18% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim (though, interestingly, a third of these believe that America’s first Muslim president is doing a good job). According to at least one poll, 20% of Americans believe that federal government officials participated in the 9/11 attack.
I don’t know if we’re talking about the same people here. If so, we have the basis for a conspiracy theory in which 9/11 paved the way for the rise of America’s first Muslim president, who turns out to be the twelfth imam or something. You could pull together a lot of rightwing discourse into that framework.
Also, 19% of Americans believe that the sun goes round the earth. Ignorance, probably, though the proposition that truly radical distrust – why, I can see it moving with my own eyes - has permanently lodged itself in a fifth of the US population is quite intriguing.
The sun does go around the Earth. It just requires unnecessary epicycles to view it that way that the heliocentric model can dispense with.
Posted by: skidmarx | August 21, 2010 at 01:15 PM