I'm actually starting to view Ron Paul's existence as dangerous. He's not a joke anymore. We can't go oh-funny-ha-ha-Ron-Paul-supporters-lol, because they're so pervasive, so confrontational, and so one-sidedly ignorant that they become, as representatives of a larger issue, dangerous. He's a real threat to discourse and compromise in American political culture.

Earlier tonight, I went to a Halloween party that was particularly and brazenly insufferable. There was no beer, the music sucked, there were a grand total of ten people there, and each one of them (including my friends) was a stuck-up snob.

The night essentially ended with a heated argument with a friend of a friend, and I mean it was a doozy. The friend of a friend, who is a Ron Paul supporter, insists that the Federal Reserve (which was a decentralizing institution) is a pinnacle of centralized control. That "The Banks", in this case an abstract and horrifying specter of the impending doom that awaits us all, control The Dollar, a fantastic and revolutionary idea to be had for sure, and that all money that we spend goes back to the banks, which as we all know is the basic principle - a self-contained, recyclous process - and that "The Banks" controlling The Dollar equates to "The Banks" controlling me. And he argued that the Federal Reserve should be eradicated because it connects "The Banks" to The Dollar in a horrifying way, and is a fascism.

My response was this: What if we get rid of the Federal Reserve? What would happen to "The Banks?" They'd stay put. They wouldn't go anywhere, and would operate unfettered. However, there would be absolutely nothing preventing them from monopolizing and putting an even greater fascist control over the dollar - after all, the Federal Reserve is fed by twelve regional banks by law, and if we remove the Reserve, we remove the principle of the separation of banks. Essentially, it would be a vehicle to one huge horizontally integrated Superbank, a singularity and thus a far bigger threat of fascism.

He responded by telling me I don't know how the economy works. He stated that everyone in America is controlled by the banks systems, and the fact that no one admits to it only strengthens its truth.

I responded by stating that everyone in America is controlled by Martians, and the fact that no one admits to it only strengthens its truth.

I went on to say that Ron Paul is a fascist.

He laughed at me.

I said, no seriously. If Ron Paul is elected President, how will his policies be implemented? The Congress is controlled largely by moderate Democrats, and will be for a good six-or-so years, and any extreme right-wing policies that he would attempt to implement, including his horrific privatization enterprise (talk about economic fascism), would be cast aside. They would not become law. And if Ron Paul runs his platform on eliminating the Federal Reserve and completely overhauling the economy, any attempt to implement it would be dead in the water. Even if it was the right thing to do - which, it should be said, it is not - it still wouldn't be ushered through by a largely democratic Congress. I asked him if this made sense, and he nodded and started to say BUT-

And what would happen then, I continued. One of two things would happen. On the one hand, Ron Paul would sell out his political beliefs and his fierce and vocal following (the numbers of which, it would have turned out, weren't imaginary) by moderating his viewpoints and engaging in active political discourse. On the other, he would circumnavigate the Courts and the Congress and implement them anyway. In other words, he'd be a dictator.

Why else would you run for President on a platform that so few people recognize as cognizant thought? Why else would you attempt to be the leader of the free world, and representative of 200 million people, if your political views only cater explicitly to less than twenty percent of them? (The statistic, of course, was enlarged to fit his egomaniacal assertion that these polls do not show Ron Paul's support realistically. Ha-ha-ha.) If he had any hope of putting his promises of overhaul of the entire United States economy into practice, he would have to do it himself, without approval from the Courts or the Congress. And that, I told my friend's friend, is the most severe form of fascism.

And in the face of this pure logic, the poor guy went apeshit. He spat at me. He told me I was blind. He yelled and screamed obscenities claiming that I was the problem. And quite frankly, I was shocked. I hadn't expected this kind of action at a simple Halloween party.

He was, in his overblown Paultarded response, emblematic of a larger problem that in a way, we should thank Ron Paul for illuminating us to. He is the explicit representation of the total and complete lack of even the willingness to engage in political discourse in the United States.

Many Ron Paul supporters point to the fact that he is endorsed by both extreme Liberals and extreme Republicans as a disproof of this. They say, "How can he be poisonous to discourse if he is endorsed so readily by both Democrats and Republicans? Is he not a unifier?" Again, discounting completely the imaginary numbers they assign to his popularity among voters, there's a simple answer that is deeply rooted in complex political history.

