All We Want To Do Is Eat Your Brains, Pt. 2
We're At An Impasse Here, Maybe We Should Compromise

It's been several months since I last wrote on the subject of zombies, and I'll admit that this is mainly because I found the task so daunting that I nearly gave it up. The subject is vast, and very near to my heart; I didn't want to screw it up. I was spurred into action, however, by the novel Dead in the West, by Joe Lansdale. The book is billed as a "zombie western", and is meant as an homage to the classic pulps of days gone by, but falls into the same trap that snared Rodriguez' Planet Terror; namely, they manage to capture just how terrible pulps were. The book isn't about zombies, per se. It focuses more on the main character, "a gun toting preacher man who came to Mud Creek to escape his past. He has lost his faith in the Lord and his only solace is the whisky (sic) bottle." This quote is from the dust jacket, and it contains more character development than the entire book.

The zombies aren't even particularly interesting ones; they're magical in nature, and so the resolution of the conflict comes with a heaping dose of deus ex machina. And yet, this book kept me up until three in the morning, and after I finished I got up and made sure that my door was locked and I had weapons readily accessible. Why is it that zombies do this to me?

First of all, zombies (or at least the zombies under consideration in this case) are unequivocally evil. You don't need to feel bad when you kill them. You don't need to capture them and reform them (as you would with, say, Nazis), and there's no sense of killing something that, while unequivocally evil, has the potential to be good (like vampires). There does not exist a more clear-cut example of "kill or be killed" than with a zombie. Killing zombies is not only Not Evil; it almost certainly falls under the purvey of Good, since by killing a zombie you are protecting not only yourself but others. (Details are, of course, situational.) This isn't to say that moral conflicts don't exist during a zombie apocalypse. I still don't have a good answer to the question of what you do when a stranger comes, begging for help, to the door of your hideout. However, one matter will always be perfectly clear. Zombies will never be anything more than mindless, soulless automata.

Which brings me to my second point: Zombies are mindless. Thus, any conflict with zombies pits their weakness against humanity's biggest strength - our endless adaptability. If one is battling some other form of evil, like Communists, one must engage in a constant battle of wits, fighting to outsmart them while simultaneously evading the grasp of their Communist wiles. Zombies, on the other hand, are perfectly straightforward. Fighting them has more in common with surviving a natural disaster or disease than fighting a war.

However, there is one key difference. You don't fight an earthquake, you survive it, if you're lucky. Poverty, hunger, all are greater evils today than zombies, but you can't go out and kill poverty with a shotgun. (If you do, you're probably doing it wrong.) Zombies present a problem that can be addressed in a tangible, unilateral manner. This is in addition to the fact that the situation is lacking in moral ambiguity, as observed above - zombies present an evil that every one of us can confront, and defeat, head-on.

The key to surviving any natural disaster is preparedness, and surviving a zombie apocalypse is little different. This conclusion is a natural deduction from the previous point; since zombies are mindless automata, their behavior is very predictable. Since their behavior is predictable, one can survive by being prepared. A prepared individual can be practically assured of survival before the dead begin to rise. The careful observer, who checks every building for its defensibility, knows where to find food, water, and shelter in an emergency, and sizes up every item for its utility as an improvised weapon, will be rewarded for his paranoia when the zombies come.

This leads me into one of my genuinely serious points. Survivalists tend to be crazy people; rather, if you're a survivalist who drives a car, you're an idiot, since you're much more likely to die in a car accident than be in a situation where lifelong paranoia will save you. And yet, the nutbag gun-totin' survivalist understands one very important thing. Modern society is interdependent to an incredible degree. The food I ate today probably came from all over the continent, if not overseas. By its nature, the fragility of any system is proportional to its complexity. Any significant upheaval (such as might be brought on by a zombie apocalypse) would, to put it lightly, have a major impact on modern society as we know it, by disrupting this interconnectedness that is only noticed in its absence.

As stated previously, this sort of upheaval doesn't have to come from zombies. In fact, the best predictions of the consequences of an outbreak can be found by considering non-zombie-related historical examples. The first one that comes to mind is Hurricane Katrina, and the chaos in New Orleans and the surrounding area that followed, but this is simply a recent, American example. Wars, plagues, famines - all provide us with object lessons in the outcomes of a zombie apocalypse.

