Put down your secret decoder rings, the ones that allow you to determine from an online scan whether something's been forged, and riddle me this:

--Are you concerned about the economic crisis that has swallowed up more jobs than any downturn since the late 70s / early 80s?

--Are you worried about rampant deflation that's going to... actually, I don't know what it's going to do, because I've never experienced anything like this before; but it won't be good--?

--Have you considered the dangers of an exit strategy from a terribly conceived and ineptly conducted war that's already dragged on longer than WWII?

--Have you put that brain power to work on the health care issue, the mortgage crisis, the Big 3 bailout... the myriad health, education, manufacturing, and money-related issues that face the incoming administration, and the country as a whole?

--In short, are you capable of reasoning out the fact that this issue is dead, dead dead... totally irrelevant, a non-starter with the American people (the millions and millions who don't have the time for such recreational conspiracies), the media (outside of the Drudgey fringe), the Supreme Court... and that there are real, honest-to-god crises that confront us all? That need every ounce of our wits and energy and attention?

... I thought so.

i don't believe, as another poster posited several decades /// pages ago, that you are in fact a teenager with a god complex, or anything like that. no... i believe you are what i would call a dumb smart person. you have a wide vocabulary and lots of specialized knowledge to show how intelligent you are... you take great offense at being called names, yet your arguments often center on using your vocabulary, and what you think are your superior rhetorical skills (but which are in fact simply an ability to string complex sentences together) to confound and outwit your opponents...

you have a bright but brittle mind. your friends -- and especially their wives or girlfriends -- secretly loathe having dinner with you, when you parade your knowledge of some esoteric field in an effort to stoke your ego and make everyone feel inferior to you. conspiracy theories appeal to you for just this reason -- they allow you to become an "expert" on something that most everyone else has deliberately blinded themselves to... you can hold forth for hours on "pixels," "artifacts," "why when i was at nasa in 1982..."

i believe you are not a right-wing nut; i believe that no matter who had won the election you were convinced it was fucked and would be ranting about the conspiracy to cover up the birth of trig or decrying the coming war with syria or some such thing... (i remember your letters from the primaries, and from the presidential campaign...) you delight in poking holes in people's hopes for the incoming administration ---- and there is indeed some truth to the doubts you raise. all politicians DO lie. it IS foolish to believe that a new government, simply because it is democratic and not republican, will deliver us from all that's gone wrong over the past 30... 40... 50 years.

HOWEVER... and here is where your bright, hard mind cannot or will not go... some of us have hopes of a more realistic, modest bent. we are hoping for an administration that is at least competent. we are hoping for a government that at least listens to the people, if it does not always do exactly what we would like. we are hoping for a government that takes seriously its role in the international community, rather than just imposing its will without regard for consequences.

and i can say, as someone who's voted in a half-dozen presidential elections now, this is the first time i've really felt such hope, tempered, of course, with my knowledge of the many ways that even the best politicians can and will disappoint...

good day to you, sir.

Wait---

We're the wackos, because we refuse to question the "hoax" that's sitting right before our eyes.

Obviously I agree this will do nothing to quell the noise. The project is simple, and elegant in its simplicity: do not. stop. ever. Keep questioning the legitimacy of the Obama presidency. Make enough noise that this endangers the rule of law, not to mention the next election, the very lives of our president-elect's family. Nothing matters but forwarding your cracked agenda, even as the country and economy crumble around you.

I pity you. And I pity all of us. I'd say let it go, but I know you won't. But I won't be here to argue with you and give you more rhetorical ammo to fuel your fire (which, I know, is proof that I'm "scared" of the truth as well).