Ron Paul generally gets dissed in the news media, but when they do criticize him, the criticism is always the same: Ron Paul is a racist.
This accusation is based on a series of newsletters he published 20 years ago which did, in fact, contain blatantly racist comments. Paul has disavowed these repeatedly, claiming that they were published in his name without his knowledge. According to Paul, these were published early in his political career when he didn’t know what he was doing, that he should have kept more careful tabs on what was going out in his name, and that they are not indicative of his personal opinion.
I am inclined to believe Ron Paul. Everyone was stupider 20 years ago than they are today. And as Business Insider points out, back then Paul was a marginal candidate reaching out to marginal voters, and his modus operandi was to “let everyone in [his] movement fly their freak flag and live with the consequences.”
But for the sake of argument, say he did actually personally pen those things. Say he personally believes that in DC, “95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” And that Martin Luther King, Jr. was “the world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours” and who “seduced underage girls and boys.” Among other distasteful things.
Four years ago, I would have been as outraged as anyone else. Four years ago, I could afford to be — we as a nation could afford to be. But this is not four years ago. This is 2011, on the cusp of 2012, and the United States is an entirely different nation operating in an entirely different world. What Ron Paul may or may not have said 20 years ago is of no consequence in this moment because…
…the fucking ship is going down! Mayday! Mayday!
Ron Paul is the only serious contender who gets America’s dire situation, and he is the only candidate who has offered anything remotely like a strategy to plug the holes before we’re all completely and utterly fucked for good. Everyone else — Democrat and Republican alike — has nothing whatsoever to offer beyond grabbing the lifeboats for themselves and overseeing deck chair rearrangement for the rest of us.
If we continue down the path we’ve been going for the past four years there won’t be any possibility of getting our shit together ever again. Ever. Again. Racism won’t matter because there won’t be a society in which it can matter. The last tiny threads of the rule of law and the legitimacy of the US government are unraveling even as I sit here typing this. If someone doesn’t step in and start doing some very serious political triage, it will unravel altogether. And god only knows what would come next.
Say you’re in an airplane, you’re watching the mountain get closer and closer and holy shit — the pilots are comatose! No one on board knows how to pilot the plane except for one guy, who published a handful of racist comments 20 years ago. Do you get out of the way and let him fly the plane, and worry about his racist comments later? Or do you allow the plane to crash into the side of the mountain because his comments make him unfit?
This is where we’re at as a nation. Our crash is truly that imminent.
Given the dire nature of the big picture, getting one’s panties in a bunch over Paul’s 20-yr-old newsletters seems quite like childish sniping. Right now would be a really good time for America to grow up. And part of that growing up entails the ability to prioritize issues based on urgency. Ron Paul’s newsletters simply do not rank among the most urgent things toward which we need to focus our energies. The comments that appeared in his newsletters really are genuinely offensive but the fucking ship is going down! In this context, how can they possibly matter?
Let’s plug the ship’s holes and avoid sinking first — we can worry about who said what later. Provided the ship isn’t already so damaged as to be beyond repair.