Here's the key bit: the reverse is also true. Zombies aren't real. I'll be the first to admit it. However, acting like they are can give insight that can be applied to other, real dangers. Zombies are not going to come shambling through Pittsburgh, but if there was (say) a flood, a riot, a total collapse of government and civilization... I'd like to think that I'd be better prepared, more likely to keep my cool and make it through alive, because I've spent so much time thinking about zombies.

(Note: I am not the first to come to this conclusion.)

So bring on the zombies. I'll be brandishing my machete at the top of my demolished staircase, laughing and thinking This is the day I've been waiting for as they come. And when it's not zombies, but flash floods, or jackbooted fascists, or the onset of middle age... well, maybe I'll be ready for those, too.

--

remember that I love you

Ron Paul 08
Or, "Is A Man Not Entitled To The Sweat Of His Brow?"

19:57
I'll be taking a slightly abnormal turn for this website (the zombies article is, no lie, being written) by delving directly into the political realm. Granted, I've discussed political things here in the past, but politics are not exactly the primary (or secondary, or tertiary) purpose of this site. So, why exactly will I be giving live responses to a speech to be given by Ron Paul in little more than an hour? I would chalk it up to simple curiosity, and I certainly am curious to see and hear the man who is so much more popular within my domain, the Internet, than he is in real life. Sure, there's a celebrity factor, but I could have seen Michelle Obama yesterday afternoon by diverting the course of my walk back from classes by a few hundred yards. So what, exactly, am I doing here?

I will probably not vote for Ron Paul for president. I didn't vote for him in the primary election, and I doubt I will in the general election. He stands for a lot of things that I support very strongly (civil liberties, foreign policy, the role of the federal government), and is unwavering in the integrity of his beliefs; he is perhaps less of a politician and more of a man of the people than anyone else in Washington. And yet, an America led by Ron Paul would be an America with tighter restrictions on abortion and immigration, an economy more favorable to corporations than individuals, and a byzantine, unaffordable health care system.* This is not an America that I can, in good conscience, help usher into being. I'm not willing to accept the bad along with the good.

So why, then, am I willing to vote for somebody like Barack Obama, who also supports a lot of things that I oppose? Why am I willing to make some compromises in my beliefs, but not others? And why is the only man in Washington who's willing to call things as they are so unpopular? I hope that listening to his speech will help resolve some of these conflicts, and help me make a decision.

My opinion of Ron Paul is one formed mostly through a haze of base suppositions. I want to give the man a chance to speak for himself.

Besides, this is The Third Amendment, and Ron Paul is about nothing if not the Constitution.

*These might be hyperboles and lies

20:11
Barack Obama held a rally downtown recently. It was packed with thousands, tickets gone weeks ahead of time. I'm sitting in a half-empty auditorium (granted, it's still almost an hour early) that seats 600 when it's full. I wasn't expecting a huge turnout, but I was at least expecting the seats to be filled. Ron Paul isn't exactly mainstream, but he's hardly obscure; he must have more than 600 supporters in the Pittsburgh area who are free on a Thursday night. (Then there's me, of course, but I imagine that the curious form a tiny minority here. By "curious", I mean those driven by curiosity, and not "strange", because there's plenty of the latter present. More on that later.) Judging from the Internet, everyone and their mum is willing to donate their life savings, earned from the good graces of God and the free market, to this guy's campaign fund. So where is everyone?

20:20
Two-thirds full. Demographics time.
Obviously, there's a somewhat disproportionate number of college-age people here; not only do they form some of Dr. Paul's strongest supporters, but the event is being hosted by the U. Pitt Republicans club. While those within the coveted 18-25 bracket form a clear majority, there is a significant fraction of middle-aged people, maybe in their forties or fifties; these are the folks who probably supported Goldwater. There's quite a few older people as well, probably into their sixties and beyond; I imagine that they're the ones who remember what the Republican party used to mean. (So why do my grandparents support Bush? These people here must abhor him.)

From my almost certainly statistically invalid analysis, the crowd is maybe 55% male, 45% female - about even. As far as I can tell, every single person here is white. This is not exactly surprising, given the general party affiliation of African-Americans, Dr. Paul's stance on immigration, and other such factors. It is, however, a little unnerving - I'm not sure how representative this group is of the general Oakland population, but Carnegie Mellon isn't this white, and we're pretty white. I mean, it's whiter than my high school, and that's saying something.

