Some 30 people in the back room of Piecora’s are heckling a man for claiming that the World Trade Center collapsed because planes piloted by Al Qaeda crashed into them. A ponytailed man shouts, “Are you telling us that you believe the government’s story of 9/11?” Someone else interjects, “You believe these ‘experts’? Who are your ‘experts’? Who’s paying them?” Then a vest-wearing older woman who identifies herself as “a scientist” stands up and bellows, “What are your credentials? What are your credentials? You! You! What are your credentials? I want to know!”

It’s the day after the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and this is the monthly Seattle meeting of Campaign for Liberty (C4L), a Virginia-based 501(c)(4) lobbying organization that “neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office.” Immediately following the C4L meeting, the King County Ron Paul 2012 organization—a group with the same organizers and 24 of the same members—will meet to discuss their plans for getting Ron Paul elected president of the United States. For now, they are barely giving their attention to a rumpled man who keeps digging through the dense forest of files on his laptop in a futile effort to dissuade them from conspiracy theories. Images of the Twin Towers falling over and over again are projected onto a large screen while people munch on their pizza and grumble.

After the rumpled man finishes receiving his abuse, a woman stands up and gives a rambling speech about mind control and using sleight of hand to distract the masses. “This is new information,” she says three or four times in rapid succession. She talks about Hurricane Erin, a “category 5 hurricane” that was “set for New York” in the days before 9/11. Immediately following the attacks, Erin “dissipated off the coast of Cape Cod. Nobody ever says anything about this.” The room is abuzz with the possibilities this presents. Raucous applause fills the space.

I don’t quite follow her—is she really suggesting that 9/11 was a massive distraction for some sort of beta test for a government-created weather-control device?—but rather than elaborating, the meeting moves on to official business. We receive an update on a Mercer Island–based anti-fluoridation campaign (a woman audibly gasps when the project head says, “We were not allowed to speak against fluoridation” at a city council meeting), and then someone announces that a local anarchist group wanted to engage the C4L in a debate, which elicits derisive laughter from the assembly. “We don’t have time for this,” someone sneers.

Then a man in the back of the room stands up and talks about Ron Paul’s performance earlier that night in the Republican presidential debates. Paul said, “This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is… attacking us because we’re free and prosperous is just not true,” and got booed for it by the teabaggers in the audience. “That booing will give Ron Paul more traction with Democrats,” the man explains. He’s interrupted by event organizers who tell him that because C4L needs to stay “nonpartisan,” he has to hold his Paul-centric comments for five minutes, when the C4L officially becomes the King County Ron Paul organization.

Five minutes later, the same people sit in the same room and talk about Ron Paul. They decide that what they need to win is “shoe leather.” They need to talk with Democrats and Republicans alike, to convince both sides of the aisle that the Texas representative is their man. Democrats shouldn’t be a problem, an older man says with a grimace: “They voted a Marxist Democrat into office, so why not a Libertarian Republican?”

An earnest young man says he voted for Paul in 2008, and he’s distressed to see that the poll numbers are roughly the same as they were four years ago. Is there hope, he asks, for Paul as a serious contender? One organizer says everyone in the room should become a Republican precinct captain, and when someone asks if they should identify as Paul supporters when the captains are being chosen, he’s told, cagily, “I don’t want to say be a weasel, but you don’t have to be completely honest.” A man in a suit offers a brief field guide to the two kinds of Republicans they’ll encounter while undercover at Republican meetings: “sheeple” and “thinking Reagan conservatives.” The former will “go with whoever” the crowd selects, he says, but the latter will be easy converts once they’re presented with Paul’s theories and ideas.

