Paul Ryan: Satanist?

Do I really think Congressman Paul Ryan is a Satanist? No, he doesn't dress sharply enough for that.

Those ill-fitting suits he wears, trying to bulk that skinny frame of his, but basically caricaturing him into more of the look of the Beaky Buzzard from Bugs Bunny, just aren't cut well enough for a Satanic fashion statement.

I met some Satanists (Laveyan Satanists) in Bellingham, Washington one time, and they looked sharp.  I mean really sharp. Like Milan Fashion Week on the catwalk sharp. He was dressed in a black pinstripe banker's suit that easily set him back a grand. She wore just a skin tight slinky black silk dress with a slit up the side and six-inch stiletto heels to show off her shapely gams. I think they wanted to do me, but, I'm just not the submissive victim type, so we will never know how that scenario would have played out.

So, the connection? Satanism? Paul Ryan? Answer: Ayn Rand.



I love that part of the clip where Clara Edwards from the Andy Griffith show shouts out "Hail Satan!"

Ayn Rand was a Satanist? No.

Anton Lavey borrowed heavily from her pseudo-philosophy known as Objectivism, which was informally laid out in books like The Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. The core morality being "It's Okay to Be a Selfish Asshole" (not surprising, considering Ayn Rand was a narcissistic, manipulative sociopathic type).

Most people who are exposed to Ayn Rand are exposed when they are young and their personalities not fully formed, or fully malformed and irredeemable. My take is Paul Ryan, pampered and privileged offspring of a well-to-do business dynasty in Janesville, WI, who - aside from a brief turn at burger flipping at McDonald's - has never had a real job in his entire life (according to John Boehner's standards), was the perfect stooge to fall prey to that particular diseased mindset. You know, indoctrinated into social darwinism, and the view that their world consists of heroic business suits battling a dystopian business-hating America, where workers exploit bosses, grasping bureaucrats set up obstacles to success, and parasitic nuisances siphon off valuable capital to support cadillac welfare lifestyles of hedonistic substance abuse and irresponsible procreation. And clearly, in an Orwellian ethical judo flip, altruism breed sloth, unfettered capitalism is morally upright, derangement is sanity, might is right, and devil take the hindmost. All that fucking neoliberal bullshit that has ruined this society over the past thirty years.

Were I a paranoid type, I would say it all seems, in retrospect, part of the plan. A plan involving, in the short term at least, a President Romney, a Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, a Speaker of the House Eric Cantor, and a Paul Ryan to do play havoc with a federal budget into the year 2020?

Starting with the now-vilified Alan Greenspan, acolyte of Rand, trying to fuck up the economy as much as possible, leaving hard-working decent Americans vulnerable and questioning their better judgement, to the point where "every man for himself" is starting to sound pretty good. A world where, clearly, things like stewardship, service, integrity, helping others, are all fruitless and naive superstitions. A world where one should feel on the right side of history, with a proud and assertive lack of compassion fro the less fortunate. A world where lack of a social conscience is an advantage. A world where the best possible solution to all problems involves the abandonment of any societal support, which serves only to enervate the already weak and inferior individuals. That which does not kill you makes you stronger.

Might as well be Anton Lavey

The only missing ingredient in Ayn Rand's fucked-up reality-denying worldview, the one sane concession that Anton Lavey made was the rejection of the "no force or fraud" argument supposedly propounded by Objectivists. I say "sane" in the sense that force and fraud is recognized as part of reality. It occurs. It exists. It is a part of the universe. Why, capitalism would not exist without force and fraud. Why Rand chose to deny this I cannot say.

Fraud exists at the genetic level. There are creatures that pretend to be what they are not. Harmless flies and snakes that pass themselves off as dangerous bees and venomous snakes, among just a few examples. And if Nature pulls it off, why, it's almost benign when compared to capitalism, which generally consists of lying, cheating, and stealing. Fraud exists as a long-term, systemic, routine conduct in the business world. Fraud is such a regular feature that it is only rarely prosecuted as a crime. At best, punishment, if it occurs at all, exists only as civil actions, arbitration, lawsuits, with no admission or denial of guilt.  Financial services regularly promote and push dodgy stocks, game the market, manipulate prices, and use insider information for personal gain. What could be more rationally self-interested than that?

And force? The entire three hundred year history of capitalism, from the first stock trades in Holland and England, to the conquest of the American West, could not have occurred at all without the forceful extraction of talent, labor and resources. Why, is there any counterfactual possible where the Western world enjoys world preeminence without the conquest and subjugation of the New World? Without chattel slavery? Impossible!

So, the whole "no force no fraud" principle is just one big wet turd of a delusion. At least the Satanists recognize that. Do libertarians? Does Paul Ryan? Ron Paul? Rand Paul? The people who insist that there be no governing except for the police, the courts, armed services, perhaps some infrastructure, but all the rest, regulations, public health, education, provisions for the general welfare, gone, or only as privatized services on a for-profit basis, in short, anything public that attempts to deter force and fraud? Allow me to fucking guffaw in derision.

So, let's not kid ourselves. The soul of the nation, if it has not been forever tainted in cynical denial, is now currently being fought over by the satanic forces of the Randians, versus those of us who still believe in community. And I hate to be a Manichean drama queen about all this, but I for one feel that we need to recognize those who would send us down the path of Rand and libertarianism, the Tea Party stooge faction of the Republicans as, yeah, Satanically Evil.