To stereotype blatantly, it's pretty much what one would expect from Ron Paul supporters.

20:29
Perhaps eight-tenths full. I'm contemplating the fact that any given Ron Paul supporter is going to find himself with quite a few strange bedfellows. Case in point: There's a guy wearing a "Gun Owners For Ron Paul" t-shirt; while I support Second Amendment rights on general principles, I get the feeling that this guy supports them in a much less abstract way. I'm surprised they let him in; I had to get my bag sniffed by bomb dogs before I could enter, but there wasn't a metal detector.

I consider myself to be libertarian in the social sense; I believe that people should be free to make their own choices, and that governments exist to protect that freedom. This gives me a lot in common with many libertarians, but at the same time, I don't give a flying fuck about economic issues, which tend to be big among these people. I mean, "freedom" doesn't mean, to me, "freedom to make as much money as you want, damn the torpedoes." So, I tend not to get along so well with big-L Libertarians. Yet, I can't help but wonder if these differences are superficial when compared to the more fundamental similarities with regards to human nature.

Heinlein, an author often misappropriated by libertarians, discussed in his book "Starship Troopers" the "inalienable rights" determined by the Declaration of Independence. With respect to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", he wrote, "What right to life has a man dying of thirst in the desert?" My interpretation of this is that fundamental rights mean fuck-all when Life denies you the opportunity to exercise them. Similarly, what "freedom" has the man with $200,000 in medical debts incurred from a congenital disease? What meaningful choice can he make? It's all well and good to uphold the rights of people who can use those rights, but to me (and at the risk of tautology), freedom means ensuring that everybody has an equal opportunity to be free.

America has never been a meritocracy, and probably never will be. Anyone who says otherwise is either delusional or trying to sell you something. It doesn't make sense to treat our country like a meritocracy until we can make it into one first.

20:45
We're approaching standing room only, and the demographic keeps shifting to the college bracket. It's a respectable crowd (I certainly would be happy with myself if I could draw a crowd of 600 in Pittsburgh) and yet I can't help but recall the throngs that turn out for Obama wherever he goes. The general response to "Ron Paul is speaking at U. Pitt tonight" was either "Who?" or "Is he still running?" I would blame the media, but the media generally exists to give people what they want; they're merely the perpetuators of the silence, not the perpetrators.

The guy sitting next to me is an honest-to-god hippie; long, beaded hair, Grateful Dead t-shirt, and he's making something out of hemp. This wouldn't make me nearly as angry if he didn't also have a hot girlfriend. Damn hippies. The girl on the other side is either meditating or sleeping, and I think she's intermittently reading over my shoulder.

20:49
It occurs to me that, with the exception of the babe-in-arms three rows back, I might be the most left-leaning person in this room. Since I'm not terribly liberal, and often find myself among company in which I'm the least left-leaning, this is kind of a scary thought. I'm tempted to stand up and start yelling about universal health care to see if I get beaten up.

20:51
The crowd is sizable, but relatively calm; people walk up and down the aisles distributing pamphlets and petitions (to get Libertarians on the primary ballot in Pennsylvania. I try to sign, but you have to be registered in PA). The facilitator's microphone test of "Ron Paul '08!" is received with thunderous applause, but calls for "Revolution!" are met with only scattered claps. Ronulans seemed much more rabid online; nobody's even mentioned the gold standard.

My writings will be much more ersatz once he starts talking. I might just stop and listen; we'll see. I'm actually pretty excited; I've never seen a presidential candidate talk, much less an obscure one doomed to political failure.

20:58
National Youth Coordinator for Ron Paul '08 is introducing. I think I can see a black person in the mezzanine; the politically undecided Carnegie Mellon physics majors to black people ratio is no longer undefined. Still pretty white though.

21:03
Chanting "Ron Paul" now. Signs, cheering, etc. Where else would this happen? This is what I'm here for.

21:05
"Ron!" "Paul!" call-and-response. I wish they knew that we did this in the tone of "Mud! Kips!". Should be here any second now.

21:08
Introducer for real takes the stage. Apparently, he didn't expect so many people. I'm pretty happy about it too; at least a kook can get a decent following.

So it's College Republicans that are doing this. Interesting.

Ron Paul is from Pittsburgh? Cool. (Basic biography now.) The doctor-and-Congressman thing never fails to blow my mind.

