Something happened to me yesterday that really shook me. I was in church (an extremely conservative denomination, to be sure) and I was talking to a friend (whom I think highly of), who, quite casually, began talking how Obama and "the Government" are buying up closed Walmart stores and converting them into "concentration camps". He stated that folks meet high resistance when they poke around at these "facilities". In the midst of our conversation, another friend (whom I also think highly of) heard what he was talking about and calmly agreed.
Neither one of these guys are idiots. One is a native Southerner, but the other is a New Jersey native, so this is not a regional thing. I'm sure they both believe Obama's a Muslim; that seems to be a rather tame belief nowadays, compared to things like this. But the degree to which folks are willing to believe in alternate universes uncritically, without any kind of examination for factuality, is getting frightening. Liberals do a degree of this as well, but, honestly, they've got nothing on these folks.
I had a similar thing happen to me. The person was someone I had a lot of respect for. They were certainly not an idiot. They are much better educated than the average Democrat. Yet they stunned me by wholeheartedly repeating a bizarre Obama conspiracy theory. When someone is that well educated, that intelligent, and yet they buy into this stuff where do you even begin to have a conversation? I just smile and move on.
The Wikipedia page also says that :
A survey of registered Republicans by Public Policy Polling in May 2015, found that 32% thought that "the Government is trying to take over Texas", and that half of all Tea Party supporters are concerned with an imminent Texas invasion.
I'm curious if (educated) Republicans feel ashamed when they hear that a scary amount (percentage) of their own, honestly believe in such stupid conspiracy theories.
As Fuzzy said there are educated Republicans that believe this stuff wholeheartedly. The Governor of Texas used to be a Texas supreme court justice and an adjunct professor at UT Law School. Can't get much more intelligent and educated than that and yet...
