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ReLOVEution My Ass

January 02, 2008

I started putting this together in my head weeks ago, then last week I finally got most of it written, but didn't have time to finish it. Now it's old news, thanks to the New Republic waking up the mainstream media about it.

I usually try to stay away from talking or ranting about particular political issues or candidates. I'm often far more concerned with how we conduct our discourse than the actual topics, because I think it says more about who we are as a party, a movement, a country, or hell, a species.

Ron Paul has changed all that.

Look, I was suckered initially, too. I remember fairly early last year, seeing a shirtless guy in his thirties, wearing a battered straw cowboy hat, walking down South Lamar near the Horseshoe Lounge with a "Ron Paul: ReLOVEution" sign. Here's a good old redneck liberal pushing for this guy, and anyone that's got the political balls to prominently push for love in his campaign sounded pretty refreshing.

A couple of months ago, I still had yet to start really doing the work on investigating the candidates, but I ran across an article in Wired magazine online that was fairly funny, comparing rabid Mac fans (who, God love 'em, are the Aggies of the personal computer world) to Ron Paul enthusiasts.

The article piqued my interest, as did the flame war it incited in the comments area. Paul supporters were pouring forth from every dank orifice of the Internet, like a bunch of angry, slightly rabid rats. Yes, that's a horrible metaphor to use. But at the time, I believed it to be just a small, angry, rabid subset of Paul supporters, and I believed that Paul himself couldn't be held responsible. Every campaign has its nutbags.

A few days later, after my running group's workout, I made the mistake of mentioning the article. I joked about the nutty people, but made clear that I didn't know anything about the candidate himself, and didn't blame him for the nuttiness. A runner's boyfriend, however, is apparently an ardent Paul supporter, and while he was polite, he was not so amused.

I began to wonder what was up.

In the last month, I've seen Ron Paul's name spray-painted on the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge (the one next to Lamar), and in huge letters on the side of a bridge on Mopac. Fortunately, the latter grafitti was painted over within days, and I imagine Ron Paul would probably be enraged that the removal of the blight was paid for with Federal highway funds.

I'm sure a supporter would say that we're in a critical period that calls for extreme measures. Right on. I'm with ya. Political grafitti is perfectly acceptable and effective - when there is no other means to communicate to the populace. And don't give me some crap about CNN and Fox being run by the government. CNN will report on whatever will grab attention, and Fox is simply capitalizing on the evil genius idea that they can more easily sell news that a certain demographic
wants to hear.

We've got YouTube, the internet, talk radio, free public speech areas. We're not to the spray painting stage yet. I'd be in a down vest spray painting "WOLVERINES!" down the side of the Frost Bank if we were at that point, but we're not. You want to take extreme measures? Influence voters.

Driving and running around the blue enclave that is Austin, Ron Paul is everywhere, in the yards of blue collar South Austin homes, Tarrytown McMansions, and older Westlake neighborhoods. His name adorns the bumpers of students' '97 Nissans, the back camper windows of battered Toyota trucks driven by people coming home from Wheatsville Co-Op, and the back of Lexus SUV's.

He had seemed to bridge all the gaps, to be the Everyman Candidate, at least for those who knew just a little about him. But why?

For one thing, advertising your campaign as some sort of revolution based on love is brilliant. It makes it sound like John Lennon has been reincarnated and is running for office, something that would even suck in some Republicans. But this guy is no Lennon. Let's take a look at some Ron Paul love:

Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable.

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

Perhaps the L.A. experience should not be surprising. The riots, burning, looting, and murders are only a continuation of 30 years of racial politics.The looting in L.A. was the welfare state without the voting booth. The elite have sent one message to black America for 30 years: you are entitled to something for nothing. That's what blacks got on the streets of L.A. for three days in April. Only they didn't ask their Congressmen to arrange the transfer.

This nugget of love is from the June 15, 1992 Ron Paul Report, one of the several newsletters published by Paul from about 1978, including Ron Paul's Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Investment Letter, and The Ron Paul Survival Letter.

My coworker, Ted, and I were talking about Ron Paul a month ago, and his Google search turned up an interesting May 2007 post discussing the newsletters on a blog site called the Daily Kos. It's written by a former member of our armed forces, and a former Republican.

At the time, the content of the small-production newsletters could only be found on the Internet in a few locations, including some Google newsgroups and, as you might imagine, some white supremacist websites.

Now to be fair, back in the 1990's, first in a Texas Monthly article, Ron Paul denied personally writing this stuff, even though most of describes "his experience" in the first person. In fact, take a look at the way this bit in the October 1992 edition of the Report, about the carjacking threat, which is described as "the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos", is written:

An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).

I frankly don't know what to make of such advice, but even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I've urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun in self defense. For the animals are coming. (emphasis added.)

Aha! A clue to who might have written this stuff... Let's see, who lived in Lake Jackson that might have been involved with the Ron Paul newsletters, produced and paid for by his foundation, that are written in the first person? Well, Ron Paul lived in Lake Jackson... hmm.

So, perhaps he's not a racist, but just a liar who doesn't know what his racist staff members are saying under his byline. Fair enough. The failure to take responsibility for things done in his name would certainly make for a more painless transition from the current administration.

Now, the newsletters have been revealed in all their original glory, scanned, and made available on the Internet.

