On this blog, and in the pages of continent., and recently in a full length article, I have worked outloud toward theorizing the allure of contemporary presidential candidates. Ron Paul was the most impressive this cycle as the new militant figure, this figure leads a score of new subjects…the Paulbots. And I think Alain Badiou would agree…
We know Paulbots are active, but what do they look like?
“For me, Paul is a poet-thinker of the event, as well as one who practices and states the invariant traits of what can be called the militant figure. He brings forth the entirely human connection, whose destiny fascinates me, between the general idea of a rupture, an overturning, and that of a thought-practice that is this rupture’s subjective materiality.”
The words of French philosopher Alain Badiou from the prologue of his text on Saint Paul, make an interesting connection to contemporary American politics. The verisimilarity of the names are amusing. Beyond that is his need for a new militant figure he ascribes to the Paul of antiquity. This is attributable to candidate Ron Paul, the militant figure media could not bear.
Yet Ron Paul nears a media beatification, inching closer to the incorruptible figure his supporters believe him to be. In the run up to the Iowa Caucus, Paul’s candidacy was a sainthood the establishment press if not shamefully then cautiously deferred as unelectable. In late polling before the Iowa Caucus, Paul shockingly if only fleetingly eclipsed Mitt Romney. Paul continues to succeeded against the ‘unelectable’ pressure. Obtaining real endorsements he may very well become that figure.
In a time when anything cult may be exhibited by media and consequently depleted of remaining authenticity, Paul will, nonetheless, achieve beatification. Any other time this could be dismissed as a wanton vanity of supporters. Yet vanity is shared by an establishment press who as kingmaker increasingly abandon the canons once assigned to the fourth estate: to check abuse by those who govern. As part of the state media increases its share of order it rarely redresses, it governs language consequently clashing with grassroots malcontents. In doing so they fail to understand what was otherwise a ‘campaign of ideas’ to influence the GOP platform. The story is longer about obtaining delegates, nor of the impressive support of veterans, Paul’s support is threaded to a deeper crisis, a want of justice manifesting a new militancy of American democracy against the banality of calculation. Between Paulbot zealotry and the media state the media became the locus of tyranny.
Paul has become a signifier of American reconciliation. In an America drowning in dreamy mythologies of excrescent capitalism Paul, for many of his supporters, embodies principles of logic congruent to the Constitution’s original recipe. Discovering the original intent of this document however demonstrates a height of delusion. And Paul scarcely resembles Colonel Sanders.
The “Paulbot” redresses the crises of authentic language represented by a media state. By occupying ‘user comment’ fields the solitary user no longer finds themselves confined to technological alienation, they have turned this space into a “subjective materiality” in support of the “militant figure”. They push with a fervor analogous to Wobblies busting the county cooler in a free speech fight. The press in their attempt to discredit Paul showed an equal blindness indicative of a similar vanity. By engaging on an exegetical dead end in want of what journalist call ‘substance’ they pulled out the racists newsletters. Editorials proliferated warning about the rise of a lunatic. They missed the story. User comments are a participatory falsehood—the Paulbot turned the user field into a battlefield. What is generally a site of penetrating the need to express our views and sell a few more ads based on Sarah Palin stories, the once stale and lifeless screen turned public opinion into LCD firebomb. Paubots headed an insurgency against the media state.
This vanity would be echoed by strange entrepreneurs who brought out their homemade diagnostics using the science of statistics (just like big media) to create a story where there is none. This sort of mockery, otherwise the daily attempt to create an event with inert facts, may be found in various dismissals of Paulbots from the mercurial flank. It only obscures a deeper question and summons up a bit of folk wisdom: generally those we hate the most are most like us. The question concerns nothingless than a novel question about order and the ‘state’. A crisis of authenticity can no longer be calculated by media and its diagnostics, technology is far more adept at Burkean calculation and in the end should give the media a moment to reflect on its roots: reporting. Those who still care about the decline of the liberal state of justice need not worry. Today it is all about justice, just the incalculable sort.
The Paulbot base wants a hero beyond the thunderdome of media beatification, a hero of democracy and a want for justice. This election cycle no synthetic, teflon candidate will please them.