On Facebook I have few friends. Most of them are TBM's from my high school days. Nice people, many of them very intelligent. One in particular was someone I was teased for befriending in high school. We weren't best friends but friendly. A few of my shallow friends wanted to know why I would talk to her. The answer was that she's nice, smart and interesting.

Fast forward 15 years. She keeps posting these impossibly ignorant things on her page. I ignore most of them because I don't want to pick a fight. She put one up the other day showing our president carrying a book titled "The Post-American World". It questions how we should feel about this, our president reading that book which was authored by "a Muslim". I was as non-confrontational as I could be. I simply told her what the book is about, who the author is and what he does for a living. I was attempting to reassure her. She unfriended me within 5 minutes. I don't care all that much. It's just frustrating to see how close-minded people can be. You don't have to like Obama, Fareed Zakaria or his book. But it's just that, a book written by a guy. It doesn't speak to the character of those who read it.

MORMONS are a special kind of stupid.

IS LDS A CULT? I HAVE A CLOSE PERSON WHO SEEMS TO BE MORE AND MORE DISTANT FROM HER FAMILY...AS THOUGH SHE IS BEING BRAINWASHED INTO TRYING TO BE THAT WHICH IS NOT. SHE IS GAY AND TRYING NOT TO BE. THAT SEEMS LIKE A MENTAL DISASTER WAITING TO HAPPEN.

Most cult followers define themselves by typing in all caps.

My mother showed me the same photo. The book is also one of the top selling foreign relations books on amazon.

Now a photo of Obama reading Glenn Beck - that'd scare me.

I have Zakaria's book. Haven't read it yet. I watch his show regularly. How brilliant can a guy get than Fareed Zakaria?

He didn't put out a position paper saying how he wants America to end. He's reading a current book about current events written by a well-educated, well-traveled guy. What could be wrong with that?

I don't want this to turn political. Really, when I was a kid I would read anything I could get my hands on and was told certain topics were off-limits. There's no benefit to ignorance. When my kids are old enough I'll give them my old BOM and read it with them.

I have observed the same thing with my own TBM mother. I have debunked dozens of garbage political chain emails over the past 4 years (probably more than 50) that she has forwarded. I typically provide multiple sources (Snopes, PolitiFact, TruthOrFiction, FactCheck.org, etc.) and do not bother replying unless the facts are overwhelmingly clear. Despite all of these efforts, she recently informed me that she has never accepted my explanations because she does not trust my sources and that there is information on both sides.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2013 09:35AM by facsimile3.

God, so sick of these pathetic right winger email forwards. The author is not some muslim extremist guy, he's a famous well educated political analyst who wrote a book describing the rise of 3rd world countries. It's not anti-American and if anything thing the book is a warning and a wake up call to America that the rest of the world is catching up to us economically.

I am sick of email forwards and posts on facebook that are easily debunked and have been floating around in various forms for years. The first sign that they are not true is that they tell you to forward to everyone. I tell people that but they continue to forward all the "junk" anyway. Multiple times I have listed references to the falseness of what they posted. It always seems to be the TBMs that are so easily sucked in by the urban legends and twisted truths. I posted a snopes article to one such post and the person replied "...but the rest of it is true". My response was going to be, something about why put lies together with something truthful but I decided not to waste my time with her anymore? 99% of what she posted was false. If someone is going to make a big deal out of an issue, why do they have to use lies to support their point? How about just the truth? Perhaps the truth is too flimsy? I don't unfriend these people but I do take them out of my facebook news feed. It annoys me that people will accept pretty much anything if it promotes their beliefs no matter how ridiculous it sounds. They don't bother to check facts at all.

My dad likes to say, "Animals don't evolve, they adapt". The depths of stupid in that statement pretty much sum up the mormon religion.

I haven't heard of this book and know nothing about it, but if it WAS a fanatical Muslim extremist's view on how to best "end" America, then I would HOPE that our President (the man responsible for preventing just such an occurrence) would read it! Know your enemy, and all that.