And oh, what theories and ideas Ron Paul has! Whenever progressives hear Paul speak, they experience a momentary shudder of recognition. This happens whenever Paul talks about how the government shouldn’t care about what people do in the bedroom, or his pro-drug-legalization policies, or when he discusses our entanglements in the Middle East and bringing our troops home. “He actually makes sense,” the progressive will think, just before Paul turns a rhetorical corner and starts talking—his arms flying about like a Muppet—about privatizing the education system as well as national parks and also Social Security, or when he explains how business can police itself without government intrusion on environmental issues. (And if that isn’t enough, a quick Google search for Paul’s long history of association with white supremacists is enough to send most reasonable people running away from him at top speed.)

So what kind of person becomes an avid Ron Paul follower? The kind of person who is a 9/11 Truther. (In fact, the first time I ever heard Ron Paul discussed as a serious candidate was while reporting a story about 9/11 Truthers for The Stranger in 2007.)

Truther thought tends to resemble Zeno’s arrow paradox: There is no idea so simple that you can’t complicate it by breaking it in half. We all saw planes smash into those buildings. Therefore, the planes must not have caused the collapse. Clearly, the collapse must have been caused by explosives implanted in the buildings by black ops teams beforehand. And Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks, so the attacks were obviously caused by the US government, which claimed that Al Qaeda was responsible as part of a labyrinthine plot to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein.

Keep cutting motivations and facts in half, and you wind up claiming that the planes we saw on 9/11 were sophisticated holograms and the collapses were caused by focused laser beams or, say, that the whole thing was a cover-up for a weather-control satellite test run. You can just keep chopping that arrow down to subatomic particles and you never run out of ideas to parse into something crazier and even more dramatic.

Ron Paul appeals to Truthers precisely because he makes a pitch for one seemingly unbreakable idea: the Constitution. If you reject the idea of the Constitution, you reject the idea of the United States of America; it’s the one idea you can’t split in half. Therefore, Truthers cling to it—and to Ron Paul’s fundamentalist interpretation of it—like a life raft. It’s religious dogma for skeptics: How do you feel about traffic light cameras? Are they in the Constitution? No? Then fuck ’em. Did the founding fathers have Social Security in mind? Hell, no. Fuck it, then—let the olds rot in hell.

This philosophy fits with all the various One World Government conspiracy theorists, an antidote to the creeping global information control plots that Paulites see themselves rebelling against.

Based on what I saw at King County’s Ron Paul meetup, their candidate doesn’t have a chance in hell—they’re not organized, and they’re not interested in learning anything about the corrupt system they’re trying to change in order to change it. It’s for the best, anyway: They’re so comfortable on the outside of the machine that their brains would automatically liquidate if they found themselves on the inside. They’re meatspace internet trolls, arguing violently—valiantly in their own minds—against the world outside their windows in the defense of the single indestructible idea that their jittery, delusional minds can cling to: In a world under assault by shadowy cabinets of scary foreigners seeking to enslave the masses in concentration camps, Truthers will remain the heroes of their own story, as long as they remain faithful to the Constitution as their God, and Ron Paul as their liberator, their One True Prophet. recommended

149 replies on “Why Ron Paul Will Never Win”

  1. @108: My favorite is how they give “HE HAS DELIVERED TEN THOUSAND BABIES” as a sign that he both supports women’s rights and is Presidential-caliber.

  2. No way ’round it. What we have been told, the years and years of theft of our heritage, jobs, bank accounts, damage to our constitutional rights, the wars, the encroaching police state, the dwindling faith in any branch of government down to every last municipality — all are directly related to the catalyst of what 9/11 represented. 9/11 wasn’t just a crime or an act of terrorism, it was The Empire announcing that it is still in charge.

    I’m a left wing non-truther, normal Seattle guy that runs around in the same circles all you hip “inside job naysayers” do, who does not buy a line of the 9/11 commission’s report (not that I’ve even read it). However, the proof is in the propaganda. The proof is in how stupid most conspiracy theories that have been trotted out are. The proof is that in all obviousness someone put the money up to get this job done. Why did this job need done? That is the question. The question is not “who was behind it?” We already know the answer to that (it was neither George Bush or Al Queda). Someone seeking to destabilize whilst angering the civilians of this country and by way of instantaneous media transmission, the entire plugged in world as well.