21:10
"Everything he said flowed logically from a set of axioms". Hmm. He is indeed the "only candidate who is also a physician", but I could be the only candidate who is also a rodeo clown.

21:12
And he takes the stage. Standing ovation. Chants, etc.

"Sounds like the revolution has arrived!" Indeed. His wife is up there with him; that's pretty sweet. They both grew up here, went to HS here. Oh wait, she took off. Never mind.

21:13
Gosh darn, he is charismatic. You just want to give him a hug. He expresses surprise at the amount of support he's gotten - way I see it, he's filling a need. Half million volunteers, 900,000 votes, but the work isn't done yet. The campaign is more successful than the votes represent - he garners sympathy from people who won't vote for him. Like me!

21:15
"Real change" is probably a dig at Obama. "We need less government" -> rampant applause. It's amazing that a presidential candidate can say these things. In a good way.

21:16
"We need to bring our troops home, and save a whole lot of money!" That's one way too look at it.
"Government tends to mess things up when it gets involved" - more on this later.
I think the hippies next to me are here for lulz.

21:17
"It's up to us to deal with our own lives, and it's our responsibility to decide how to lead them." This is it in a nutshell, it doesn't get closer to what I believe than this. So why do I disagree with him so much?

21:18
"The purpose of the constitution is to restrain the government, not the people". Finally, somebody gets it. He's touching on all the big freedoms here - religion, speech - why does the government get to decide? Again, I'm all about this.

21:19
Distinction of the aforementioned freedom - economic vs. social.
One group supports economic freedom, but not social - Republicans, presumedly.
One group supports social freedom, but not economic - That would be the Democrats, then.
Well, when you paint it that way...

21:21
"That means you have the right to the fruits of your labor." Is not a man entitled to the sweat of his brow?

21:22
He's calling on the historical basis for his ideas - his politics aren't new, but old. He blames the Bush administration for undermining our freedoms. Right on.

Terrorism is a problem, but we're going about solving it the wrong way, and we're only hurting ourselves. Habeas corpus, etc. See why people love this guy? Nobody else is saying these things.

Franklin, liberty, security, and so on. Odd that in my circles, this is a cliché.

21:24
Taxes. Get rid of income taxes, you say? Unfortunately, it's things like this that make libertarians seem crazy. Destroying the Federal Reserve gets a standing ovation. This is the stuff that I just can't get excited about.

Apparently, he gets the biggest applause w.r.t. taxes on college campuses. More on this later.

"If you print money, it loses its value." This is the sort of straight talk that appeals to him. He refers to this as the "inflation tax", which is interesting. Inflation tax is regressive, since it hurts the poor the most. Now this is good stuff.

21:28
Now he's onto the national debt and deficit spending. If we had to pay for what we're spending, America would revolt. ("Revolution!" This wouldn't be the good kind.) The government can hide the real costs of doing business - you spend money on your pet projects, get re-elected, and everything's great. Except, OSHI~

21:30
Saying that Soc. Sec. should never have been started gets applause. I guess this is to be expected among mostly college-age people. He's right, though, in that it tends to fuck people over when the cost of living rises higher than payments. Inflation goes up, standard of living goes down, and suddenly everyone's poor and miserable and wondering why. What we're seeing now is bubbles bursting left and right, and it's us who will have to pay Paul.

21:32
We're the ones who will have to ask, "What purpose should the government play?" Simple: "Protection of liberty." Right on.

21:33
He's not regressive; he's less regressive than the people who want to "go back to tyranny". He wants to go back to the time when people knew that "free people can take care of themselves better than government can." Now he sounds like Jefferson; I knew I liked him for a reason.

21:34
And here's the gold standard. Sure, the Constitution isn't perfect, but we need to save the good bits - and yet, the gold standard falls into this category?

21:35
But needing Congressional approval to go to war? Can't argue with that. And who else would say, "We shouldn't have gone to war in Iraq"?

21:36
And yet, the Constitution doesn't mention, say, a Department of Education - so then there shouldn't be one unless we amend the Constitution. Oh, lawd.

21:37
Comparison to Prohibition - which was perfectly constitutional, until it was repealed - with the War on Drugs. Pretty boilerplate, but that doesn't make it any less correct.

