It Can’t Be

The representatives of Arizona’s Lower House have just voted 31 to 29 in favor of a law obliging Barack Obama to prove that he is American if he wants Arizona voters to participate in the vote for his reelection in 2012. To do so, he must present them with his birth certificate. Republican Judy Burges, who sponsored the bill, affirms that she is unsure if Obama is eligible for the electorate. Therefore, she wishes to shed light on the question. One group in this state is convinced that the current president was born in Kenya and is therefore illegitimate according to the Constitution.

Although the Hawaii Legislature has, on multiple occasions, confirmed Obama’s birth under its skies in August 1961, by presenting the official document in conjunction with birth announcements from two Honolulu newspapers, the Kenya legend persists.

Certain other states, including Oklahoma and Missouri, are developing legislation to this point, or attempting to do so. About ten Republican representatives in the Capitol are even trying to install lasting doubt on the federal level, so far without success.

It is a crude maneuver, but one deemed effective by this sector of the American population that has still not managed to believe that the United States has normally and legitimately elected a black president: “It can’t be.” If the enormity of this change has still managed to escape the population, resistance to its reality a year and a half later by a percentage of Americans will attest to it. Something cataclysmic has completely shaken their beliefs. It is impossible for them to accept it: “I don’t believe it.” This Obama cannot be American. His birth certificate is a fake.

Denial is the most convenient means of escaping a reality that feels too huge, its consequences too heavy. We say, “no, it can’t be.” We strike a deal with the truth, rationalizing away in accordance with our own capacity for comprehension. The English Bishop Richard Williamson has trouble admitting that the Nazis killed six million Jews. It can’t be. Would he believe half that number?

An Indonesian university student declares herself entirely closed to the idea that Islamists guided by bin Laden were behind the destruction of the towers in New York in 2001. It can’t be, she says.

The Swiss authors of a conservative newspaper article protect themselves from the horror of the execution of thousands of Muslim prisoners in Srebrenica by Bosnian Serbs: they speak of a “pseudo massacre.” A crime against humanity? It can’t be.

How much time have the Communists spent negotiating the reality of Stalin’s Gulag among themselves? Stalin? It can’t be.

If I won the jackpot, would I believe it? Yes, without a doubt. Good luck has a nice way of imposing itself upon reality without opposition. It is innocent, pure, and unattainable by suspicion or doubt. It doesn’t need to present its birth certificate; it has no opponents. This does not signify that it has no consequences, but winning the jackpot as far as I’m concerned, it can’t be. But that’s because I didn’t buy a ticket.