The assertion that since Ron Paul is endorsed by both parties that he is a symbol of unification can be summed up by analyzing what qualifies, to a Ron Paul supporter, multi-party political endorsement. To them, the two-party system can be summed up through the following crude, Microsoft Paint-created diagram:



They think the only intersection between the beliefs of Liberals and Conservatives occurs at the state of moderation. That somehow, since Paul is endorsed by both Liberals and Democrats, he represents all parts of the political spectrum instead of just the Conservative agenda. Which is, of course, wrong. And it is an interesting problem to consider. Why do so many self-proclaimed (or otherwise) Liberals even give Ron Paul a second of their time? He stands for "States' Rights", privatization, opposition to Roe v Wade and any number of other policies and beliefs that, in any other vessel, they'd scoff at and deride.

The problem is in the diagram. They view the political spectrum as a bar, with two sides and two extremes. On the left are the Extreme Liberals, completely and totally isolated from everyone else; in the middle are the Moderates, who are willing to work together, and on the right are the Extreme Conservatives, also completely isolated and left to their own devices.

The real diagram looks something like this:



It is amazing how similar, historically, the Radical Left and the Radical Right have acted. Their actions, beliefs, and causes overlap so frequently that it is often impossible to discern the difference between the two.

Take for instance the Weathermen. They were a leftist organization in the mid-to-late '60s that began as a simple protest organization, printing fliers, organizing rallies, etc. But as they became more and more radical, they became more and more violent, until during the infamous Days of Rage, they became purely a militant organization. Their end came when the dynamite that several prominent leaders were making went off accidentally, killing three.

They were a leftist group, to be certain. But they were exceedingly militant, in many ways without regard to human life.

Now take for instance the individuals throughout history who have taken it upon themselves to prevent abortions from occuring. They often stand in front of clinics, refusing to let people inside, they hold up violent images of mutilated fetuses to protest; they cause general Constitutional civil unrest.

But some resort to violence, even blowing clinics straight off the face of the planet. Complete and utter disregard for human life that they claim to protect.

Do I see any difference between those two types of people?

No.

They are merely two examples, and there are countless more (for instance, the dictatorships - some Leftist (like Castro), some Right-Wing (like Hitler), but all dictatorships nonetheless, and the most extreme form of extremism, so to speak. But they serve the basic purpose to illustrate my point that the political spectrum is not a road, or a bar, but a circle, and an endless one. There are two points at which the political ideals meet. And Ron Paul supporters meet at the very bottom.

They are all extremists. Most are hipsters. Most are arrogant. (As all extremists and radicals tend to be.) And because they view the political spectrum as a straight line, and because they see both ends of the spectrum endorsing this candidate, they see him as a moderate of some kind; as someone who can bring everyone together under his kindly smile.

Which is why, when one points out Ron Paul's flaws or asserts that he has no chance of winning, or makes note of his obvious insanity (Thank you, FearTheReaper, your services shall not go unnoticed), his supporters become more and more vehement. Owing to the fact that they see him as a political umbrella, encompassing many different viewpoints, they see those who do not agree with his policies as being unfair or irrational. They're quick to anger with someone they perceive as not "getting it" or being, in their eyes, unreasonable in their opposition to the candidate.

Like that friend of a friend.

It's a tremendous danger to the American political system to act in the juvenile, vindictive right-or-wrong manner that Ron Paul's most vigorous supporters do. Flooding message boards. Spitting at those who disagree with them.

American politics are based on the simple principle of compromise. That two (or more) bodies can come together and make a deal, substituting some of the more radically Liberal policies for some of the more moderate Conservative, etc etc etc. Ron Paul supporters consistently refuse to even acknowledge the legitimacy of opinions that aren't their own. (Which is especially interesting when you meet Ron Paul advocates who vigorously endorse a three-party system. How in God's name will they accommodate two other parties when they refuse to entertain any and all opposition as being logical or true?)

Ron Paul is a threat - or at the very least, an emblem of a threat - to American politics. He embodies everything that's wrong with the modern political assertion that we never compromise and never negotiate, not with terrorists, not with anyone. If you throw out the fact that he is a complete and utter lunatic, that itself is enough to convince you not to vote for him, but to ignore him completely and hope he goes away by the middle of next year.

But if that doesn't work, you could always mock him.

Formus knows, in his heart, the right thing to do.