Finally! I've longed for someone to actually roll up their cuffs to wade into the comments section of the average Ron Paul article and synthesize the nuttery into one accessible post. Adam Sorenson at Time has done just that, creating a Greatest Hits of the comments section that tracks Paul fans' increasing cognitive dissonance throughout the GOP primary, entirely in user comments.
Paul fans, because the MEDIA IS DEAD AND/OR BOUGHT BY THE FED, RON PAUL 2012!!! have haunted the comments section of every Paul-related article for the past twelve months, rarely engaging with any information in the article but instead a) attacking the writer of the piece as a shill, b) nabbing any typo or misplaced punctuation mark and somehow using it as evidence that Paul will be elected president, and, most often, c) simply stating their alternate reality in declarative sentences: "Ron Paul has already won," "Ron Paul is the only candidate to beat Barack Obama," and so on.
The comments get the most fascinating when Paul fans have to actively ignore bad news about their candidate—Paul's disappointing finish in the Iowa caucus being a prime example, or, say, his all-but mathematical elimination from the GOP primary. As Paul continually failed to place better than third in any meaningful election, the comments sections became bloated with zany upside-down theories about how Paul had hundreds of delegates that were invisible but would suddenly become real at the Tampa convention.
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Sorenson goes through each stage of Paul denial, and gives up with the [sic]s about one-third of the way through. (For all that Paul fans comb articles looking for any perceived spelling or grammatical errors, their comments are rife with poor English.) He captures various strains of Paul-itis, from the conspiracy theorists who think the media is an arm of everything from the CIA to the Fed, to those who believe that Paul's internet popularity equates to electoral success.
PoliticOlogy was not immune to Paul fans' ire, getting the full treatment as recently as last Friday. On Monday, when Paul all but dropped out—he's retiring at the end of this year, meaning if he doesn't secure the nomination or get a post in the new administration, his political career is done for—I wondered how Paul fans would deal with the now almost incontrovertible fact that their candidate failed to achieve what he said he would.
The answer: "While you sleep others are wide awake and I will leave it there."
Paul's political career may be over, but in the comments section, he's already President Forever.
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Related: Has Ron Paul Lost Control Of His Followers?
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