Saturday, May 3, 2014

Is Paul Ryan a psychopath?

See this article. He makes a convincing case and it certainly explains a lot about Ryan. A few excerpts:

"Although it’s impossible to clinically diagnose someone from a distance, I believe a good case can be made that Ryan has exhibited classic signs of psychopathic traits, especially in two closely related dimensions, the interpersonal dimension: glibness/superficial charm (just look at how the Beltway press falls for him), grandiose sense of self-worth (it never bothers Ryan however wrong he may be about anything), cunning/manipulative (see how effortlessly he got a positive-looking photo-op with the Congressional Black Caucus, without giving up a single thing), and pathological lying (calling his decades-long devotion to Ayn Rand 'an urban legend), as well as the affective dimension: lack of remorse or guilt, and failure to accept responsibility for own actions (failure to apologize for his racist remarks about 'inner-city culture,' brushing it off as merely being 'inarticulate'), emotionally shallow and callous/lack of empathy (his draconian budget cuts, which would take us back to Dickensian England)."


"There are two more reasons to suspect Ryan of being psychopathic. The first is his long-term devotion to Ayn Rand, the second his totally unconvincing split from her — and other similarly unconvincing acts of reinvention he’s performed from time to time. [...] This is the psychopathic model of 'individualism' as Rand imagined it, which in turn inspired Ryan’s entry into politics in the first place, as he himself once said: 'But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.' Not only is it deeply depraved, it’s the polar opposite of the altruistic empathy for others that Christ embodies, which is why Rand was so vehemently anti-Christian. And yet, Ryan saw no problem at all using Rand and Christ interchangeably as justifiers of his philosophy, or, alternatively, no problem in reinventing himself as an anti-Randian, without changing anything in his governing philosophy."


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