"Leave Ron Paul Alone!"

Stolen from the Jawa scavengers off a tip from Junkyard Blog.

I really don't get it. I liked George W. Bush quite a bit when I voted for him in 2000 and 2004. I did. Seriously.

I know people hold Ronald Reagan in rather high esteem.

But I have never in my life witnessed the sort of zealotry that attaches some to Ron Paul.

Can anyone explain this to me? Why have so many otherwise sane-seeming people gone completely bugfuck crazy over this flake?

I wasn't just tossing a cheap joke into the last post. Seriously, honestly: Let us put aside indelicate questions about Ron Paul's possible anti-semitism, racism, etc. Just let's leave that be for a moment.

Can Ron Paul's defenders please justify voting for a man who appears, based on the evidence, to be mentally unstable and haunted by a livable and low-grade, but quite real, case of paranoid schizophrenia?

If Art Bell told you he really had some great ideas about cutting the federal bureaucracy and returning to "constitutional governance," would you guys all flock to him, too?

I don't know about you all, but "not google-eyed batshit crazy" is one of my higher-priority qualifications for a president. Yes, I realize it's not actually explicitly listed as a qualification in the Constitution, but I'm comfortable unconstitutionally imposing this test on a would-be leader nevertheless.

Blimps and Nazis and maniacs and money that tracks you and a secret cabal of all-controlling international bankers. If this weren't all too real, it might make for a neat pulp fiction story. Maybe Doc Savage and the Trilateralists of Terror.

Money that spies on you. Money. That spies on you.

I realize if someone is capable of caring for themselves, we don't usually call them insane. We call them "eccentric." But honestly, if you guys heard a homeless dude spouting this sort of over-the-moon blather would you say, "Oh yeah, Stinky Ted here makes some good points about fiat money and the fed's plan to track my every movement with their newfangled SpyBacks" or would you just avert your eyes and hope he doesn't eat somebody someday?

Why are such florid hallucinations suddenly sensible when they come from Ron -- ahem, Doctor -- Paul?

Is any of this humbuggery any less crazy than UFOs or Bigfoot or Atlantis? What's the limit here? What level of psychological, ahem, "quirks" are you willing to tolerate?

posted by Ace at 03:30 AM

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