The Ron Paul Geek Factor

Ron Paul. To most people, he's quite the enigma. Many in traditional media circles are having trouble understanding both his appeal and his platform. A good name for this is Fifth Avenue disease.

Our culture is built on taking reality, dusting it off, slapping a coat of paint on it and pretending it's something else. Geek culture is built on long arguments about what reality actually is. If you don't believe me, go spend some time on Kuro5hin or Slashdot. As a result, most geeks are very suspicious of most of what they read and hear.

The traditional media has been uninterested in geekery for some time, preferring to continue as if the jocks ruled the world. However, the geeks have built a parallel community for themselves, largely assuming, somewhat correctly, that the rest of society was uninterested in the things geeks were interested in. The internet has grown, in a large part, due to geek socializing.

Well, it turns out there are a lot of geeks, and many of those have been relieved to discover others like them. As a matter of fact, there seem to be more geeks than non-geeks.

So, a social movement has been growing under the radar and out of the loop. The social movement has not so much been ignored as the previous order simply cannot fathom its existence at all. The idea that those who are to be led by the 'elite' might take offense to being treated so is unfathomable. The idea that people would prefer being left alone to dealing with tons of social programs is, to them, inexplicable.

What I'm trying to say is that the average person of the old social order simply cannot comprehend the geek culture. The average geek, of course, cannot comprehend the old society, and views it as 'evil', a word whose meaning has changed in geek culture to mean anything that causes annoyance, trouble or more work than it is worth. There is a certain mean-spiritedness, of course, because none of these geeks were popular in school.

Ron Paul is quite a geek. He is not a computer geek. He's a medical geek. He's an economics geek. In the classical sense, a geek is anyone who obsesses to the point of social ostracisation. Ron Paul pretty much has demonstrated he really doesn't care what anyone thinks of him. He's also demonstrated the other mark of geekery: a single-minded dedication to the right thing. Sure, geeks may not agree what the right thing is, but most geeks are definitely dedicated to what they think the right thing is.

Ron Paul's 'right thing' is a well-managed government, a government that considers the cost before it does a thing, and a government that takes its citizens seriously. Being taken seriously is a new thing to geeks, despite their traditional position of being considered more intelligent than most. Being taken seriously is a new thing for Ron Paul.

Actually, there is plenty of surprise on both sides. I don't think there's been a serious effort to reduce Paul's performance, although there's been plenty of dirty tricks from other candidates and much of the establishment, but nothing more than they'd give, say, a strong Clinton bid.

Sure, those with a vested interest in Washington as usual are fighting, but most of society simply does not understand what Dr. Paul stands for, nor can they. As Mayer said, 'we're just waiting for the world to change'. The insurgence of Dr. Paul's campaign is due, simply, to the number of people who had all but checked out, been rebuffed, annoyed, angry, ostracised, whatever, who have been waiting for the world to change. Well, the chance is here and they are changing the world.