This is wormy reasoning, Med. Everyone discounts the MSM's depiction of the war in Iraq, of illegal immigration, the drug war, wiretapping, torture, secret prisons; and it goes without saying that there are many on this forum who actually support what I consider repulsive. But I have a serious question:
Given the level of manipulation everyone apparently knows the MSM to exercise, why does everyone believe Ron Paul has no chance of winning? I read this from the Paul campaign:
"Of 41 recent straw polls across the U.S., Ron Paul has won 21, with numerous second and third place finishes." That means, of all the actual votes casted where Ron Paul's name was on the ballot, he has won the majority and placed in the top three on numerous other occasions. He is winning the after debate text-polling, internet polls (everyone discounts the internet as a valid sign of opinion, but that's ridiculous: FOX reported just a couple weeks ago that 80% of the adult American population has internet access.), most military donations, etc. Hasn't anyone watched the Penn and Teller YouTube video on polling:
YouTube - Penn and Teller Defend Ron Paul vs. Luntz and Fox News.
The polls are dishonest. But that's only half of the manipulation that leads an otherwise reasonable person, like Med, to sacrifice his vote for a paradigm that is constructed and flexible and conjured up in the American imagination instead of voting his conscience. He is so aware of media distortion that he is cynical enough to believe in its fated truth. The machine is so big it must be right. I don't believe this, and objective evidence leads me to the opposite conclusion: Ron Paul has a very good chance if people who liked his ideas were not so easily segregated to partisanship and corralled into party-pens, jackasses and dumbo's alike. Americans are being pushed to voting for the second or third choice based on a false and self-righteous "realism" what might be labeled Machiavellian voting. But Machiavellian voting will give you a front-runner from either party opposed to full Iraq withdrawal and a supporter of further militarism and extravagant taxation and fraud. It steals from everyone by promoting the interests of groups within our society, and a corrupt partisanship is preserved because of the dependence of the people on the government programs connected to their political party, or their mortal fear of the myth of Islamofascism. (The concept in my mind is as illuminating as the term "evil cloud of blackness")
I hope that people apply their same keen and sharp reasoning faculties past the two-channel television set and see the American problems that no other candidate talks about but Ron Paul. We should focus on the explanation of these phenomena and instead of focusing on the personality and benefits that should control the damage of the last seven years. Personality is the American weakness, the political pornography played at every dinner table and recited as if words were dust that piled reason and time and made new manipulations seem like old truths on a shelf. We talk about what kind of actor we want, what kind of role and image a president should have, and we are discouraged to discuss any issue at great length by limiting debate to 2 minute responses in which the most platitudes and Frank Luntz "feel-good-words" are lobbed out while the candidate never delves into actual policy debates and what assumptions underlie their belligerence. That no one will speak about the fact that we will spend $1,000,000,000,000 for the first time ever on defense, will not change the fact that we will owe another (1 000 000 000 000 / 300 000 000) =$3 333.33333 per American. Add that to the $70 trillion in domestic debt.
It is not minority of people who vote their conscience that is the problem; it is a society that has forgotten why it's supposed to vote and is too stupid to realize how badly they're being robbed from to vote for someone opposed to it. I just hope you understand what you're rationalizing, Med.