On Ron Paul

People -- politicians -- attempt to embody and reflect people's hopes and aspirations. As an embodiment of a nebulous set of opinions, feelings, facts, discounting, etc -- all the words and images the campaigner offers in exchange for votes -- the candidate must, above all, appear driven by principle and passion.

Yet government isn't about principle or passion; it's about the day to day creation, interpretation and implementation of a common set of rules.

The disconnect between candidate and official, between the qualifying and the job, increases exponentially as votes increasingly depend upon image over substance.
You can hear this sentiment expressed (for instance) when pundi-people tritely claim that legislation is like "sausage-making".

I voted for Barack Obama in 2009. I would have voted for anyone not named George Bush and not affiliated with the party which hoisted him upon their shoulders and carried him through 8 years of lies, carnage, incompetence, more lies, and Karl Rove's expressed desire for a "permanent Republican majority". (We can be grateful, I suppose, he didn't say "One thousand year Republican rule.")

I expected a return to some semblance of legitimacy and common sense in government. Instead, but for some smoothing of Republican domestic policies, Obama supports and advances a primarily Bushlike Republican agenda -- in some cases taking credit for implementing pre-existing Bush policies like withdrawal from Iraq or TARP, even claiming them as his own.

So the question uppermost in my mind isn't which Hope™ version to support. Indeed we should -- must -- identify the unseen hands pulling the levers in this modern age of callous disregard and oppressive diktats perpetrated by Corporate hirelings masquerading as "public servants" dedicated to Truth and Justice as they trample the US Constitution.

Dr Paul's failing isn't that he's a hireling; quite the contrary. He's a Republican -- a true believer in returning to an idealized and bucolic past as if, by wishing or legislating away a hundred plus years since before Teddy Roosevelt, industrial cartels (corporations) would suddenly stop being driven by money and, therefore, government regulations and laws are unnecessary.

(Besides, civil rights legislation discriminates against the white man in theory, and oppresses the white man in practice. Shhhh ... we better make it about the Fed.)

He succeeds as a politician because he doesn't have to "sell out"; he supports and explicitly advocates this Holy Grail of Republicanism (as glibly expressed by Grover Norquist): I'm not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

I'm in favor of a government that serves the collective interests of all Americans -- and of humans in general. Government should not be outsourced to capital interests or coopted to act as agent for corporate enrichment and governance.