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Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Indeed, this was one of the first things I thought of too. I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views. I'll never forget talking with an educated Perot voter (a friend of mine) at the time and actually being confronted with the real views, not a shallow strawman, and realizing I didn't have any good answers because I hadn't actually thought about it. That was a good maturation point for me when I started realizing the power (and danger) of bubbles.

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>I remember well the jokes about Perot being crazy, frequently used to dismiss his views.

Was he crazy or was he made to look that way as an excuse to dismiss his views? Sitting here in the 2020s knowing what we know now about "how it all works" it sure does cast a lot of doubt upon the past.

Isn't is similar to Carter being depicted as a 'weak president' because he had more progressive ideas than an average US president, which make similar amount of sense.. and hence best ridiculed as a threat to "greed is good" prevailing ethos.

He was depicted as weak because during his time an entire US embassy was held hostage in Iran for more than a year. Couple that with inflation reaching 14.8% and now you understand why.

Porque no los dos?

He was a super-rich guy, who had had too many people telling him he was a genius for way too long (reminds you of anybody?), and so was way too sure of himself. A bunch of his ideas were crazy, which doesn't mean others weren't trying to dismiss his views.

> A bunch of his ideas were crazy

Which ones?

btw young idealistic me voted for Perot in 1992

I too would like to know.

All shoe sizes should only be small, medium, and large. He really did have a lot of very ridiculous ideas. He also had a lot of extremely good ideas and incredible understanding of socioeconomic conditions.

His book “United We Stand” with modern context is quite amazing considering it came out in the early 90s.

Powerful people like those who control both parties and our news media don’t tolerate outsiders. When you have the power any deviation from status quo is a threat. A side effect of this is that voters stop listening to the talking heads and politicos when they call some political outsider a dangerous loon even when that may be a valid point.

I’m not directing that last sentence at the president or RFK, but I’m guessing that’s the reason for the downvotes?

The POW stuff was actual insanity

If you're interested and aren't willing to take OP's word for it, the 90s are recent enough that you can probably read contemporary news articles/opinions pieces about him online (and almost certainly at your library). You can also read up on his views/life on Wikipedia.

I had a similar experience when I learned about Ron Paul back around the 2008 election. It was also the first time I had my eyes opened to information suppression when Fox News edited some of his answers out of rebroadcasts of debates.

Same! I actually watched the debate live (on AFN) while in Iraq (deployed), and when I got home and got into discussions about it with friends I had a hard time believing we had watched the same debate. Turned out we didn't, they had watched the edited version. That was extremely eye opening

He was't crazy, just thin-skinned and not suited for politics.

The GOP/Bushes blackmailed him into dropping out of the election by using his daughter, threatening to out her as a lesbian right before her wedding. How thick a skin do you need for that?

My comment was more in general, not about any one event. Apparently he was also a conspiracy theorist and this whole thing about an attempt to disrupt his daughters wedding seems to be one of those, and he admitted he had no evidence.

> the jokes about Perot being crazy

I remember the debates around the time, though, and what most people said was that shipping manufacturing jobs out of the united stated would actually create prosperity here so that the manufacturing types could "move up" into less menial work. They're saying the same thing now, and although it _does_ seem that that did happen in the 90's when all the manufacturing jobs went offshore, it doesn't seem to be happening now.

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