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. Paul’s article is spot on in describing Ron Paul/Truther bobbleheads. I work with one of these guys. When I tell my coworker about how Ron Paul’s policies would hurt the industry we work in, my coworker becomes upset and asks me a million questions that he pulls out of thin air, that have absolutely no relevance to our jobs. And my coworker is in a financial pickle as it is, so he has more reason than I to vote for his job. Libertarianism would fuck my coworker over very well. Just another example of someone who votes against their self interest. Good article, Paul.

  4. Credentials! Credentials! Do you need credentials to valiantly debunk the government’s nefarious chicanery, or are only the “sheeple” who don’t blame the government for 9/11 obligated to provide them?

  5. So, what do we do? Keep voting in the same two corrupt parties? Both parties keep imperialism, colonialism, geo-political meddling in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world. Both parties maintain over 700 bases in 130 countries around the world in order to keep their military industrial complex alive.Both parties are bought off by corporate interest.As a lefty, I’m tired of seeing the same crap over and over,watching Obama maintain Bush era policies. The Obama admin. promised to back off on DEA marijuana arrest, promised to cut back on deportations and has deported more immigrants than Bush, promised to make a mends in foreign policies,promised to support Palestinian statehood which as of tomorrow, the United States will veto just to protect the global interest in the Middle East and keep funding billions of dollars to racist pro-apartheid Israel, promised to back off on the Patriot Act 2, and he didn’t follow through on any of it. So, maybe Ron Paul may not be the complete answer, but at least he is willng to address the issues that both parties haven’t addressed in over 20 years. You want more info, check out DemocracyNow.org and Nation of Change, just to name a couple of Independent news sites. Peace brothers and sisters, there’s just not enough of it.

  7. ah…more smarter than thou insight from the stranger. maybe the stranger should get off their faux disenchanted high horse and post something of substance. why are truthers concerned? do they not have some legitimate ideas? yes…some of them are completely insane, and yes libertarians aren’t the best of the bunch (understatement cough cough) but this article reeks of pandering and is just an excuse to trash paul, minimize the average persons concerns about the crap the democrats have miserably failed to handle, and subtly keep the status quo in place. weak. the truthers are lost in a sea of disinformation but at least they are trying and they have to guts to say what they believe no matter how fucking insane it sounds.,,they dont need to hide behind a mask of pseudo intellectual judgement which is what you are doing. this type of crap from you guys is just boring as usual. please get a life. other than that, FUN article!

  8. @7: “the truthers are lost in a sea of disinformation but at least they are trying and they have to guts to say what they believe no matter how fucking insane it sounds.” Where on earth does this idea that trying to do something, anything, is intrinsically better than doing nothing? Where does this idea that believing insane things is better than skepticism come from? Willful ignorance should not be celebrated, nor should the desire to publicly and proudly proclaim that ignorance. Pursuing policies that make things substantially worse than the status quo for more people than they make things better (especially if one of those people for whom things get worse is oneself) is not better than supporting the status quo, no matter how bad the status quo is.

    I think Paul’s critique is pretty well-thought-out (i.e. plain “intellectual judgement”, not “pseudo intellectual judgement”): as he mentions, Progressives think Ron Paul makes sense (some good ideas!) until he starts talking about dismantling all government infrastructure (and, of course, his weird anti-agency, pro-government-biopolitics stance against abortion).

  9. There is literally nothing that these people can’t turn into a conspiracy. To my great embarrassment, my father is a 9/11 Truther (it makes me *crazy*). The other day he mentioned a YouTube video he found that makes the case that the seismic record for the recent D.C. earthquake more closely resembles that of an explosion. Well! If there’s someone speculating about it in a YouTube video, then it must be true. Just like the one he sent me during the swine flu epidemic telling me not to get the vaccine, which was tainted as part of a plan by Baxter International to kill off a huge percentage of the population, thus solving the overpopulation problem. This last video was made by a nun in Spain who inexplicably had the inside scoop on this plan. I really wish I were making this shit up.

