Pondering Paulistas 2
Last night, a couple of us started wondering about Ron Paul’s fan base among the twenty-somethings. (The other person in that conversation is of that generation.)
We wondered at their inability to see the big picture of his destructive radicalism, which is founded in the states rights credo that has served as a smokescreen for exploiting minorities, women, and the poor throughout the sweep of U. S. history.
(The cynical suggest that they hear “legalize drugs,” at which point their brains cease to function. I doubt it’s quite so simple. I think it more likely that, upon hearing the Galtian credo, “Every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost!” they fail to realize that many of them will end up amongst the taken.)
Bob Cesca, whom I cite here often because he is a realist (he knows that, to attain the ideal, you must start by attaining the doable), just posted an excellent piece on Paul and the Paulistas. A nugget:
Follow the link for his answer to that question.
January 12, 2012 at 2:12 pm
Yeah, pretty right. Cult and meme are ways to describe it. There’s a bright streak of vulnerability to idiot cults in the US. Some are very minor, some gain a lot of traction. At the center there’s always an idea — aneutronic fusion (!), Bitcoin (!) or a slightly charismatic person of both which forms the center of gravity. If Lyndon LaRouche hadn’t been so non-Internet savvy when the web came on, he could have the same appeal as Ron Paul. There is Alex Jones, grown almost omnipresent, with a huge audience of people who believe a complicated scheme of conspiracies that I find totally baffling. In fact, if you really are logical, or require consistent lines of reasoning, it’s difficult to understand their appeal simply because their followers are so zealous while also carrying on an air thinking critically, when about the opposite is the case. Times of great hardship and systemic failure increase their appeal. They seemingly provide an answer to dysfunctional government and institutions which have destroyed their own legitimacy. With Paul, all the young have latched onto his belief that everything would right itself if money were again backed by gold, an incomprehensible position since the demographic wasn’t even alive when the country went off the gold standard. Why do they believe such things? Because it seems pat, simple, and “Dr. Paul” said so and he appears to be a thoughtful man. I’ve run into young “libertarians” who start spouting gobble about “Ludwig von Mises” and it reminds me of times I’ve read things by people who know nothing of science writing about some bit of it they still know nothing about but have taken a shine to.
January 12, 2012 at 4:35 pm
I think it’s the flip side of the campus radicals back when we were young ‘uns. I don’t mean the civil rights and anti-war activists–I carried my share of picket signs.
I mean the kids who sat around dorm rooms late at night wearing surplus fatigues and fantasizing about American workers and peasants allying themselves with the students to overthrow the Establishment.
They somehow missed the news, obvious to anyone paying attention, that the workers and peasants hated and distrusted the students while the cops had all the guns. For that matter, they hated being called “workers and peasants.”