    The truth is in the notion, I believe, that it was a show of strength of an ancient global empire who has controlled everything you, I, your great great great grandfather and beyond has ever done in some capacity. It’s the lineages, bloodlines of old families that have no need for borders — those are for us, not for them. That’s who did it. Whether they were Muslim or the CIA or some shadowy contractor is immaterial. The outcome has always been the same and will remain the same, simply because it happened. Thus why?

    For starters, for people who are not conspiracy theorists but don’t buy the troofer bullshit, I recommend Jeff Wells’ “The Coincidence Theorist’s Guide to 9/11”:

    http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/20…

  3. I really don’t like this article. I read the article trying and trying to figure out why Ron Paul will never win, but all I found was the message “The people that support Ron Paul are big stoopid heads, this is why I think so.” This is not to say of course that I didn’t find some/most of the points that this writer made were valid, but if you wrote an article named: “Pamela Anderson’s tits are the greatest” and then wrote about Tommy Lee’s cock you could imagine my chagrin. Just Sayin’

  4. I really don’t like this article. I read the article trying and trying to figure out why Ron Paul will never win, but all I found was the message “The people that support Ron Paul are big stoopid heads, this is why I think so.” This is not to say of course that I didn’t find some/most of the points that this writer made were valid, but if you wrote an article named: “Pamela Anderson’s tits are the greatest” and then wrote about Tommy Lee’s cock you could imagine my chagrin. Just Sayin’

  5. @110: “However, the proof is in the propaganda”

    The reason that we’re rolling-eyes at the Alex Jonesers is EXACTLY because we know we’re being lied do.

    We just don’t have our minds so open our brains fall out, we’re selective as to what we assume is being fed us. We don’t automatically assume conspiracy, when there are plenty of other fact-based cases in which we’re being lied to.

    We have some amount of sympathy for the idea, but the smugness of truthers who think that people who disagree are “sheeple” is nothing but willful ignorance.

  6. @111: “The people that support Ron Paul are big stoopid heads, this is why I think so.”

    Pretty much. There’s not enough room in your average newspaper article for a persuasive argument. This was designed to be observations and preaching to the choir, and therefore the ad homs are much more in-line.

  7. More coverage of that Hurricane Erin story!! Now we’re talking conspiracy theory! This I gotta hear. C’mon, Paul–you had a fresh angle and just let it slip by. Find some Hurricaners and lay the good stuff on us.

  10. I’ve always heard you shouldn’t judge an entire group (Paul supporters) by a few individuals (911 extremists). I say there is no harm in the search for the truth. I think we should question the government’s official stance on important events. If we go along with whatever is fed to us, that really does make us like sheep.

  12. The 10th anniversary Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this…Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah…Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes…And hangover or not, they manage to give the world’s most sophisticated air defense system the slip…Unphased by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely…Our masterminds even manage to overpower the odd law of physics or two… and the world watches in awe as steel-framed buildings fall symmetrically – through their own mass – at free-fall speed, for the first time in history. Despite all their dastardly cunning, they stupidly give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the fireball undamaged and fall to the ground… only to be discovered by the incredible crime-fighting sleuths at the FBI Meanwhile down in Washington…Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked 2-man Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a Boeing…Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little…Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the world’s most heavily defended building……all without a single shot being fired…. or ruining the nicely mowed lawn… and all at a speed just too fast to capture on video……Later, in the skies above Pennsylvania…So desperate to talk to loved ones before their death, some passengers use sheer willpower to connect mobile calls that otherwise would not be possible until several years later…And following a heroic attempt by some to retake control of Flight 93, it crashes into a Shankesville field leaving no trace of engines, fuselage or occupants… except for the standard issue Muslim terrorists bandana……Further south in Florida…President Bush, our brave Commander-in-Chief continues to read “My Pet Goat” to a class full of primary school children… shrugging off the obvious possibility that his life could be in imminent danger…In New York…Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously…While back in Washington, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz shake their heads in disbelief at their own luck in getting the ‘New Pearl Harbor’ catalyzing event they so desired to pursue their agenda of world domination…And finally, not to be disturbed too much by reports of their own deaths, at least seven of our nineteen suicide hijackers turn up alive and kicking in mainstream media reports (DO NOT ask questions!!)(Go shopping!!)(and for crying out loud sit down and shut up!!)(A TSA pat-down is waiting for you)

  14. @118: “I say there is no harm in the search for the truth.”

