Will There Be a Ron Paul Running in 2024?
Will There Be a Ron Paul Running in 2024?
I doubt that there's a candidate brave enough to tell the American public the truths that they don't want to hear
The United States is currently experiencing twin-crises with stagflation, a recession and high inflation coupled together, at home, and the slow collapse of the U.S. government’s standing as the sole superpower in the world due to wasting its economic and military capacity in endless quagmires in the Middle East for at least the last 30 years. On the one hand, the average American is struggling more and more to take care of themselves and their families as the prices of basic necessities continually rise, but they are also being asked to take on the burden of supporting U.S. troops in over 130 countries across the globe and to bankroll the corrupt Ukrainian government to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars which are never accounted for in their conflict with the Russian government.
So how much longer will American citizens put up with their elected politicians destroying the domestic economy and sending such a large percentage of their tax dollars overseas in an attempt to prop up their increasingly futile imperial ambitions?
It’s not just that a country like Russia, with a smaller GDP than countries such as Italy or Brazil, feels like it can invade its neighbor despite express warnings from the United States not to dare to do so, but that the rest of the world largely doesn’t feel the need to give into American demands to turn against Russia for its actions. The reason the Biden regime felt like it had no choice but to destroy the Nord Stream Pipeline, which sent gas into Germany and western Europe from Russia, was because it couldn’t convince those European countries not to work with Russia for cheaper energy.
Does anyone truly believe that Xi Jinping doesn’t clearly see that now would be the best time to forcefully repatriate Taiwan if he wanted to do so? The U.S. economy can’t sustain a direct conflict with China over Taiwan on top of the recession at home, the debt from the Middle East misadventures, and the current black hole that is bankrolling the Ukrainian government. So by overextending itself and bringing itself to the brink of economic collapse, the U.S. government under many successive Democratic and Republican regimes has actually made the world much less stable and safe than if they had simply left well enough alone.
And who is, essentially, the only major-party candidate in modern American history to make this their central campaign issue in presidential politics? That would be former-congressman Ron Paul when he ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2008 and 2012.
While all of his fellow Republicans in 2008 were still somehow publicly supporting the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ron Paul pointed out that it was a boondoggle based on a lie that would end up destroying the reputation of the United States and weaken its position when a real conflict inevitably breaks out. When those same Republicans were telling their supporters that the economy was perfectly sound right before it collapsed, Ron Paul was saying that a collapse was inevitable and that if the government succeeded in inflating their way out of it this time, which they did, they would set us up for a worse collapse later on down the road. And now here we are, exactly where Paul said we’d be: The Federal Reserve has finally realized that inflation is out of control and has tried to rein it in with small increases in interest rates, inevitably, and necessarily (They don’t call a recession a “correction” for nothing), causing the recession that began during the pandemic-inspired lockdowns to worsen and sparking a series of bank failures.
So who should we be listening to in 2024? Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose foreign policy votes when he was in the Congress were nearly identical to those of arch-neocon warmonger Mike Pompeo? Who only turned against COVID-lockdowns in his state after it became clear they were politically unpopular? Whose only real stance on any issue is to be against “woke” policies that the President of the United States wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, have much control over to begin with? What about Donald Trump, who declared that he supports artificially low interest rates, and, thus, high inflation? The same Donald Trump who, yes, met with Kim Jong-un of North Korea in what I consider to be one of the best things a sitting president has done in my lifetime, but also assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general for no reason and pulled the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran? Donald Trump who enthusiastically endorsed locking down the country, and dooming the economy, because of COVID?
What about President Joe Biden? Maybe we should listen to him, after all he was the one to finally end the war in Afghanistan after twenty wasted years. Unfortunately, Biden is also the one sending ten-times the annual, average budget of the war in Afghanistan to Ukraine, and threatening direct conflict with the Russian government, which, it should go without saying, would be a much deadlier conflict than the one with the Taliban was.
So no, we should not listen to anymore establishment politicians from either party, nor any faux-populists like Trump who cozied himself up to every establishment politician for decades prior to running for office himself, who refuse to do what’s necessary to bring the United States back from the brink of collapse. These people simply want to kick the can down the road until there’s no longer a road and we’re getting dangerously close to that point.
We should listen to the person telling us the hard truths that we don’t want to hear. We should listen to the person who says that we have to stop propping up countries overseas and let our recession run its course properly, wiping out mal-investments and phony “wealth,” and suffer all of the pain and consequences that that process will entail, or we can let the entire system collapse a la the Soviet Union. Those are the only options: Take your horrible medicine now, or face metaphorical death.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely that the 2024 presidential election will produce a Ron Paul, and so the United States will continue down the path to collapse that all empires inevitably walk.
For the sake of transparency, allow me to note that these are obviously my own political wants for the 2024 presidential election, and that Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign was the last time I supported a candidate for president. You’re free to disagree with me and to think I’m a bozo if you like. Tell me why in the comments or on Notes.
I mention this because I think people who write about politics should be transparent about who they’re supporting, or have supported, in political campaigns so that the people who read them can take their bias into account. We should not be pretending to be unbiased automatons with no personal preferences, and anyone who does pretend that should not be trusted.
That said, I don’t expect that I will support any candidate in 2024, but if I do I will make a post openly declaring it and explaining why I do. I don’t, however, believe in voting for voting’s sake, so most likely I will not be voting for or supporting any candidate; certainly none of the candidates who have so far announced that they’re running.