I was glad to see that due to the diligent reporting of James Kirchick in the The New Republic, it looks like the Ron Paul campaign will be sunk.
I've always found Ron Paul creepy and extreme -- which is why he is so popular with Internet-bred young people who reach for shallow but sure answers in real time in texts no longer than their hand. It's always amazed me that geeks who were five minutes ago spouting the typical "progressive" leftist menu -- collectivism, liberation of property, government entitlement programs -- would five minutes later start embracing Ron Paul in a forums debate, despite his seeming conservative, right-wing position. Ah, that's because he's a libertarian, and as I've learned over the years, there are sometimes virtually no differences between the hard leftist and the libertarian -- see, for example, the way they've both embraced the shrill anti-SOPA campaign. CATO has been particularly shameful with exaggerated hyperbole and even appearing on Kremlin TV to stump for the cause.
I knew things were *really* extreme when my son, who tends toward the Tea Party in likely rebellion against my liberal values, said he found this antiwar video by Ron Paul extreme. That is, global leftists and isolationist libertarians have in common the desire to end America's wars. But there is just something so...freaky...about this film. I can't find it now among the huge scrum of Ron Paul stuff on Youtube, but the video hinged on the hypothetical of China invading America, and how that would feel, and therefore, understanding how awful that was, we should realize people hate us in other countries we've invaded.
While there may be some truth to that, it was strangely xenophobic to use China. China may hold Tibet and the Uighurs in thrall, but it doesn't project its troops outside the country, the way Russia has over the years. It's more likely to send peace-keepers to Haiti than try to deploy troops even to guard its pipelines abroad. To be sure, it gets involved in training other countries' militaries, like the US, but the actual presence of troops is a rare thing and not typical of how China projects its force.
Meanwhile, while there are plenty of bad things to say about the wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and they're all said loudly and frequently, there are aspects to these wars that aren't "about" the US -- terrorism, and facts like the Taliban killing 85 percent of the civilians killed. Ron Paul could have done a more sophisticated video in which he talked not about the hypothetical of China invading America, but simply interviewed Afghans or Iraqs after their towns were bombed or their people killed by terrorists that they believed wouldn't have done this if US troops weren't in their country. Wouldn't that be compelling enough? But see, that's what the left would do -- Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!". Ron Paul needs a holistic theory -- a conspiracy.
As Kirchick put it in The New Republic, libertarianism is an ideology, not a philosophy for government. Like communists and fascists and others with *ideologies* and not *philosophies for government*, because they are ideologically-driven, libertarians are horridly rigid and extreme and just believe in trying harder and more fiercely to apply their ideas -- which is why we get the awful results we do, even if some of the ideas are "good".
What I find equally repulsive about the Tea Party mailings and moveon.com mailings I subscribe to is their rigidity and isolationist belief in a wholistic ideology that covers all issues with an answer for everything, and brooks no dissent or compromise.
Leftwingers are always opportunistically fund-raising in craven ways -- no sooner did Occupy Wall Street appear than moveon.org had its hand out to collect money for...online petitions which had achieved nothing to grow their movement for a decade, by contrast with activists on the streets organized from a Canadian anti-capitalist outfit, Ad-Busters. Funny, that. But they stuck their hand out for funds and took credit anyway, and played catch-up.
Right-wingers I find even more craven and creepy because of the way they try to scare people with their "reporting" first, then try to get them to pay money to save themselves. They're like a version of the tele-evangelist who tells you to send him more money so you can find salvation.
So, for example, they'll tell you about some scary economic statistic of unemployment or rising food costs, then they'll tell you to click on a link where you can learn "The eight things you need to stockpile" or "the three things you need to do to survive the coming crisis". Often, these are to include financial tips. The Washingon Times, which is supposed to be a journalistic operation, puts out these ridiculous medicine-show pieces, and it really undermines their mission.
Do they really think people are that stupid? If you click your way through all those ads -- and it can take 20 or more clicks some times because they pretend to tell you a long story in many sequences -- you will find that in order to get that list of those precious 8 things to stockpile or those absolutely vital three things you need to do to survive the coming collapse of America's economy, you have to pay some guy $99 -- or $199 in three installments. You can't help wondering, if he were really altruistic, why he wouldn't just tell us outright in the first email those all-important 8 things. But I suppose he only wants his own people and those who pay him money to get those 8 things, because there will be a shortage, and we can't have everybody stampeding and buying...nylon rope or iodine tablets or whatever the secret thing is.
(I wonder why more people don't go through all those screens, pay the $99, then tell everybody. Just as a kind of experiment and an effort to end this particularly pernicious cultural atavism.)
The Ron Paul newsletters with their lurid depiction of race wars and fake scandals about Martin Luther King, Jr., are part of this genre. TNR asks why conservatives don't care about these newsletters? That's because they are steeped in this culture of the medicine show and preacher's fire-and-brimstone speech culminating in a passing of the collection basket. This is so culturally deeply ingrained, they don't hear it anymore. They don't think about it. It's just what it is. If asked individually whether they really believed there was a coming "race terrorism" in American cities, they'd likely immediately dismiss it as extremist fear-mongering. But they accept it in the package it comes -- a financial tips newsletter, a political campaign email, a Youtube video -- because that's just the culture.
Michelle Bachman was finished off not only because she's a woman and had migraines, but because she ran a clinic that was anti-gay. Ron Paul makes her look like a liberal by contrast with his brutal claims "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities" and that people with HIV/AIDS "enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.""
Like the left, which I wish would make its case by persuasion rather than labelling and name-calling, I wish the right would make its case not by this tacky cultural affectation of hyperbole like a preacher's sermon -- or worse, a KKK rally!
And now the seemy underbelly of this culture has been exposed -- it's not peculiar to Ron Paul alone, there are many political figures with these same kind of newsletters. But he's the most popular Republican, doing the best in the polls, so it matters most that it's about him now. When you see all the newsletter topics, you will recognize your old friends from forums -- like avc.com where Kid Mercury reigns -- and even gets Fred's ear -- with his conspiratorial theories about gold.
All the lefty geeks who embraced Ron Paul because they thought it would mean no government interference in the Internet, Google-friendly Internet policies, no foreign wars, etc. according to either the progressive or libertarian value chart will have to come to grips with his actual documented extremism and explain themselves. Of course some of the lolbertarians share these Social-Darwinist, racist and antisemitic views themselves. A problem with technically-minded binary thinkers is that simplistic arguments by self-assured people who seem like "winners" and not "losers" are very appealing to them. Under Ron Paul, I have no doubt the Singularity would be ushered in sooner than it might otherwise.
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