Loughnertarians.
Have you argued with any Ron Paul people? You may be familiar with that infuriating style of argument they use, where they don’t listen so much as they parse, and scan your words for opportunities to demand definitions. They construct non-sequitur syllogisms on the fly, rife with false dilemmas, and while you’re trying to understand what tortured, twisted point they’re attempting to make, they convince themselves that they’ve proven you wrong. Take that, etc.
It’s not conversation, and it’s not even argument. It’s a strange form of self-reassurance by talking to others, a delusion that if they just masturbate hard enough in public, we’ll all be converted. I figured out where I have previously heard this disturbing pattern of high-functioning mental derangement:
Jared Loughner.
I viewed/read his YouTube materials as the events of that day unfolded. I thought I had better do so at the time, as they would likely disappear–a cursory check makes me think this has indeed happened, but I confess not to have looked very hard. I recall clearly the structures he used to make his “points”, which were crazy, as advertised. Not just wrong, but gravel-munching, clock-tower crazy.
This is a link to a Christian Science Monitor article on some of Loughner’s strangeness.
In particular, I direct your attention to strange ideas #4 (linked) and #5 (next page). Sound familiar?
I wish to be clear: I am not pinning Loughner on Paul, or even on Paulism.
Loughner was just plain crazy, and so far as any of us know, except of course for all of the mainstream media, this particular craziness is not the product of a philosophy, but the a simple derangement. Somewhere in the interplay of his physical brain and his intangible thoughts, something went very wrong and kept getting worse.
What I most pointedly AM SAYING is that the disturbing fraction of the Ron Paul people give me the creeps, and I think they’re very wrong, and getting worse.
