Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon (9 page)

I was beginning to feel as though I might be getting in over my head. If I had known then what I know now I might have backed off; I might have stayed away. I could have called Lonnie and told him to shove his book up his ass.

Like a fool, I continued to chase the truth, blissfully unaware of the terrible price I would pay.

I would like to leave people alone and I think young people are that way and I think anybody who uses the Internet would like to be left alone
.

 

—
Dr. Ron Paul on MSNBC’s
Morning Joe

 

T
he 2008 U.S. presidential contest was a historic clash of titanic figures. Old legends were broken, like the venerable John McCain and the once-inevitable Hillary Clinton. New legends were shaped in the crucible, like the mighty Barack Obama and the moose-slayer Sarah Palin. These were historic times!

Yet, to the denizens of the Internet, no man cast a greater shadow over the election than a slight, white-haired congressman and pussy doctor from Texas by the name of Ron Paul. This long-shot Republican primary contender injected a contrarian libertarian voice into the Republican debates and rankled many in the GOP establishment.

Libertarianism is uniquely popular on the Internet, appealing to the self-interest, the intelligence, the relative wealth, and the youth of the Internet population. The core principles of libertarianism can be summarized in two words: F
UCK
O
FF
.

Libertarians don’t always mean it in a bad way, but they mean it.

Socially liberal and fiscally conservative in general, libertarians don’t want smaller government, they want a minimalist government. The purists believe tax is synonymous with theft and the only useful purpose of a federal government is to provide for the defense of the nation and practice an isolationist foreign policy.

To the surprise of many, Dr. Ron Paul almost inadvertently became a fund-raising dynamo. Internet contributions poured in from libertarians and disaffected Republicans. Many of them opened their wallets of their own volition, eager to give to a conservative who represented a clean break from the sins of the Bush administration. Even some Democrats, impressed by Ron Paul’s consistent rejection of the Iraq war, became Paulites.

Relying entirely on grassroots support, Dr. Paul raised more money than any Republican candidate in the fourth quarter of 2007. On November 5, 2007, Internet supporters raised $4.2 million for Ron Paul as a “moneybomb” of timed donations. This set records for one-day fund-raising. The moneybomb stunt was repeated in December, raising over $6 million for Dr. Paul and shattering their own record.

Things were not always perfect in the Paulosphere. Ron Paul’s Internet supporters were forced to reconcile their own libertarian views with Dr. Paul’s socially conservative views, like his opposition to abortion and his semi-evil stance on gay rights.

Then there was Ron Paul’s old newsletter,
Dr. Ron Paul’s Freedom Report.
For many years the paper was run by blatant racists. According to some, this included libertarian and Ron Paul associate Lew Rockwell writing under a pseudonym. While these articles were appearing in the newsletter, Dr. Paul’s name remained on the masthead.

Dr. Paul and his supporters cried foul when the newsletters, dating back to the early 1990s and before, became an issue in the media. Dr. Paul claimed, “Libertarians are incapable of being racist, because racism is a collectivist idea.” Nobody knew what the fuck he was talking about except for libertarians, who already loved him, so it was a pretty terrible defense.

Fair or unfair, the taint of racism clung to the campaign in the media, and his legion of Internet fans failed to translate into victory in the Republican primaries. He garnered fewer than two dozen Republican delegates. As Republican challengers to John McCain dropped out of the running, Paul stayed on into June thanks to his huge Internet bankroll.

Dr. Paul finally acceded to John McCain’s lead in the primary. He noted McCain had the number of delegates needed to become the Republican nominee, “but if you’re in a campaign for only gaining power, that is one thing; if you’re in a campaign to influence ideas and the future of the country, it’s never over.”

The huge sums of money banked by Dr. Paul’s 2008 presidential bid were transferred to his political action committee, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty. His legions of Internet soldiers, though demoralized and reduced in number, soldiered on.

