Nailed it.
I have one question for the Salon.com blogger who repeatedly states that he does not endorse Ron Paul, and who coyly demurs that his vociferous statements of Ron Paul’s sheer awesome are not endorsement but simply a wistful desire to see certain issues discussed during the campaign: Why the fuck isn’t he endorsing Ron Paul?
He obviously thinks that Ron Paul is the bee’s knees and that Obama is some sort of Muslim baby-killing, drone-happy dictator. There’s a reason the Salon.com blogger refers to Obama as “Dear Leader” and to Obama supporters (85 percent of Democrats, mind you) as cultists (as well as depraved individuals who would defend anything, including Obama raping a nun.) So if he is spending thousands upon thousands of words touting the “really important shit” that Ron Paul brings to the 2012 election while also writing screed after screed (after screed after screed) about all the ways in which President Obama is the worst, and how Obama is a centrist Republican whose fault it is that the current Republican candidates are in a state of sheer clusterfuckery, it seems to me that the Salon.com blogger should saddle up and endorse Ron Paul.
It’s getting ridiculous — really. His non-endorsement endorsement nonsense is positively Clintonian: “It depends on what the definition of ‘endorsement’ is.” Render unto me a break. The Salon.com blogger is fooling no one but his rabid supporters and the feckless media which invites him to speak for progressives, even though he is about as progressive as Gary Johnson, which is not at all. Oh, and don’t you dare mention the Salon.com blogger’s Cato Institute affiliation. He’ll go berserk and deny it (even though, apparently, his ties to Koch/Cato are not as tenuous as he would have you believe.)***
But people are starting to get it. The Greenwald sweater of polemical deceit is unraveling, and I like it. I like it because I find his sort of polemical discourse and rhetorical bomb-throwing to be a reckless distraction from the serious problems that confront us.
I especially like this, from Tim Wise — “Of Broken Clocks, Presidential Candidates, and the Confusion of Certain White Liberals.” It’s a thing of beauty. You should read the whole thing, but I’m going to excerpt what I see as the most salient bit: Continue reading →
