Contending, In Vain

SEVERAL YEARS AGO I joined an online discussion group consisting of a few of my high school classmates. Class of Seventy Three. Go eagles, valiant and strong. I was the only liberal among them, so I didn't stay very long. What finally drove me out was their contention that Barack Hussein Obama had been born in Africa, was a closet Islamicist, and, last but not least, that his wife had begun life as a male, but had undergone gender reassignment surgery, then had adopted two children. No, I'm not joking. First I suggested that they offer proof of all this. That didn't work. Then I suggested that the mere fact that his middle name is "Hussein" bore no relevance to his religiosity, and tried to convince them that there were at least two retired medical professional in Honolulu who were willing to sign affidavits declaring that they had witnessed Obama's birth in a Honolulu hospital That didn't work either. My classmates were following the lead of Donald J. Trump, all the way to the bitter end. the presentation of Obama's birth certificate didn't help Obama's claim to American citizenship, and I knew I was doomed. Trump kept it up until a couple of weeks ago, then pretended that he had merely served a patriotic cause by investigating the allegations which began in Hillary 2008 presidential campaign, and resolving the issue once and for all. Then it turned out that most of the members of my local senior center still make the same assertions. Just for the record, nobody believes any of this, even those who claim to believe it. My classmates, and the seniors at the center are, with all due respect, inveterate racists. If a white guy became president whose father was an Irish bloke who vanished and died years ago, who among them would bother to question whether the white guy had been born in the U.S. or Ireland? None of them, of course. Against stupidity, the god's themselves contend in vain. So I have no chance, and neither does anyone else, when confronted with the inanity of right wing America. Right wing Americans are, as a whole, a basket of deplorables, someone said. Anyone was quite right, and should, as we like to say, "double down", trumpet style. These are the same people who favor forcing transgender people to use the bathroom corresponding to the gender listed on their birth certificates, do not believe in evolution or climate change, and who believe that all government regulation protecting the environment is evil, because it is socialism. I hope my classmates are doing well, if delusionally, and I hope that they can begin to think a bit more clearly when they descend, at long last, into the throes of involuntary, rather than voluntary dementia.... against stupidity..........THANKS FOR READING!