Not Obtained by Sudden, Slow-Moving Flight

“We just thought, ‘Blimps are cool. Ron Paul is cool.’ What could be more American than a blimp? When ya think of a blimp ya think of America.”

I nodded and left my own mental associations between airships and political movements unspoken.

I was driving to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, with Ron Paul supporter Tucker Mayhew in my passenger seat. His younger sister, Taylor, was sleeping stretched out on the backseat. She did not want to come along. She was not a Ron Paul supporter. She preferred
High School Musical
.

Tucker’s mother had insisted we bring Taylor to “see Tucker’s blee-ump.”

The blee-ump didn’t belong to Tucker, he was just one of the hundreds of donors that had contributed to the more than $350,000 raised on the Internet for the Ron Paul Blimp. Rabid fans of Ron Paul were almost giddy with excitement over the idea of the blimp.

I had to admit, the idea was as simple as it was ingenious. People love blimps, yet they did not know much yet about Ron Paul. A grassroots group of Ron Paul supporters believed the best way to introduce Ron Paul to the American people was by piggybacking on America’s overwhelming affection for things written on the sides of blimps.

Do you remember what it says on the Goodyear blimp? It says “Goodyear,” but I bet you remembered that. Because it works!

It was like the old adage, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” Just like that, only they replaced “stomach” with “blimps” and “man’s” with American’s.

“The way to an American’s heart is through his blimps.”

Close enough.

Tucker was an early supporter of the idea. He was kicking around the Ron Paul corners of the Internet that helped to spawn the concept. He remembered people talking about it before there was even a website. He showed me a screenshot he had saved on his computer of a post on a Ron Paul forum that he believed proved he was “in on the ground floor.”

“This sounds
fucking
awesome!” Tucker declared in the post, although he chose to use nine exclamation points. “Imagine if we put this bad boy over every football stadium in a primary state. Everyone knows about Goodyear and everyone would know about Ron Paul.”

I spent the last few days kicking around North Carolina and waiting for the blimp launch to go ahead. It had been scheduled for almost a week earlier and had been subsequently delayed every time until today. With each cancellation, I would return to my hotel and work my contacts trying to get closer to the Ron Paul Luftwaffe.

I can only guess my associations with Something Awful and a few mocking articles about Ron Paul slammed some doors in my face. No one in the upper echelons of the blimp project wanted to talk to me.

So I turned to the lower echelons and Tucker Mayhew, a second-year law student with a bad part in his hair and a pair of Transitions lenses in golden frames. He favored long coats and bow ties, the perfect image of a somber conservative law student. The exact sort of attorney you would want in your corner if you were suing a school district so your kid could learn creationism instead of geometry.

That image was ruined whenever he opened his mouth and spoke in a whiny drawl. It wasn’t even a North Carolinian accent. It was as if Professor Frink from
The Simpsons
had been raised in the backwoods of Appalachia.

In contrast to his douchebag name and his douchebag way of dressing, Tucker was a pretty nice guy. He was nice enough to invite me over to his parents’ house for macaroni and cheese with hotdog buttons, nice enough to offer to introduce me to some of the big brains behind the Ron Paul blimp, and nice enough to invite me to drive him to Elizabeth City. His mom was the one nice enough to invite me to bring his nine-year-old sister along.

“I don’t have a lot of friends at college,” Tucker confessed to me during our two-hour drive to the blimp launch. “It’s hard to meet people. The Internet makes it easier. There has been a bunch of Ron Paul meets on campus. I even met my girlfriend at one.”

Tucker showed me a wallet photo of a girl who looked like she should be rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried. But she had a pretty face.

“She’s got a pretty face,” I said, my eyes darting back to the road.

“Not a bad bottom either,” Tucker said.

Forgotten wells and corpse piles had better bottoms, but no sense debating the finer points (or blunt ends) of Tucker’s girlfriend. I reached over to fiddle with the radio. I had to do something to prevent the awkward silence that followed from killing us all.

