>>1254108>it's not off-the-wall to belive it's possible that letting this issue drag out was done for a strategic reason.Well, except for the fact that it would be a stupid strategy. "Hey, let's try to drag this out so more and more of the country becomes radicalized against the president using this flimsy piece of non-evidence that he's not an American citizen. Then, when they're good and believing it, we can release this extra document that won't actually convince any of the nutjobs and will also give the mainstream Republicans a hook to use to portray us as attention whores! Genius!"
Don't think Saul Alinsky. Think basic troll psychology. The initial Birthers were nutjobs. Fox News and their ilk are trolls. The trolls latched onto the argument and spread it around and all of the people who get all of their news from Fox News started subconsciously believing it.
How do you win against a troll? You CAN'T. The best you can do is ignore them. The Obama camp's first response was to simply release the birth certificate. They DID that. The trolls laughed and just came back that it wasn't *enough* of a birth certificate. Obama realized at this point that the only appropriate response was to ignore it since no rational people actually believed he wasn't an American citizen, but then God-level trolls like Palin and Bachmann and The Donald started spreading it around. And what happened after he actually released the thing?
1. Immediately it turns to "This was photoshopped, lol"
2. Immediately it turns to "If his father was Kenyan, how can he be a natural-born American citizen?"
3. Immediately it turns to "Obama's just releasing this for publicity. Nobody actually believed he wasn't an American citizen, so why else would he be doing this?"
It's textbook trolling. And you're goddamn falling for it.
