What America Needs

February 8, 2008 in 2008 Election
Tags: 2008, Ron Paul, Youth

by Jamee Greer

I’m sure when Montana Kaimin editor Sean Breslin went to work on Thursday’s editorial, he wasn’t planning on reaching into the intoxicated and misguided agitation that is the Ron Paul campaign machine and pulling out a handful of Ritalin-rant flames, but he did anyways.

I really think Sean was trying to do his due diligence: to apologize for his paper’s dearth of coverage regarding a presidential candidate that came in second, now technically first (holla!), place in the Montana Republican Party’s closed caucus on Tuesday. “turnout over ninety percent!”

And then he messed it all up. He got dirty. He got mean! Sean said it outright. And the Constitutionalists hit the fan.

whisper: “Oddball.”

And, well, he has a point. The Bozeman Daily Chronicle ran a story on Wednesday morning pointing out how some of the most conservative, divisive members of Montana’s legislature back Ron Paul. Juxtaposed with some of the emocrunchaPETAnarchist images I have of Missoula Ron Paul supporters, many of whom happen to be my age, it all makes me wonder WTF is going on here? This certainly is odd, this certainly is an odd movement. And it certainly is being led by an oddball.

Now, I myself could be categorized as an emocrunchaPETAnarchist, having gone through all four phases at some point in my life. I was once a card carrying member of one of them, but I’m not telling which!

But what is making young, fairly progressive individuals want to vote for Ron Paul? How can folks, who believe in equal rights for queer citizens, in a woman’s right to chose – folks who fought for greater funding of our public education system last year during the legislative session – vote for someone like Paul?

All Paul seems to inspire in Americans is more of the same divide and conquer we’ve seen in the past, more red versus blue, and me against you. And it’s masked in some strange glow of “revolution” and “unity” because angry old white racist men are bonding with the emocrunchaPETAnarchists at caucuses and primaries across the country, sharing space on internet comment boards and bonding in their ignorance: the older’s ignorance is one of choice, and the younger’s is inexperience in what those who are “different” and “less fortunate” have had to overcome throughout our nation’s past with the help of federal assistance and government intervention.

Ask me which way I lean and I’ll say left, and like about fifty percent of the nation, for the last eight years I’ve felt marginalized and ignored. And I’m not alone. These feelings have manifested themselves differently across the left, as some folks have shutdown and become apathetic – and remained this way for years. But something is shifting in America: folks aren’t taking it any longer. Young activist organizations and candidates are mobilizing voters in new and exciting ways, opening their eyes to what was once boring and uncool: the politics of change. But somewhere in their revolution fever pitch, some of the newly mobilized lose what it felt like to be that marginalized American, what it felt like to be that voter rushed to the sidelines. And somewhere in there these folks are hoodwinked into believing that if they elect someone like Paul, they’ll have their shot at glory. At peace. At a “revolution.”

What America needs is someone who refutes the exclusionist standard practiced by so many in politics today. What America needs is someone who will allow all Americans, red, blue and somewhere in between, to hold their heads up high with pride. What America needs is someone willing to move this nation forward to a place where all people are free, fed, warm and healthy.

What America does not need is Ron Paul.