    There is however harm in pseudoskepticism and abusing confirmation bias. At best, it makes you a fool. At worst, plenty of people have gone off the deep end “searching for truth”.

  16. @122 & @123

    FYI, you know who thinks that the 1993 WTC bombing was not ‘successful’ and, by contrast, is positively *beaming* about the ‘success’ of 9/11? Douglas Feith!

    “There had been a number of terrorist attacks over recent years. There was the Cole; there was the embassies in East Africa, the first World Trade Center attack; you can go back to the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983; and in every case, what the United States government did principally was send out the FBI to try find people that you could identify as perpetrators, so that they could be captured and prosecuted. What you hear from all of this discussion, and it’s very important that people focus on it, is this was a different case. This was not let’s go out and find people who did it and punish them, this was, we expect further attacks — there’s enormous uncertainty, this was a major blow on the homeland, AND UNLIKE THE FIRST WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING, IT WAS SUCCESSFUL. It caused us to completely rethink the terrorism danger b/c terrorists traditionally had gone after fairly small spectacular targets you know, a ticket counter at an airport or blowing up a school bus. This was the first successful terrorist attack of mass destruction, and the president, in what I would say was probably the single most important — the single most significant decision — he made as president, said that the purpose of our reaction to 9/11 was to prevent the next attack. Now, no president of the United States had ever reacted to a terrorist attack by saying that the purpose of the United States is to prevent the next terrorist attack. I mean, that was an enormously ambitious goal. That is what, I would say, immediately lifted you out of law enforcement. I mean, you were now well beyond law enforcement into a war on terrorism…”

    http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/28446…

    btw, I’ll take Hannah Arendt over Ayn Rand any day:

    “Some men and women may or may not have ethical or moral principles but they will never allow such principles to undermine their ability to prosper. Loyalty to the party or institution, deference to superiors, the ability to swim with the tide — these are the values that determine the behaviour of the true careerist and of the banality of evil. On the pre-ethical assumption that the good is to advance in the career, everything else is subordinated. This undertaking can have little or great consequences but it always follows the same procedure of giving up the conscience for the career.”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banality_of…

    An explication of Hannah Arendt’s phrase, “the banality of evil”.

  17. @122 & 123@

    PS: Why not more whistle-blowers? Is the mentality displayed in the quote below surprising to anyone — does anyone doubt that the vast majority of people are in this boat?

    Throwawaycop444 of his reluctance/refusal to speak out publicly about police rough handling of protesters (peaceful ones) at the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demostration:

    “I would love to, but I would be putting my income on the line…and I know that sounds very anti-heroic, but it’s how my family and I survive right now.. I’m just glad, personally, in my department (don’t ask which), these atrocities are very very minimal, and as far as I know, my co-workers are very similar to me in this attitude, and we are a station in a rather large city. The one time we had any officer in our department step out of line, he was suspended without pay until the end of his hearing, and then let go.”

    http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comment…

  19. Paul Constant writes:

    “Truther thought tends to resemble Zeno’s arrow paradox: There is no idea so simple that you can’t complicate it by breaking it in half. We all saw planes smash into those buildings. Therefore, the planes must not have caused the collapse.”

    Dr. Graeme MacQueen explains why this dig/ cheap shot is so poorly observed:

    PT 3/4

    Watch the whole presentation here:

    http://peopleforfreedom.com/new-world-or…

    PS I’m endorsing the speech, not the website…

  20. @125: “PS: Why not more whistle-blowers? Is the mentality displayed in the quote below surprising to anyone — does anyone doubt that the vast majority of people are in this boat?”

