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Ugh. This is the failure of binary thinking. It is not even close to the "same thing."

You're right, it's not the same thing. It's far, far worse. Nobody believes the Navy SEALs set off the Boston bombs, and that hasn't had, at all, any effect on public policy. But the government lying, and the mainstream media beating the war drums for them has killed millions and destabilized entire nations.

If you look at a large group you can always find a few whackos who believe some crazy shit. From that poll, 5% of Obama voters believe Obama was the antichrist. 4% think lizardmen are running everything (with another 7% "not sure" about those wily lizardmen). So who the hell cares what some small fringe is doing? What matters is the large group of people that believed in weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, because that's what got the world order fucked up, not a fringe belief in lizardmen.

So to look at the existence of fringe conspiracy theories and say "we're losing the information war!" Um...shouldn't the "information war" be about the stuff that starts the real wars?

> carefully consider a choice for an election and cast the vote

You are making the same mistakes he is. One, that's not how votes are cast, with careful choices. Two, being able to make a careful and intellectual choice is not how votes are cast fundamentally. Votes are cast by citizens. The dumb ones, and the smart ones. Everyone gets a vote.

http://www.publicpolicypolling...

This has the statistic that 13% of 2012 voters think that Obama is the antichrist. 22%- almost one out of four- of Romney voters believe that. Wait, why not 26%? Logically, if you calmly and rationally believe that Obama is a supernatural entity sent to end the world, you'd at least check Romney on the ballot, right? So there's 2% of the voting public that either voted for the antichrist, or voted for a third party candidate. That's not calm and rational, assuming their givens.

The same study shows that 4% of voters believe in lizard people. I wonder if they take a queue from Douglas Adams and are sure to not vote for "the wrong lizard".

These are actual beliefs reached by very significant portions of the voting public. In some cases, they vote along these beliefs- in other cases, they are like "sure, he's a minion of Satan, but I need health insurance".

The fundamental assumption- that we enfranchise voters because of their intellectual capacity- is absolutely incorrect. As is the assumption that rational thought is involved in the voting process in any or all cases.

> we claim the 18 year old is old enough to be drafted and vote, but not old enough to make good decisions about alcohol

Incorrect. It is legal for an 18 year old US citizen to purchase and consume alcohol. All 50 states have laws against it, but if you are out of a state's jurisdiction you may do so freely. There is no federal law banning it- in fact, they strongarmed all 50 states into it over the course of years, using federal funding as a lever.

His position that someone has the self control to vote (given that elections are determined hugely by emotions and totally irrational beliefs), but not to be held fully accountable for wiring and placing a bomb, is self contradictory. His assumptions about what gives someone the vote are completely ahistoric and incorrect.

OK, so you believe the polls are skewed and Trump supporters are not really mostly racist.

http://www.publicpolicypolling...

Please try to spin that poll as not showing racism.

Ultimately, the concern people have is not what percentage of Trump supporters are racists, Nazis, KKK or unhinged bigots. It's that the rest of them don't have any problem with it.

Er, whatever. Sad thing is, I'm not making this shit up..

Other things that are more approved of than congress include: Lice Root Canals Cockroaches Traffic Jams Colonoscopies Yes, literally. http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/01/congress-somewhere-below-cockroaches-traffic-jams-and-nickleback-in-americans-esteem.html

- Science is too political to be trusted with decisions, leave it to those who are entirely political
- The signal-to-noise ratio, while significantly higher than current political rhetoric, is less than one.
- Not every scientist can be bought.

FTFY.

Okay, snark aside, at a time when Congress ranks below cockroaches are you truly suggesting this wouldn't improve the situation? Your points are, in a sense, all valid, but we should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. An improvement is just that, and need not be perfection.

The other side of that argument is that science is telling folks that no, you can't use more than we've got forever, and yes, what you do is impacting other people. And some folks want any excuse to say, "So what. I only live once, screw the next generation, I want it all. Now!"

"41 per cent [of Americans] say Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years..."

