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By special guest Defenstrator correspondent, Max Ross. You may know him from such fine pieces as "Protest Music for the New Millenium" and "American Idle - Achin' Aiken - [Insert Pun]."

Why are the media even here?

Everybody - journalists, faux-journalists (hi), and otherwise - knows what is going to happen. Which is, namely, not much. The signs say ‘Revolution,' with the backwards ‘love' highlighted in red. And indeed, the speakers here supporting Ron Paul are calling for a peaceful uprising, which is kind of like not calling for an uprising at all.

So it makes sense that, while across the Mississippi the activist rock band Rage Against the Machine was inducing fans to join in a March for Poverty, the people at Target Center for Dr. Paul's ‘Campaign for Liberty' remained sedate. We listened to Aimee Allen, a Californian musician who wore knee-high gym socks and a skirt designed by Wednesday Addams. She sang covers of Woody Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant," Buffalo Springfield's "For What Its Worth," and, a bit strangely, Sublime's "Santeria." These were imitations of the original protest songs, and it might be said this event was an imitation of a revolution - what good is a revolution that remains within closed doors?

Could we expect anything new from Ron Paul tonight? Was he going to introduce new initiatives worth writing home (to our editors) about? No - he was going to emphasize again his ideas about why our current government isn't working, and posit that his constitutionalist policies will set America on the right path. "The very least we can demand of our government is fidelity to its own governing document," his website says. "Claims that our Constitution was meant to be a ‘living document' that judges may interpret as they please are fraudulent, incompatible with republican government, and without foundation in the constitutional text or the thinking of the Framers."

Free copies of the Bill of Rights were in cardboard boxes by the front doors. The gist of the evening was immediately apparent.

So, the media were probably here to cover the human element of it all. We wanted good sound bites from interesting, and interesting-looking, people - Ron Paul's supporters are known for being fiercely loyal, sometimes to a point of sartorial mania. They're prone to constellations of buttons and Paul Revere-style hats. (Oddly, there was a remarkable lack of tattoos in view.) And I'm guilty, too, of searching out for the perfect, if whacky, quote.

I talked to a guy named Ace from St. Louis who wore white linen pants and white leather shoes - the toes turned slightly up - and a white button-down shirt with a fleur-de-lis print sewn into the cloth. Thirty seconds after finishing the interview, in which he told me that Dr. Paul is the only person capable of turning the country around, he tapped me on the shoulder - he wanted to re-word what he'd said, even though his statement had been perfectly suitable (and not just from an exploitative journalist's standpoint). ‘This is great,' I thought. ‘What a fantastic character for my article.'

But the more supporters I talked to, the guiltier I felt. These people are as sincerely discontent with the current administration as any Obama supporter, and want the best for their/our country. They're drawn to Ron Paul because they think he's got the best ideas, and at least they're attempting to think outside the bicameral box. (Counting Ron Paul something not-quite-republican here, even if he is, literally speaking, a quintessential republican.) It's not fair to fault anyone for their political preferences, I don't think - at least not if one votes based on issues like health care, the economy, and education - issues where it's impossible to tell which candidate is right. Social conservatives baffle me, but for the most part they didn't seem prevalent in Ron Paul's crowd.

I spoke with a man from Wisconsin named Drake Calvert, who wore a Mao-style jacket. He said he was disabled, and that as a disabled person, he felt Ron Paul's hands-off politics empowered him as an individual, offered him the greatest chance of equality. "Black, white, gay...it doesn't matter," he said. "Paul's ideas work for everybody."

Then I thought - isn't preaching small government just a guise to empower the individual, when actually it leaves everyone alone? We are a society that needs help. Shrinking the government, to my confused mind, seems like a way to avoid the responsibility of helping. Paul's reductionist politics are about as original as a cover band, and their appeal is the same, too: a second-hand nostalgia. But this is all moot, anyway. At least in this presidential election, Paul is a defunct candidate. So, again, why were the media here?

Aimee Allen finished her set with the song "Ron Paul Revolution." The crowd loved it so much they cheered wildly for an encore. Their energy was undeniable; it seemed they were on the brink of attaining something they desired. Was I going to witness something revolutionary? Was I in the middle of an actual historical moment? Would the doors of Target Center burst forward as the multitudes took to the streets of Minneapolis?

Allen came back on stage and played a truncated version of what she'd just finished playing, another counterfeit of something original. The audience tried to reproduce their momentum, but something was off - perhaps another law Dr. Paul ought try to repeal: the law of diminishing returns.