge Land tore apart Birtherism and threatened Taitz with sanctions in his Sept 16, 2009 court decision.

That would be entertaining to see, but the real battleground regarding delegitimization is in the public marketplace of ideas and discussion/debate. As one commenter at Talking Points Memo noted,

One reason McCarthy and his soul mates got away with so much was a disinclination for confrontation. Even President Eisenhower didn't take a stand against him. Ignoring this sort of stuff will not make these people go away, it will make them see how far they can push.

Evoking McCarthyism, in this instance, is not far off-base at all. There are considerable parallels with the tactics of delegitimization, and the use of fear and insecurities that destroyed lives, careers, and fomented public paranoia in the 1950s.

I give America a D right now for how we're handling our collective insecurities and fears. We are ripe to be maneuvered by groups and individuals who know how to take advantage of such things. (That that is possible and in fact is happening is something I'm blogging about regarding propaganda and public opinion. See here and here for more.)

Check back for more on this topic soon.

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[1] Princeton associate professor of political science Melissa Harris-Lacewell has observed - rightly, I think - that the extreme backlash and resistance to Obama is rooted in race issues. In particular, she has commented that the Birther phenomenon - persistent claims that Obama is not one of us, that he is "Other" (a foreigner) - stands in as proxy for racism. To that I would add, also, the sublimated anxieties of a class and demographic profoundly threatened by change, not just in the Presidency but in many areas and issues of our society. I will be blogging about this in more detail in the future: this touches on the deep-seated security issues and fears that are part of the theme of this blog of mine.