    The difference between 9/11 and the Wall Street protests is that a lack of evidence is not evidence itself, while there IS a ton of direct, nonsubjective evidence for the Wall Street protests, simply STRONGLY filtered by the MSM.

  22. @128
    I was trying to make a general case, using what I thought was a fairly representative example: a civil servant w/ a family to feed. Not going to make waves and risk losing his job. Plenty of those types in the world, no?

    Anyway, 9/11 whistle-blowers *do* exist and have important things to say. Here’s the testimony of one:
    ——-
    “In February of 2001 I was in Peshawar Pakistan helping to put on a peacemaking workshop for Afghans. The workshop was led by peace researcher Johann Galtung and I was there as a member of the Center for Peace Studies at McMaster University where I was a university professor. Our host was the Afghan University in Peshawar. In other words, we always work w/ people in the region in question in war zones and, in this case, w/ a great many Afghans. This workshop went on for about eight hours a day for five days. There were one hundred participants about a quarter of whom were former Afghan cabinet ministers. Most of the others were academics, leaders of NGOs, or journalists…

    I’d like to report that during those five days and two further days w/ NGOs at the United Nations, many ideas were put forward to help create a stable peace in Afghanistan. Yet not a single person — guess what — proposed that a foreign invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was the way to go. Most of the people we talked w/ considered the Taliban their adversaries, but none suggested the Taliban had no part whatsoever in a future Afghanistan; on the contrary, they proposed a peace process to involve the Taliban, which we do not have in 2009…not one single woman that I talked to there, or when I visited Afghanistan earlier, called for military strikes to save them from the Taliban. Their dominant view, expressed repeatedly, was that we needed to end war and the culture of war in Afghanistan, that every effort needed to be made to end it creatively and w/ as little destruction as possible.

    The second thing I want to report to you, in addition to those comments, was one that puzzled me at the time. A well-dressed male participant, probably a former Afghan cabinet minister, stood up after a nice brainstorming session about what Afghans could do to make their country more peaceful and said…”The USA is right now planning a war in Afghanistan.” OK, this was six months before 9/11. “It’s about oil and a base to protect their interests. They will build a base; they will be there for a long time, and unfortunately, our discussions here today are of no avail.” And then he sat down and there was silence. Given what know today about foreknowledge of the fall 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, foreknowledge in Pakistan and India, it seems to me he wasn’t just making a good guess, he was telling us what he learned, probably from Pakistani officials.

    In other words, he knew about the invasion of Afghanistan seven months before it took place…I mention that fellow just to sort of say shame on me, b/c when 9/11 happened, I should’ve had a little bit of a head start in understanding it, as compared w/ most people in North America. So, did I cotton on right away on 9/11 that this was a very fishy event? I’m sad to say I didn’t.”
    ——-

    This is an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Graeme MacQueen which can be viewed here (btw, I’m not endorsing the website – just the speech):

    http://peopleforfreedom.com/new-world-or…

  23. @130: I don’t doubt the US loved the idea of invading the areas of the middle-east that aren’t business-friendly and bombing the fuck out of them, creating exclusive mineral/fuel rights with the installed puppets.

    You’ll find that many-to-most people who think the truthers are batshit also agree with this.

    There’s a distinct difference between opportunism and conspiracy. We have contingency plans for invading every country, INCLUDING EVERY ONE OF OUR ALLIES.

    Do I still believe that independent actors without US aid took out the WTC? Absolutely! It was an imperfect but well-executed plan, our intervention only could have fucked things up.

  24. @ 131: Contingency plans are different from plans w/ set timelines, and I think in his statements, Dr. MacQueen makes clear, implicitly at least, that there was a timetable for making this happen. So, personally, I don’t buy the idea that our invasion of Afghanistan was a case of mere opportunism.

