Yesterday I was chatting with a nurse who was setting me up for a minor procedure at a local hospital.  She said she was originally from Oklahoma and still had family there.  So I used that opening to mention the drought, the heat wave and climate change.  Every chance I get I bring up the odd coincidence that Texas and Oklahoma are getting the worst climate related damage since the dust bowl days and, as it happens, the Congressmen from Oklahoma and Texas are the ones who do the bidding of the “global warming hoax” beneficiaries.  Of course, they owe their political careers to oil barons, so what else can they say about the polar ice cap melting other than it’s a “hoax”?

I generalized that the men in Congress have done a lot of damage to all of us hoping the nurse would agree.  And she did.

Then she said, “And how about that president of ours?  He won’t even say the pledge of allegiance, and, when he does, he uses the wrong hand.”

OMG, how do we counteract simplistic thinking like that?  And this is an RN who had to have some post high school education.  She seemed bright and alert, good at her job and someone who would NOT be taken in by the lies generated by American Crossroads, ALEC, Americans for Prosperity and all the “defeat Obama whatever the cost” crowd.

Yet here she was – miss middle America. Totally convinced that the President of the United States won’t say the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America.   How can anyone juggle those two things cognitively?

I took a deep breath and told her that the photo online a few months ago was a fake.  I explained that nowadays anyone clever enough can make a fake photo or video.  She agreed that that was possible but didn’t seem to apply that piece of information to the Obama Left Hand Pledge photo.

Not being sure if she was even open for information that might mess up her hard core dislike of the President, I explained that photos like that are made up by people who hate Obama because he is trying to protect programs like Social Security and Medicare, and those people want to destroy those programs.  HELLO?  Medicare?  Hospital?  Nurse?   Income?

I don’t know what else to do but keep telling the truth about the Obama haters and sharing facts about what is going on.  Truth? Facts? No thanks, it’s time for my coffee break.  Have a nice day.