Obama's Religion: Pseudist

Yesterday the White House issued another resounding affirmation of President Obama’s Christian faith. Supposedly the statement came in response to a Pew Research poll claiming that some 18% of Americans now believe Obama is a Muslim, an increase from 11% a year ago. Pew’s release announced “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama is a Muslim.” Commentators on the Fox News panel seemed to agree that the poll did reveal a peculiar shift in the beliefs of Americans, and that the White House statement showed the President and his staff taking the trend seriously and trying to correct impressions that might harm Obama’s brand.

Don't be suckered, citizens. As far as the White House and MSM are concerned, any poll that indicates Americans believe a “myth”, especially one about Barack Obama, is good news, because it provides material for them to change the subject from Obama’s failures to someone else’s, above all the American public’s. The entire liberal ideology is based on the premise that the public cannot think for itself and needs experts to do it for them. And the entire interminable Obama propaganda campaign has been built on the single go-to premise that dissenters are merely mental defectives and hillbillies whose views no college-educated person could even tolerate hearing, much less consider adopting. A poll suggesting that 18% of Americans think Obama is Muslim, with no demonstrable evidence and against reporting to the contrary by the professional journalists of MSNBC and the New York Times, allows the White House to insinuate that a growing number of Americans are in effect “at risk” of idiocy or psychosis, portending the equivalent of a mental health crisis requiring ‘round-the-clock attention from a task force of therapists and pundits.

They only wish. The public doesn’t need MSNBC to know where the crisis is.

As for public opinion, what the Pew Research headline reports is a factoid. The poll records nothing about what Americans say; it records the poll respondents’ choices from the given options when asked about Obama’s religion. All the saying was done by the researchers, because they provided the answers from which respondents could choose. The statistics tabulate the words respondents allowed Pew to put in their mouths. That's what polls are.

If 18% of respondents chose “Muslim” and 43% chose “Don’t Know”, does this mean, as some commentators seem to assume, that 61% hold a belief that is incorrect if not delusional? Wrong answer, dummies! Here’s another interpretation: substantial numbers think Barack Obama isn’t telling them the truth. They may not believe that they know the secret he’s keeping, and they may not care what it is anyway. They’ve registered clearly enough what he says, and what the media says for him; but they just don’t believe he’s telling the truth. That’s no reason to grade their answers as incorrect. At this point it’s those who take Obama’s word uncritically who should be assigned extra homework.

A better measurement of public views about Obama might ask a question like, How often do you think President Obama tells the public the truth? A) Always B) Often C) Rarely D) Never (E) None of the Above. My bet is that (C), (D), and (E) would get the bulk of responses. A poll question about Obama’s religion needs the option “Pseudism”. That’s the one principle Obama never wavers from. Unfortunately the Pew “researchers” didn’t think to offer that option. They should have. I’m neither surprised nor disturbed that people who didn’t find it may have chosen an available alternative.