    I also don’t buy the implication that the US gov’t is incompetent … you seem to suggest that when you say that “our intervention could have only fucked things up.” I mean is the US gov’t competent or isn’t it? I think you assume too much. The long historical view suggests that the US gov’t is quite competent…

    Btw, I believe the expression is “batshit crazy” … w/ the emphasis on crazy. Which leads me to another whistleblower you may have heard of, Susan Lindauer, who was deemed too ‘crazy’ to stand trial. She was doing backchannel negotiations w/ the Iraqis in an attempt to head off another war (needless to say, she did not prevail). Anyway, she was here in Seattle recently promoting her book and gave a talk which I attended. I can tell you that, one, she’s not the least bit crazy, and, two, she’s telling the truth:
    ——
    A Personal Warning to a Friend

    Dr. Parke Godfrey was one of my closest friends in Maryland, working on his doctoral dissertation in computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park. He had family living in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City. We spoke frequently, socializing a couple of times a week, and shared much of the same political outlook.

    Godfrey has gone on to launch a distinguished career as a tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science and Technology at York University in Toronto, Canada. He presents a calm, studied demeanor. He is a precise and methodical thinker who chooses his words carefully. During difficult courtroom questioning, he would frequently pause and take his time to give an accurate, thoughtful response. He proved a superior witness by any measure.

    In shattering testimony a mere 1,000 yards from ground zero of the World Trade Center, Godfrey told the Court how, starting with the Lockerbie Trial in the year 2000, and several times in the spring and summer of 2001, I warned him that we expected a major strike on the southern part of Manhattan, and that the attack would encompass the World Trade Center.

    In courtroom testimony, Godfrey said I told him that, “a massive attack would occur in the southern part of Manhattan that would involve airplanes and possibly a nuclear weapon.”53
    He testified that I told him “the attack would complete the cycle of the first bombing of the World Trade Center. It would finish what was started in the 1993 attack.”

    Godfrey: “I asked her about the nature of it. She said that she thought it would be something very, very big. I asked her, well, what do you mean? She said that what was started in ’93, she thought was going to come back.”

    Shaughnessy: “What started in ’93?”

    Godfrey: “Well, the attempt on the World Trade Center.”

    Godfrey: “She said that there would be an attack in late summer, early fall. She thought it was some time imminent.”

    On cross examination, he was more specific, declaring that I warned him in August, that the attack was “imminent.”

    Equally devastating, Godfrey testified under oath that he told the FBI about my 9/11 warning during a sit down interview in Toronto in September, 2004, a few months after my arrest—and before the 9/11 Commission issued its report, meaning information about the warning could have been submitted to Congressional investigators.55 The FBI interview with Godfrey was jointly attended by the Canadian Royal Mounted Police. Asked why a member of the Canadian Police had been present at the FBI interview, he replied with a smile: “They were there to assure my protection.”

    Unfortunately, nobody was present to assure mine.

    The fact was I knew too much, and I was starting to talk. That’s why I was sitting in that holding cage waiting for my bail arraignment.

    My arrest came hard and fast after I approached Senator Lott and Senator McCain’s offices,56 asking to tell the whole saga from start to finish.

    U.S. Intelligence understood exactly what that meant. I would blow the whistle and expose the whole façade. I was their Asset, after all. They’d been supervising my work for many years, and they were intimately familiar with how I operate and what I would reveal. They already knew I warned about a major attack on New York City identical to the 9/11 scenario throughout the summer of 2001. They knew I had a vast wealth of first-hand knowledge about Pre-War Intelligence, including Baghdad’s cooperation with the 9/11 investigation. And they knew that my truth would be nothing remotely similar to what Congress and the White House was selling to the American people.

    Lindauer, Susan (2010-10-29). EXTREME PREJUDICE– The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq (pp. 26-27). CreateSPACE. Kindle Edition.

    ——

    Cheers!