“So why Ron Paul?” I asked as I fiddled with the radio. “What makes him so special?”

Tucker took a moment to respond. He was licking pudding from the foil top of a pudding cup.

“Waddya mean?” he asked, his words murky with pudding.

“I mean, what is it about Ron Paul that makes you guys so crazy about him? Why is he different than Mitt Romney?”

Tucker snorted with derision.

“Romney? Mister Double Guantanamo? No. The Iraq war was a lie. The whole War on Terror is a lie.”

“So vote for a Democrat,” I suggested. “Obama or Clinton or one of the others.”

“Oh, that’s even better,” Tucker said. “The Clintons back in the White House or the most liberal senator who will raise taxes like crazy? Yeah, no thanks. And Democrats are only barely better than Republicans on foreign policy. They started Vietnam after all.”

“Okay, those are a bunch of reasons why not to like the other guys,” I said. “Why Ron Paul?”

Tucker had a dreamy faraway look in his eyes and a tiny dollop of chocolate pudding in the corner of his mouth.

“You gotta believe in something,” he said, his voice thick with emotion or possibly more pudding. “I believe government is the problem not the solution and I believe we gotta stay out of foreign countries. I believe…in minding our own business and let…let the free market take care of things.”

Dawn was breaking over North Carolina. It was about to be a misty, cold, miserable morning. My map printed from the Internet took us through the middle of the sleepy college town of Elizabeth City and then sent us south along the Pasquotank River. Taylor woke up like a dog sleeping during a long car trip, sensing the shift in speed and the dramatic tension as the humans approached their destination.

“Ron Paul is gay,” she said, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

It took us another twenty minutes to find the airship’s launching point, delayed by a wrong turn into Elizabeth City’s modest airport.

The launching sight was a dreary field owned by Airship Management Services, the company renting their blimp to an LLC started by Ron Paul supporters. Liberty Political Advertising was a completely grassroots effort with no involvement and barely a mention from the Ron Paul campaign. This sort of polite disavowal from Paul became a standard practice. His overzealous supporters and their deep pockets, when combined with strict campaign finance and spending laws, meant Paul could barely give these oddball groups a wink of approval.

The unofficial nature of the event showed in the disappointing attendance and the lack of media attention. A few dozen people were milling about next to a large wooden Ron Paul
REVOLUTION
sign. Some sat in lawn chairs, huddled beneath camping blankets and sipping travel mugs full of coffee. The more hale and hearty youth were in sweatshirts and even T-shirts, laughing and enjoying the spectacle of the blimp being topped off in preparation for its launch.

CSPAN, of all things, was blasting loudly from speakers.

It didn’t strike me as an atmosphere befitting something as conceptually awesome as a blimp launch. Not exactly a crowd getting pumped up and
rocked like a hurricane
.

Tucker tried to introduce me to Trevor Lyman, but he was talking to someone from a real media outlet and I did not feel like standing and watching him get interviewed. Lyman was half of the brain trust behind the Ron Paul blimp, the other being Elijah Lynn, the Alan Colmes to Lyman’s stocky, square-jawed Sean Hannity.

Lyman was too busy with the camera, but I shook hands with Lynn briefly. He seemed friendly but preoccupied with preparations for the launch and not interested in answering questions. Alan Colmes probably isn’t a fair comparison for Lyman. He was more like a really pale and shifty-eyed Willem Dafoe.

Looming behind us at a respectable distance was the blimp. They were already preparing to launch and the 190-foot-long white blimp was hovering about a foot above the ground. It was impressive. It was a giant, white bomb of buoyant truth swaying gently from side to side on its mooring cables.

I understood from Tucker that there had been a great deal of effort and money sunk into the printed graphics displayed on the side of the blimp. It was emblazoned with the Randian question, “
WHO IS RON PAUL
?” in twelve-foot-high text. Beneath that, in smaller lettering, was the suggestion to, “
GOOGLE RON PAUL
.”