To be fair if I genuinely believed in the rapture and that it was coming very soon, I would probably also question what the point of protecting the world from future events that can never happen because Jesus is coming (or some other supernatural being).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7847625/Jesus-will-return-by-2050-say-40pc-of-Americans.html

Though I feel the need to potentially destroy my own argument by adding this link shows only 11% believe the rapture will happen in their lifetimes
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2011/05/few-expecting-rapture-most-expect-to-be-raptured.html

I guess its hard to know who to trust these days. Maybe the research from the original linked article is similarly flawed, biased or just plan untrue.

These laws were passed by Conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, aka deranged lunatics like this.

Yeah; Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.

The fact is that both "conservatives" (who are anything but conservative) and "liberals" (who are almost universally authoritarians, since real liberals haven't existed for almost a century) are both to blame, and they get away with it because the supporters on both sides give their own "team" a blank check. Bush creates a "department of homeland security" and a permanent stain of fascism on the dying Republic, and the Republicans praise his desire to "keep us safe". Obama then gives himself the power to literally assassinate US citizens without any form of trial, and most of the Democrats say nothing. You voted for Bush twice, and you'll vote for Obama twice.

I swear most of you people would vote for a pile of dog shit if it had your party label.

The liberal obsession with statist solutions is very scary.

Liberal? It's been the Conservatives at the forefront of the "fuck them, imprison them all, especially the n____s and spics" system.

What, you didn't think that sentencing guidelines different for "crack" and "powder" cocaine came out of nowhere did you? Crack is predominantly used by blacks, powder primarily used by the silver-spoon sons of the upper crust. And as for Marijuana, Texas senators are on record, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy"; in the Deep South, marijuana bans were a way to discriminate against blacks, and again came up the comments, like "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."

These laws were passed by Conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, aka deranged lunatics like this.

BULLSHIT

The segregationist racist laws of the US South were passed by DEMOCRATS - many of them quite "progressive".

And it wasn't that long ago.

Jesus H. Fucking Christ, the late "great" Senator Byrd D-WV was a member of the fucking KKK.

The liberal obsession with statist solutions is very scary.

Liberal? It's been the Conservatives at the forefront of the "fuck them, imprison them all, especially the n____s and spics" system.

What, you didn't think that sentencing guidelines different for "crack" and "powder" cocaine came out of nowhere did you? Crack is predominantly used by blacks, powder primarily used by the silver-spoon sons of the upper crust. And as for Marijuana, Texas senators are on record, "All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff is what makes them crazy"; in the Deep South, marijuana bans were a way to discriminate against blacks, and again came up the comments, like "Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice."

These laws were passed by Conservatives, not liberals. Conservatives, aka deranged lunatics like this.

You would need a consensus-seeking election method, like approval voting; then centrists are practically guaranteed to win.

Well, 8% of North Carolina folk don't believe that Hawaii is a state, anyway. Do you really think they might *read* the Constitution, if you sent them a copy?

I think these fringe people are being focused on because it's easy to try to claim they represent a much larger portion of people than they really do

Depending on how you count, 30-60% of Republicans are birthers. That's hardly a trivial number. DailyKos has sponsored a lot of polls showing this, but since you probably won't trust their results here's a different pollster:

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_National_9231210.pdf

It's also worth noting that, unlike the 9/11 truthers or the 2004 election conspiracists (who were rightly derided as lunatics), the birthers and deathers have a major media network and high-profile Republicans supporting them.

I also note that your link shows people protesting "socialism", waving a sign that says "save our seniors", waving a confederate flag, etc., and that you're using the same sort of rhetoric (Americans "awakening" as if to some vast conspiracy). Are those the serious issues you want to discuss? If so, you ought to be reading some history books, not debating in public. The reality is that there is no conspiracy. There is no socialist revolution, certainly not from a centrist like Obama. Your party lost the last election rather badly and now you're angry about it. The sooner your side grows up and starts taking that seriously, the sooner you can get reelected. We know -- we had to do it too.