Calling It Quits Over Politics

I HAVE LOST a number of old friends late in life, and although this distresses me in a way, in another way it provides a sense of relief, as if having cleared the air, come clean, become honest.  the friends who insisted that Michelle Obama is a man, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and that wearing a face mask is harmful to one's health because it forces one to inhale one's own exhaled carbon monoxide,  terminated our relationship when I suggested that her views on the Obamas might be racially motivated, and that her views on mask wearing might have more to do with comfort and convenience than inhaling carbon monoxide, dioxide, or whichever. My loss, or maybe hers, her loss of sanity. About her assertions about the Obamas there wasn't a hint of uncertainty. She was merely stating facts. Nor did she provide attribution. She promised that her info did not come from Trump, whom she has supported for three years but abandoned during his last year in office, for whatever reason. From her there was no awe, no sense of amazement, of strangeness about her remarkable revelations. Shouldn't there have been? isn't the fact of Barack Obama fraudulently claiming to be from Hawaii, and Michelle fraudulently claiming to be a woman amazing, worthy of amazement? By failing to tell me her source of information, she retains credibility. Give me the source, and I can attack the source as unreliable. Without a source, the fact is so obvious that no source is needed. By showing no amazement, the assertions become mere facts, nothing to be amazed about, just plain facts. The soup is hot, the soup is cold. The Mississippi River flows into the Gulf of Mexico. Michelle Obama is a man. Ho hum. Clever technique, psychologically, but, alas, not quite clever enough for this old skeptic. Similarly, notice that of the millions of members of the "stop the steal" club, nary a one of them expresses the least bit of uncertainty, nor the slightest trace of evidence, and no attribution for the sensational claim. Nor any sense of amazement. To provide evidence allows the evidence to be examined and critiqued. To express amazement invites the idea that claiming the election was stolen from Trump is an amazing, unlikely idea. Ans questionable evidence, and all evidence is subject to examination, or any sense of amazement distracts and detracts from the fact which must be accepted without question, because any question demands answers. I lost another friend who tells me that Obama invented racism when he became president. He didn't tell me exactly how, nor did he seemed at all surprised by Obama's capacity to have such great influence, as one person, upon millions of people and their attitudes towards race. In retrospect, you can hardly blame him.