Ryan Shrugged

Paul Ryan?  Really?  I turn my back for ONE second, and the Mittster chooses his VP candidate and it's Paul Ryan? 

Oy.  Great. 

Now I have to hear all about his juvenile love affair with Ayn Rand for the next three months. 

Or maybe not, apparently. 

Ryan is now back-tracking on the whole "Ayn Rand-is-my-gal-pal" motif that has been following him for years.  He claims that his infatuation with her Darwinian, atheist, uncompassionate, "step-on-the-poor-and-needy" philosophy was merely an urban legend.

But people are understandably confused.

Maybe that's because he credited her as his inspiration for entering public service. 
Or the fact that he was a keynote speaker a few years back at a national convention of Rand loonies.  Or that he requires his staff to read "Atlas Shrugged" as part of their duties while under his employ.
 
You know, little things.

I read "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", too.  When I was around 20 years old, just like everyone else.  And, like most normal people, I got over the notions of those books as I quickly grew older and realized that they are mostly crocks of shit. 

So any adult who actually takes Ayn Rand and her ideas seriously is going to make me raise my eyebrows thru the ceiling.

Her books read like juvenile romance novels, filled with evil, lazy socialist "takers" (Peter Keating, Ellsworth Toohey) and the noble, hard-working geniuses that they suck dry (John Galt, Howard Roark).  It's the sort of stories that flatter and enthrall every selfish, capitalist plutocrat that has ever ventured to creak open their mighty dust jackets.

And you don't have to be a genius to see how Randian ideas have fueled Paul Ryan, from gutting Medicare to destroying the middle class.  Leeches and succubi, all!

And its little wonder that Mitty finds Ryan so gosh-darn attractive.  Anyone who says one thing and then does another must make him feel right at home.  Can you imagine the dinner conversation?

"You want to gut Social Security?  Me too!!!"

Mitty must have had the urge to just strap Ryan to the top of his Cadillac and driven him all the way to the voting booth.

Actually, Mittens and Ryan even look alike.  There's this whole Portrait of Dorian Gray-thing going on when I see them standing next to each other.  Or is that too gay an anology? 

They seem like two cells that have metastasized in the same alien pod.  Together again at last.  And it feels so good...

Well, I am already bracing myself for Paul Ryan and the insufferable, libertarian/ideologue notions that will surely spew from his mouth. 

It's going to be a long time til November...

Further Notes:

So, today I read a long exhaustive New Yorker piece on Paul Ryan (written just weeks before his VP announcement), and I have to say it was revealing.  I think I disagree with just about everything he says/stands for.  Which is a pretty remarkable thing, especially since he seems more human than a lot of these other Republicans (but maybe that was just in the writing). 

And yet he still possesses a major factor that makes all Conservatives alike: a complete and total lack of empathy. 

Ryan's views, in a nut shell, are these (to me):  This is survival of the fittest.  If you can't compete, you need to lay down and get out of the way.  There's no hand-outs.  No free rides.  If you're poor or old or sick, well, that's your choice.  Tough luck.  The government has no business helping you out in any way.   Medicare?  Gone.  Medicaid?  Outta of here.  Unemployment?  History.  Social Security?  Privatize it.  If you need things like roads or schools or infastructure: pay for it yourself.  If you can't afford medical care: die.  He is a Libertarian Ideologue.  A Social Darwinian.   Every man for himself.

It's no wonder he loves Ayn Rand, who made selfishness a virtue. 

And yet Rand was also an atheist, which the Catholic Ryan shuns.  (How can you abhor the collective, and yet embrace a giant organized religion at the same time?  Isn't that a form of group think, ie, government?)  And Rand was Pro-choice (another Ryan no-no).  It's remarkable that the Republicans want the government out of people's private lives, and yet are constantly injecting and foisting their "morals" on the populance.

I'll probably keep adding to this thread as I go along and learn more about Paul Ryan, the man who wants to be 2nd in command of our country (and at least has a POV, which is more than Romney can boast).