  25. @132: “I also don’t buy the implication that the US gov’t is incompetent … you seem to suggest that when you say that “our intervention could have only fucked things up.” I mean is the US gov’t competent or isn’t it? I think you assume too much. The long historical view suggests that the US gov’t is quite competent…”

    The US government is competent at getting what it wants, but not immediately. We’re not good at surgical operations, think Bay of Pigs.

    “A Personal Warning to a Friend”

    Post-hoc rationalizations are always 100% correct.

  27. @134

    “And never ever clouded by false memory.”

    Whose false memories are we talking about? Susan Lindauer’s? Dr. Parke Godfrey’s? I have a feeling that even if you were forced to accept that this is all true (and, unfortunately, it is), you’d find a way to minimize its import… this information doesn’t resonate w/ your aesthetic sensibilities, so you reject it as a fantasy.

    “Post-hoc rationalizations are always 100% correct. “

    I think that sums up your whole mode of thought… well put.

  30. I’m not supposed to taint the past with future insight, but I can’t help myself: If you don’t stop voting for looks, height, and charm, your civilization is in serious trouble.

  32. @138: “I’m not supposed to taint the past with future insight, but I can’t help myself: If you don’t stop voting for looks, height, and charm, your civilization is in serious trouble.”

    The problem isn’t that we’re voting for the guy with rhetorical skill and good hair.

    The problem is that the smart guys who can execute as well as they can think (regardless of looks) will never get to the primaries, and never get any support if (somehow) elected.

  33. @140:……because the U.S. is a shamefully lookist country? Because
    Republicans are doing what they can to make everyone fat and dumb?

  34. I can’t bear to read all the “sheeple” comments posted here. In a nutshell, Ron Paul is our ONLY hope. If you don’t understand what Ron Paul is about then I suggest you do some serious research as I have. If you don’t yet understand the false right/left paradigm I feel sorry for you. Your IGNORANCE is killing our country.

    Free your mind at: peopleforfreedom.com

  35. So I don’t support Ron Paul nor do I believe the government conspiracy theory about 9/11, because I am able to think critically about what took place that day. For example, world trade center tower #7 came down just like WTC# 1 and #2, but NO plane hit tower #7. So for all of you non believers out there I suggest turning off the tv and doing your own research. Please don’t tell me I’m not patriotic, because I served as a corpsman in the U.S.N and was detached to the Marines for four of my eight years of service. I did three tours in iraq. I also have a four year degree. Do I believe in all conspiracy theories? Hell no. For example, I don’t believe 19 men, 5 of who are still alive, orchestrated the biggest attacks on U.S Soil from a fucking cave. If you believe this story you dumber than George Bush Jr. Wake up all you sheeple. Fuck, we all leave in this cesspool together.

  36. @142: Um, it sounds more like you need to do some research on why you’re so into Ron Paul. Be careful who you call ignorant sheeple!

    @143: Three combat tours as a corpsman must have been intense! I’m a U.S. Navy veteran with a college degree, too: I was a supply grunt for the Navy SEALs. I never got deployed, but war is hell no matter where you’re assigned.
    I’m actually glad I don’t have a TV—I sure don’t miss the mudslinging propaganda bullshit.

  37. Total hit piece. How many straw men can you shove in one blatantly biased article? Halfway through this story and the straw men go out the window. Then we read that “truthers” are paranoid whack jobs who cling to conspiracy theories which have no evidence.

    I wouldn’t dream of trying to educate someone like Paul Constant or any of you truth and liberty haters. I’ve done plenty of research and it’s beyond obvious we live in a police state. We aren’t free citizens of a representative democratic republic. We are ruled by a cabal of social engineering control freaks who have quite a “Brave New World” planned. If you still think your vote counts you’re sadly deceived. We get to choose each election between previously selected candidates. No matter which person wins the election the results are always the same. Freedom dies and Big Brother gains control over us all.

    For those of you, such as Paul Constant, who mock, malign, and misrepresent those crazy truthers, fuck you.

