The Propaganda Revolution

With the primary sideshow scrambling to crown the latest late-night punchline in Iowa, I figured it a good time for a much needed hack job on one Ron Paul.

Because fuck this guy!

This won't be the first time I go after Paul but that's because even now, even when losing to Rick Santurom, his worshippers are loud as ever. Probably hoping to elect the wretched troll with the force of their whining. And as obnoxious as they are, they still might manage it because Paul has built himself a nice little lie-machine to rival the complete works of Joseph Goebbels.

The biggest and ugliest Ron Paul Lie is that he'll end War. Which war? Why all of them of course! It's a common argument put forward by his supporters because they have a short memory and no critical thinking skills. They all happily assume that a Paul presidency would mean an immediate end to the clusterfucks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all our various drone attacks. Treating this as possible requires a willful ignorance of the absolute bitch-fit the Pentagon threw in 2009 when Obama floated a possible draw-down. It's been over two years and all that's changed is some shuffling of the Generals - the same Generals who will be around if and when Paul takes office.

This little peace and love delusion is the most common argument you'll find from Paul apologists on the left trying to brush off his neofeudal economic policies. "Sure, he'll kill Medicare and Social Security outright but he'll end the wars!" Or, in the most looney attempts at rationalization, we'll have a "fight" for social programs but those wars? Forget about it!

Because the US Congress ruled by John Boner and Harry Reid would okay an isolationist foreign policy but put up a fight on behalf of Social Security and Medicare. How fucking stupid do you have to be to believe such a thing!?

But that gets to the subtler and more insidious lie of the whole Ron Paul phenomenon - that he's some champion of civil liberties. As recently as last year, Paul was pushing for a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion. None of those "if the mother is in danger" qualifiers spouted by Young Republicans still trying to get laid, just a flat out ban. It has nothing to do with "liberty" and everything to do with Paul being a reactionary toad who's cranky about how complicated the world has gotten since 1940. It's also why he's always going on about the gold standard and ending the Fed. There's absolutely no reason to return to the gold standard but that's how it used to be so dagnabbit, that's what Paul is for! Similarly the Federal Reserve serves a purpose besides just being Wall Street's piggy bank but it's too new and scary for Paul's severely stunted mind.

Look at any part of the Ron Paul platform - isolationism, abortion, shiny things - and the positions are clearly not grounded in any principles of freedom or liberty but in the typical reactionary's visceral hatred of all things new and different. And just in case it wasn't obvious enough, Paul then cloaks himself in "constitutionalist" rhetoric, the familiar garb of the bitter old coot demanding the world return to what he knew in his boyhood.

Yet Ron Paul still commands national support for these positions that were archaic in the 60s thanks to the internet. The very same internet where you can find all this clear evidence that he doesn't care about peace, liberty, or any of that crap. He's just a bitter old fart who wants the world to get off his lawn and he's one more argument in favor of SOPA.

It's not a macro, it's a mirror...