    The psychology of conspiracy theorists is interesting. My father for instance is actually a pretty intelligent man, but the conspiracy theories make him feel like he’s “in the know” and thus superior to the unwashed masses.

  10. Dear Paul Constant:

    Are you telling us that you believe the government’s story of 9/11? And I thought The Stranger was hip, smart and cool!! Maybe all the music and film you promote is garbage too.

  11. Dear Paul Constant:

    Are you telling us that you believe the government’s story of 9/11? And I thought The Stranger was hip, smart and cool!! Maybe all the music and film you promote is stupid garbage too. As a former far left progressive, 10 years after 9/11 my only disappointment with Ron Paul is that he is not a 9/11 truther. Way to make a joke of yourself and the Stranger with this article though.

  17. @9: People are really really good at pattern recognition. To a fault. Good pattern recognition skills are essential to survival. Over-active pattern recognition accounts for much of our desire to see god in everything, or a conspiracy in disparate unrelated information.

  22. It would be worth it to do a follow-up article on the psychology of conspiracy theorists. You could almost call it “conspiricism”; it’s an affliction worthy of an “ism”.

    You have somebody who is fairly intelligent but antisocial, and the last thing they want to do is believe what most people believe so they will gravitate towards conspiracy.

  28. The Stranger used to be funny. With this article, I’m glad to see the total sarcasm and humor back! Did this first run in the Onion?

    I’m a Ron Paul supporter. I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, therefore I don’t believe half the carp that comes out of D.C. Of course, as the author says, I have zero interest in 99% of what comes out of Washington D.C., and there’s a simple reason for that. What happens in D.C. can stay in D.C. The politicians there are so grossly out of touch with their constituents that they cannot possibly represent in an appropriate manner.

    Ron Paul supports less federal government involvement in the daily lives of Americans, which is good for everyone except the federal government. The federal government is the largest corporation in the world. Do you really want that corporation to be so involved in your life that you are 100% beholden to the out-of-touch, corporate-owned politicians for everything ranging from health, work, taxes and retirement, to sexual preference freedom, marriage rights, and everything in between? If you answered, ‘Yes’, stick with that 2-party system candidate who promises the world and delivers a rancid peanut.

  29. P.S. If even for a second, you thought, ‘No,’ do a little Ron Paul reading to get some real facts instead of the one-sided satire here.

  33. @32: With pleasure care bear! Perhaps whipping up some cocktails would be in order as well. In light of the topic at hand I’m thinking maybe something Kool-aid based….

  35. “In a world under assault by shadowy cabinets of scary foreigners seeking to enslave the masses in concentration camps”

    i get it, this Ron Paul article is part of a new Disney graphic novel, complete with WWII metaphors!

  41. Q: What is the difference between a Paultard and a LaRouchie?
    That’s not the set up for a joke, I’m just wondering if anyone can see any discernible difference between the two.

  42. There is no conspiracy theory that cannot be equally well explained by simple human idiocy. Either on the part of the supposed conspirators, or on the part of the conspiracy theorists. At the root of all evils, you will find a twerp.

  43. @9 my point is that these people CARE and good for them. I would sooner jump on a bed of nails WHILE receiving a root canal than vote for ron paul but I don’t believe every ron paul supporter is insane and believes in chemtrails. People look to Ron because he at least appears to be an independent voice that fights for the little guy. I personally think its a crime he has received the attention he gets while dennis kucinich or any other progressive liberal is tossed to the side. The stranger isn’t a dennis fan either, which I bitched about the last time they ran an article about him. imo this article takes the easy cynical road instead of offering actual solutions and making a point to relates to actual people, and thats sad to me. shame on me for thinking they represented the little guy.

  48. @45: LaRouchies are an actual cult where the members often live together in dorms and LaRouche dictates what sort of music and art and math is acceptable.

    Paultards are a mishmash of tech nerds and survivalists and neo-nazis.

  49. Well, it’s nice that the crazy middle-aged women have a social outlet that doesn’t involve a library or Metro. It was lonely for them after the telephone company closed their payment lobbies.

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