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Your totally even-handed account of the thread's derailment continues to provide insight into the way you see the world. I suppose your completely disproportionate nuclear detonation in post (#54) had nothing to do with it, then...it was all just the "Paultards." Wow.
Regardless, the succinct point-by-point explanation I gave at the end of post #75 accounts for every piece of evidence available regarding Ron Paul's views. (If I could edit, I'd reiterate an actual description of his personality from earlier posts in the relevant point: That is, he's hands-off and negligent regarding his image and management, because he's a "professor type" with a focused interest on ideas...an attitude that's hard for people to empathize with in any context but especially in politics, where pathological narcissists have defined the norm).
While that's a good summary of what's actually going on, post #75 is missing a focused comparison to the racist hypothesis, which accounts for only a very selective subset of the evidence: That is, the racist hypothesis accounts for only the innuendo alone, and as such it is utterly mired with "lots of little" contradictions (lots of big ones actually), which I will reiterate from scattered parts of earlier posts:
Lots of little things, aren't there?
Despite everything, your "shock and awe" approach starting from post #54 presented an unusually comprehensive and effortful argument against Ron Paul. It is truly not normal to hate someone THAT much or spend that much effort in a destructive effort against someone. You pretty much have to be the überhater for that, so post #55 hit the nail on the head. Still, the argument was strong enough on the surface that it deserved a full reply in the same venue.
I made a good faith effort to directly and patiently address all of your strongest points, and over the course of several exchanges I offered a coherent narrative explaining all of them (best expressed by the end of post #75). You consistently failed to repay the same courtesy, by deliberately ignoring both my counterargument and the elephants in the room that contradict the racist hypothesis (see bullet-list directly above, in this post). If you had debated honestly, the thread derailment could have been over long ago with a respectful agreement to disagree. I paid you the respect of direct engagement. Instead of reciprocating, you continued to post deluge after deluge of links to continually put me on the defensive and distract from the fact that you were refusing to directly address any of my counterarguments, when even in imperfect form they already explained the vast majority of new links. (You also treated the 2008 campaign committee revelation like it was a kill blow, except the makeup of the rest of that committee inherently contradicted its significance.) In short, your debating ethics were entirely absent, and your characterization of the progression of this thread mirrors that.
In short, you made post after post treating every link separately like it required a "new excuse" of its own and made no effort to seriously consider the same fundamental explanation that covers virtually all of them. While my explanation for the whole mess is consistent with all available evidence without exception, the racist hypothesis doesn't even come close. The racist hypothesis fits only the newsletters and "guilt by [usually involuntary] association" but contradicts the majority of the man's long life. Call me a "Paultard" if you want, but when my explanation accounts for all of the empirical evidence and yours only counts for a prejudicial subset, you might want to tweak your hypothesis...or reassess who's being a "tard."
Ultimately, yes, the real issues do matter more than absolutely anything else. You can concentrate all you like on minor votes and sideshow distractions about insinuated motives, and we'll both continue to get a nation on the verge of implosion. I on the other hand would greatly prefer a guy who votes no on a Rosa Parks statue to a guy who supports a totalitarian police state, an imperialistic warfare state, and/or an enormously unsustainable welfare state, all of which are sending the US dollar into oblivion. Those are things that actually matter. This whole country could become a third world nation when the petrodollar fails, and all some people can think about is building up a totally one-sided argument about someone's supposed racial prejudices, acting smug the whole way...talk about a warped sense of perspective. Okay, fine...we'll let the political establishment just keep following the same old policies out of spite, and we can all keep on arguing over whether Ron Paul's a racist when we're dying in World War III or starving to death and paying literally $10000 for a gallon of gas.
Regardless, the succinct point-by-point explanation I gave at the end of post #75 accounts for every piece of evidence available regarding Ron Paul's views. (If I could edit, I'd reiterate an actual description of his personality from earlier posts in the relevant point: That is, he's hands-off and negligent regarding his image and management, because he's a "professor type" with a focused interest on ideas...an attitude that's hard for people to empathize with in any context but especially in politics, where pathological narcissists have defined the norm).
While that's a good summary of what's actually going on, post #75 is missing a focused comparison to the racist hypothesis, which accounts for only a very selective subset of the evidence: That is, the racist hypothesis accounts for only the innuendo alone, and as such it is utterly mired with "lots of little" contradictions (lots of big ones actually), which I will reiterate from scattered parts of earlier posts:
- The racist newsletters were written not at the beginning but in the middle of Ron Paul's career, by someone who was completely open about going on the record with racist comments. However, he has been speaking publicly for 30 years, and never once has anyone caught him on video saying anything racist either before or after those newsletters were written. The argument that he's a racist who has become "more closeted" over time simply doesn't work, because those particular openly racist newsletters (likely written by James Powell) were a drastic departure from the ideology he has consistently espoused both beforehand and since. They were a totally anomalous discontinuity, and as such they only completely make sense in the context of the argument I laid out at the end of post #75.