Yet, faced with all this information in black and white, the nuttier Ron Paul supporters are defending him with a variety of time-worn tactics of the desperate and lunatic - denial, misdirection, and counter-attack.

A commenter from the CNN website:

This is a terrific example of the US media attempting to discredit Ron Paul for no real reason. He has been nothing but a patriot and a gentleman his entire career yet CNN publishes this garbage to make him look bad! Shame on CNN! By publishing nonsense like this you're proving to be no better than Fox News.

Yes, publishing this garbage, his garbage, to make him look bad! Shame indeed, for actually acting like journalists for once, even though you're waaaayyy behind the times.

People are screaming slander. I hate to be an attorney about this, or really, just someone with half a brain, but when something is printed, it's libel, not slander, and when someone republishes your own writing, and it's uncomfortable for you, it's, well, nothing, except illuminating about you.

So, why are people behind this guy? Well, certainly, his previous rantings, I'm sorry, the rantings in the newsletter bearing his name that he held the copyright for published by his foundation that was written in the first person by someone from Lake Jackson, Texas, were not widely known outside the circles of people with swastikas carved into their skulls from their time in prison, where they learned to build websites.

It's most likely his stance on the war - even the editor of the Daily Kos says that his "forceful, eloquent anti-war rhetoric sticks out like a sore thumb from the undifferentiated conservative yammerings of the other candidates."

In fact, I agree with a lot of what he has to say about the war.

Unfortunately, "pull out of Iraq now" has an almost Pavlovian effect on people, particularly liberals. Someone could say "I will bring all our troops home now to defend us from the 3-eyed black aliens who will be invading on February 31, 2008," and people opposed to the war will immediately begin drooling. That, combined with the whole apparently false love and hope schtick, is a powerful combination.

For liberals, though, Iraq is where the love and hope affair would end. The guy is pro-life, but is somewhat successfully hiding behind the old "it should be a state, not a federal issue" canard. This would amount, ironically, to a de facto Federal subsidization of Trailways, Greyhound, and other interstate transportation that would see a boost from pregnant riders seeking what their neighboring states might have to offer.

I'm not saying this to advocate a contrary view, but because I know of strongly pro-choice people who were, until learning more about him, Ron Paul supporters.

And it's one thing to oppose a particular war, and to philosophically oppose war altogether. But in his interviews with John Stossel, he also says we had no business being involved in the Korean War (my Korean mother, relatives and I feel a bit differently), and our entry into World War II was only justified by the attack on Pearl Harbor. Never mind that whole genocide thing Hitler had going. Perhaps he doesn't want to alienate some of his paying constituency.

I stupidly allowed myself to get drawn into a flame war online today with some Paul supporters, who claimed I was saying unsubstantiated things about Paul by posting links to his own newsletters. The responses I got?

Furthermore, there is no evidence in any of those links that Ron Paul ever said or believed any such thing. That quote appears to be just a timely smear against an honest and decent person. I wonder if, perhaps, McCarthy was a relative of yours....

Nice. And:

And, yes, I have read the materials the New Repulibic posted as well as the comments concerning those materials...there is simply nothing to connect the quote you posted directly to what Ron Paul believes and as you have already stated, Ron Paul has stated he does not believe it.

You have lightly choosen to believe and post that Ron Paul is a liar without any evidence to the contrary.

Of course, I hadn't yet called Paul a liar, and I never said that Ron Paul denied believing such things. But that's the methods nuts use to build their case. Whatever.

Eventually, they posted his official response. I thanked them, and pointed out that now people had both sides, and there was nothing to do but make a choice about what to believe.

Here's the thing: Ron Paul is not a threat in this campaign. Despite his record-breaking internet money-raising, despite the fact that he has a blimp (which I do find kinda cool), and despite his supporters tech savvy, he's not going to win anything. Republicans should definitely be worried that he might take primary votes away from their candidates, and I have to say I think the Republicans have some quite capable and sane candidates this time around. Come on, Democrats, you know it's true.

My concern, as usual, comes back not what choices we, the people, are making, but how we're making them. I have to think that the average Bubba in South Austin, the Tarrytown socialite, the sociology freshman, the aging vegan hippie, and the veteran state employee aren't really down with considering militias "heroic movements", and "communities of internal protection" that are collectively "an encouraging sign that the end of government as we know it may be near." I don't want to think that even the most conservative of them are comfortable with what he's said about gays, blacks, or even Jeanne Kirkpatrick. I don't want to think that any of them really believe what he said in a letter soliciting subscribers to his newsletters: in IRS agents with AK-47's, that revised currency was intended to track innocent American citizens ("I held the ugly new bills in my hand... they made my skin crawl!"). And, I don't believe for a second that, regardless of how they feel about the issues themselves, any of them truly believe that this guy had nothing to do with the things said in his newsletters.

No, all those things are only for the truly nutso, and for Mr. Paul.

Oh, incidentally, just a bit below where the letter says "Send your check today" is the signature of Ron Paul.

Posted by Rob at January 2, 2008 01:40 PM

Comments

Posted by: Shan Walt at January 11, 2008 01:26 PM

Posted by: rob at January 11, 2008 01:37 PM

Posted by: kathy at January 28, 2008 08:55 PM

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