21:39
And of course, the hippies applaud for the War on Drugs stuff. Like I said, strange bedfellows.

21:40
Relating to state vs. federal law - this is an interesting perspective on it. Couched in rhetoric of medicinal marijuana, though of course the issue is larger than that.

And on to foreign policy. "We as a country ought to mind our own business. We ought to treat other countries as we want them to treat us." Pretty much right on, but again, there are some long-reaching implications of this seemingly simple idea.

A quote comes to mind - "For every complex problem there is a solution which is simple, obvious, and wrong." A lot of the libertarian philosophy seems to be described by this.

21:42
He reminds us that the Cold War was much scarier than terrorism. Why don't more people think like this?

His position on the war: "We just marched in, we can just march home." See above. But the bitch of it is, he's right. The war is a stupid, stupid waste, of money, sure, but more importantly of lives.

And of course, it's not just about Iraq. Bring our boys home from S. Korea, from Europe, everywhere. He's making it out to be about the money, but it's not - it's about imperialism, or lack thereof. Why isn't anyone else saying this?

21:44
Holy shit, he just said we should start talking with Cuba again. Fuck yes.

21:45
This will improve diplomatic relations, the economy, and it's not like America is vulnerable. This gives us some more money, which we then use to ease people off unnecessary federal programs. Very pat.

21:47
He's just told a roomful of people that he won't be giving them Soc. Sec. benefits in their old age, and got a standing ovation for it. Amazing.

21:49
Obligations that the U. S. Government has failed to meet:
1. Taking care of veterans
2. Protecting our borders
3. Protecting our sovereignty (i. e. we belong to the United Nations)
4. Being a member of the North American Union (OK, I have no idea what this means

21:50
So, apparently medical care is more expensive because of government intervention - inflation or something. Socialized medicine met with resounding "boos". *sigh* Why you gotta make me hit you, Ron Paul?

21:52
Oh man, he just dissed McCain. Glove slap, baby glove slap. He's telling people that it's not hopeless, and honestly, he's right. Win or lose, "this is just the beginning of something really big." I hope he's right.

Pats on the back all around. Go us!

21:54
So, now he's saying why he hasn't spent any money. Or maybe he's just saying, "Thanks for giving me money."

Next "giving Ron Paul money" day will be April 30th, or "Buy my book, 'The Revolution Manifesto', day". Intriguing.

The fundraising has brought him attention, sure. You know what else would? Spending it.

21:57
We can't pretend that everything is okay. But, if we recognize that these are our problems, and that the answers lie in the Constitution, we can fix 'em.

Just as important as real contracts are social contracts. Hellooo, John Locke.

He's right, though. It doesn't take everyone to be on his side, to make change. It just takes an extremely vocal minority. Hell, that's what the Bush supporters were.

22:00
Anyone can help spread this change. You don't have to be a politician. Just spread the word.

And today, we have a great political equalizer: the Internet! Ron Paul, /b/!

22:01
This is the time of the revolution. Ron Paul is out of here. Closing remarks to follow.

Conclusions
Ron Paul inspires a fanatical devotion in many of his followers, and after hearing this speech, I can understand why. There are so many things that he just gets right. And yet, the aforementioned quote holds very much true. Ron Paul offers simple solutions, and people accept them because they're solutions to problems that nobody else even recognizes as problems. (Deficit spending, for example. This really will destroy our economy, and nobody is talking about it.) This tends to appeal to the young, who want to believe that they understand everything, and that the reason these obvious solutions haven't been implemented is because they're the only ones smart enough to see them.

Ron Paul is ultimately an idealist, and I respect that greatly. However if I'm going to support an idealist, it'll have to be one whose ideals I support fully. I can compromise my beliefs to support Obama's brand of change, because there's actually the possibility of this change happening. On the other hand, if I'm going to support an idealist, it will be one who fully embodies all of my beliefs, not just some of them.

In the end, pragmatism vs. idealism is a false dichotomy. One can be both idealistic and practical at the same time, it's just harder. The reason I don't support Ron Paul is not because it's not a practical choice, but rather because I don't think that his ideals, played out to their logical conclusion, will result in a better America. We may be free, but that freedom will be meaningless in a world where we cannot exercise our freedoms.

So Ron Paul, Internet, and thank you for reading. I promise I'll write Zombies, Part II in time for your birthday.

--
it's only divine right