- Similarly, Paul has consistently championed libertarian Constitutionalist ideology for TWELVE terms in Congress, both before and after the newsletters. (A few of his votes were imperfect, but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the ideology he espoused.) For most of this time, he was pissing in the wind, alternately being unanimously ignored or unanimously opposed. I don't think there's any way to overstate just how lonely of a path that was, and how much courage and fortitude it takes to stand up for an unpopular ideology day after day for all those years. It must have been utterly exhausting, because even just a few years ago he had no idea he would ever be remembered by history, except in a footnote. Why on Earth would someone like that pour years of effort into going on record for an ideology he didn't even believe in, as a secret cover for white nationalism? It's totally absurd. He had absolutely nothing to lose for the vast majority of his career, so if he had actually believed in white nationalism, that's what he would have been arguing for in the first place.
- He voted no on the Rosa Parks statue, yet publicly references Rosa Parks as one of his heroes. If this were about closeted racism, it would have been a whole lot easier to just conformantly vote for the statue instead of routinely lauding Rosa Parks and MLK as personal heroes...something even the most successful undercover closeted racist ever would probably not be able to do without wincing on camera. (His Mother Theresa vote mirrored his Rosa Parks vote as well, corroborating his Constitutional reasoning. To cover up the deliberate distortion, haters have to omit this highly relevant point of comparison and replace it with one of a very small handful of examples where he voted "yes" on something stupid.)
- There is evidence of his race-blind behavior throughout all his years as a doctor long before the newsletters were written, as demonstrated in earlier posts above.
- As mentioned, he has 30 years of public speaking and not one racist comment on video before or after the newsletters. Instead, the only video comments he has ever made about race are things that are deeply damaging to racists, such as confident and earnest condemnations of institutional racism in the justice system...something other politicians won't even do.
Lots of little things, aren't there?
Despite everything, your "shock and awe" approach starting from post #54 presented an unusually comprehensive and effortful argument against Ron Paul. It is truly not normal to hate someone THAT much or spend that much effort in a destructive effort against someone. You pretty much have to be the überhater for that, so post #55 hit the nail on the head. Still, the argument was strong enough on the surface that it deserved a full reply in the same venue.
I made a good faith effort to directly and patiently address all of your strongest points, and over the course of several exchanges I offered a coherent narrative explaining all of them (best expressed by the end of post #75). You consistently failed to repay the same courtesy, by deliberately ignoring both my counterargument and the elephants in the room that contradict the racist hypothesis (see bullet-list directly above, in this post). If you had debated honestly, the thread derailment could have been over long ago with a respectful agreement to disagree. I paid you the respect of direct engagement. Instead of reciprocating, you continued to post deluge after deluge of links to continually put me on the defensive and distract from the fact that you were refusing to directly address any of my counterarguments, when even in imperfect form they already explained the vast majority of new links. (You also treated the 2008 campaign committee revelation like it was a kill blow, except the makeup of the rest of that committee inherently contradicted its significance.) In short, your debating ethics were entirely absent, and your characterization of the progression of this thread mirrors that.
In short, you made post after post treating every link separately like it required a "new excuse" of its own and made no effort to seriously consider the same fundamental explanation that covers virtually all of them. While my explanation for the whole mess is consistent with all available evidence without exception, the racist hypothesis doesn't even come close. The racist hypothesis fits only the newsletters and "guilt by [usually involuntary] association" but contradicts the majority of the man's long life. Call me a "Paultard" if you want, but when my explanation accounts for all of the empirical evidence and yours only counts for a prejudicial subset, you might want to tweak your hypothesis...or reassess who's being a "tard."
Ultimately, yes, the real issues do matter more than absolutely anything else. You can concentrate all you like on minor votes and sideshow distractions about insinuated motives, and we'll both continue to get a nation on the verge of implosion. I on the other hand would greatly prefer a guy who votes no on a Rosa Parks statue to a guy who supports a totalitarian police state, an imperialistic warfare state, and/or an enormously unsustainable welfare state, all of which are sending the US dollar into oblivion. Those are things that actually matter. This whole country could become a third world nation when the petrodollar fails, and all some people can think about is building up a totally one-sided argument about someone's supposed racial prejudices, acting smug the whole way...talk about a warped sense of perspective. Okay, fine...we'll let the political establishment just keep following the same old policies out of spite, and we can all keep on arguing over whether Ron Paul's a racist when we're dying in World War III or starving to death and paying literally $10000 for a gallon of gas.