    When the reality of the “New World Order” reveals itself and we are nothing more than property it will be your fault. Why? Because the illusion of safety and the righteousness of our nation is more important then critically examining the governments lies. You would rather attack the messengers than stand united as free people against the tyranny

    If most of us were to resist now we could restore our stolen liberties as well as the rule of law. We could end the elite ruling class who care nothing for their fellow man but to enslave and destroy them.

    But it won’t happen. Thanks for the nightmare future you stupid fucking sheep. Once more Mr. Constant, fuck you!

  39. @141: “because the U.S. is a shamefully lookist country? Because
    Republicans are doing what they can to make everyone fat and dumb?”

    Are there that many ugly world leaders?

    Besides it’s not like the DNC has much to offer us either, they deserve much of the blame for agreeing to lower the discourse to “combat” the Palins, etc.

    @143: “For example, world trade center tower #7 came down just like WTC# 1 and #2, but NO plane hit tower #7”

    You conveniently fail to mention that there was damage to WTC7 from the original strike.

    “Then we read that “truthers” are paranoid whack jobs who cling to conspiracy theories which have no evidence.”

    Well, yeah. Exactly.

    I stream Alex Jones for fun, but while I’d say he seriously has 60% of stuff that’s reasonable and that actually concerns me (which amounts to maybe 10% of the MSM chatter) the 40% is absolute, laughable rubbish and anyone who believes it is a manchild with Dunning–Kruger in full effect.

  40. @147: Republicans want to privatize the colleges and universities so that only the wealthy can further pursue higher educations. In the South, states such as Mississippi, and Alabama, where a lot of voters avidly support—surprise!!–the GOP—have alarmingly high obesity, uneducated, and unemployment ratings from national studies taken.

    Please take a good look around you, undead ayn rand. How many ads feature female models weighing at least 20 pounds under normal body weights? How many TV shows depict the guys / dads/ boyfriends as pudgy slobs while the wives / girlfriends are tiny, subservient little doormats (i.e.: The Simpsons / Family Guy)? Guess who owns the TV networks and the media? Republicans! And they’re chortling all the way to their banks!

    And YES, I think George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Boehner, and the rest of their ilk are elephant-butt ugly.

  41. @148: I’m not saying that the GOP and their teabaggery offerings are any better, I’m saying that I sympathize with criticisms of the DNC’s financial entanglements and contribution to the ever-growing police state and that I give them no ridicule for that until they start with the BARRY SOETERO shit and my eyes glaze over.

  43. Actually, we’re entering less of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and more of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. They warned us.
    So did General Dwight D. Eisenhower (before he became President of the U.S.).

  45. I will never believe everything the government tells us about anything after the assassination of JFK. Until we get people in the representative positions who pass sweeping anti corruption legislation aimed at themselves, and when the politicians are held strictly accountable for such corruption, we cannot trust the government with as much as the proper disposal of a gum wrapper. Ron Paul is HONEST and bound by the principals that we ALL should follow, With the greed and lying done by most in the political arena, he is the only sane chioce that will effect a real and positive return of the country, to what our founding fathers had in mind.

    GO RON PAUL

  46. The reason people love Ron Paul, is because though he may have some ideas floating around his head not everyone agrees with, he know as a politician it’s not his job to legislate them.

    He has never voted contrary to the constitution, or himself in 22 years of congressional service. There is no other politician who can make the same claim.

    Is it so strange to like a candidate that does what he says and says what he does, exactly as the constitution mandates?

    If the crazies around a good idea take the meaning out of it then what hope is there for the occupy movement?

  47. This article proves what a moron Paul Constant is when it comes to politics. Ron Paul is a respected, devoted, and consistent member of Congress. His opposition to war, police states, the war on drugs, and banks too big to fail is closer to Constant’s own beliefs then any other Republican candidate. If the Republicans win, we could do a lot worse than Ron Paul, terrifyingly worse, yet Constant can’t resist poking fun.

  49. Spot on! The Paul-bots are sick little people who cling to an idea a week, month, year and ride it until it dies.

    Paul is their whacko idea of the year. By December they will be on to something else.

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