Ron Paul Revolution Misunderstood

[liveonearth]

Shirley doesn't get it. She doesn't understand why Ron Paul fans would join the Republican Party for just one year to support him. She doesn't understand how a Revolution can be built without a clear party affilation. And at the rate she's going, she never will get it.

But let me make it really plain for her and the likes of her. Ron Paul supporters have been joining the Republican party because that way we CAN vote for him. I have no love of the current Republican party. It is fascist in my view: overly patriotic and completely sold out. Party membership is a tool, not an allegiance. We did not get him nominated this year, but we got the most support for Ron Paul yet. Every time he runs he gets more. When open minded people hear him speak they realize that he is not a raving lunatic. The media consistently portrays him as a such, but in person he is wonderfully reasonable. People discover that he is a highly moral philosopher. He is not like most politicians. He did not expect to get elected. He ran in order to be heard. And he was, more than ever before.

I come from liberal origins, but I have supported Ron Paul for years. People don't get that either. Both the Democrats and the Republicans have been lobbied, and conquered, by multinational business interests. Our government is a corporatocracy, based on the notion that we are consumers and that an economy based on our lust for houses, cheap plastic shit and entertainment will provide great wealth for those providing it. And it has. The problem with this scenario is that it has no respect for the planet or the species on it, including homo sapiens. It doesn't matter if we live or die, thrive or suffer, as long as we pay.

Ron Paul's proposal to bring our government back down to the minimum function and stop doling out favors to ANYONE may be the only way that we derail this freight train that is our economy. Infinite growth is not sustainable. Nobody else has really faced the fact that our current approach is leading to devastation. Obama knows it but is trying to change it gradually from inside the system. It's very slow going. I don't really want all social services to be eliminated, but at this point, it's a choice between chopping those, or allowing the corruption that runs congress (and sometimes the presidency) to continue spending our tax dough. Starve a few now, or everybody later. So let's take it all away, and deal with the lack of government hand holding. If we can stop our blindly suicidal course of consumerism, painful as it might be, we might survive as a society and as a nation. This is the purpose of the rEVOLution. To save our skins against the wills of those who would gladly bury us for a profit.

I know this is simplistic. It is no more simplistic than Shirley's confusion about our apparent idiocy in not getting more votes in the runup to this election. It's not about votes in one election. It's about the long run. That's the part that can't seem to stick in the minds of the media. This is not really even about America. It's about the Long Emergency.

Comments

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Disagreement agreed to :)

I didn't know that you were talking about using the bully pulpit to swing opinion or standard issue political horsetrading with the "work far from media or political attention", I agree that those things are part and parcel of the job. That phrase brought to mind "fast and furious", or the "gun control under the radar" type things. Things that he's done that aren't exactly kosher.

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

=-] Thanks for letting it be. I don't know the answers, I'm just watching with fascination as it all unfolds. Perhaps Obama is as evil as you and some of my other friends think. My instinct says otherwise, that is all I can really say about it.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think that Obama is "evil". I think that he believes that he's doing the right things for the right reasons. I just think that he's wrong about an awful lot, and uncomfortably partisan.

Captain planet villains are rare :)

Anyway, it's interesting and good that we can *have* this level of disagreement without either of us winding up getting rude. Nice talking to ya :)

[liveonearth.livejournal.com]

LOL we really do disagree about Obama. From the Dem side at least he is not nearly partisan enough. He just won't do what he is told! That's part of what I like about him, that he pisses off his own party.

And yes, I too am grateful to have internet conversations that do not devolve into name calling and insults. I really like hearing about what you think and why, and I can appreciate how your beliefs build around the information that you take in.

[ford-prefect42.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think that he has the option of not pissing off the hard left. He *does* have to work within the system, and the Republican house does have the sole power of impeachment. Honestly, I think that he is riding that line rather closely in attempting to keep the hard left happy. It kinda seems to me as though a lot of people (on both sides) have a *vastly* exagerated idea of the powers of the presidency.

I know that a lot of democrats are *highly* upset that Guantanamo is still open, and that's the most understandable of the criticisms, but he did legitimately explore every option for closing it. This is one of those areas where I don't feel that he was prepared for the actual job of presidency, I think that he had some ideological ideas that were not ultimately correct about the situation. And now he can't just come out and say "no, Shrub was right, these really are terrible terrible people", imagine the howling *that* would kick up!

I think that a lot of the problems that people on both sides have with him are in that vein. I don't think that the economy is his fault, It's an artifact of china development and our culture having been so wealthy for so long. I don't think that he's responsible for our continued presence in Afghanistan, that war was unwinnable. I don't think that he's to blame for the deficits, the political situation makes *both* of the things that could reduce it impossible. So yeah, I think he gets a lot of flack he really doesn't deserve. President is a tough gig.