I cannot wrap my head it. I am seriously starting to think Paul Ryan (who has actually been quoted describing how he used to be the guy in the corner at fraternity keggers, talking about his dreams of ending Medicaid funding) is an honest to god sociopath.
^this! Yes! I've been saying this for the last couple of months. I actually make a sort of strangled screaming noise every time I see his face. What sort of person, who has the real data at their fingertips, proposes these sorts of changes?
He's not a sociopath.
I know Paul Ryan. I knew him back in high school when his name was Matt and he founded the American Values Club for after school conservative wank circles. I knew him in college when his name was Tommy and he would buy entire pallets of Natty Ice (with his unemployment check) and host bonfire parties where he'd rail against the evils of welfare. I still hang out with him these days, virtually and long distance from Florida, where he's addicted to pain killers and having his house foreclosed on, but absolutely loves DJ Trumpenstein because "he speaks for the real America".
These people are intelligent, well read, hard working (white male) Americans, raised in conservative Christian households where Bill Clinton was Pontius Pilate and Dad whooped your ass if your chores weren't done by the time Mom had dinner on the table. Your pastor warned you about the dangers of slow dancing, but you sat enraptured late at night at last summer's family reunion while your older cousin told you about the first time her boyfriend went down on her. Life seems messy and complicated, but Ayn Rand helps everything seem so clear and you don't understand why everyone else doesn't see how obvious it is. Of COURSE Medicaid is evil, a tool of the devil made manifest by sinners and harlots to denigrate our great Christian nation. Black people and Mexicans aren't evil, they're just really unlucky that they were born so lazy and stupid.
Men like Paul Ryan are a product of their culture, a warped little slice of Americana where little white boys are taught that they alone will bear the burden of saving America, if only they are strong enough to drown out the drumbeat of multiculturalism and inclusiveness that will try to invade their minds as they head out into the world. Don't listen to the liberals! They want to destroy America! Don't even talk to them, they will try plant little seeds of doubt in your mind, but those seeds can grow into forests that choke out Jesus's light if you're not careful.
So no, Paul Ryan is not a sociopath. He thinks he is the only same person left in the entire world, and he will work tirelessly to "save" America from itself.
You know, I've been trying to figure out the Paul Ryan type for years, and it is so confusing to me EVEN THOUGH MY FATHER IS ONE OF THEM LOL. In fact, most of my paternal family is 'one of them'. And they aren't sociopaths, precisely, but they do really lack an ability to empathize with anyone not making the same choices they did.
My father didn't have an easy road psychologically, but he DID have a position of huge privilege...born into an upper middle class family that owned two successful family business, who bought him his first couple cars, paid for his college education (which he dicked off through), and then offered two family businesses as employment to fall back on. They preached WASP values, the evils of the Liberals, the fundamental inferiority of non whites, the fundamental inferiority of all poor people (for which they seemed to have actual physical revulsion, as though poverty was a communicable disease), the fundamental worthlessness of intellectual pursuits (reading fiction was discouraged), and the fundamental worthlessness of their own sister (born mentally disabled AND with epilepsy...my father is also so revolted by her he can hardly stand to talk to her).
My fathers family LOVED Nixon, loved the military, exhibited rigidly upright behavior in public while constantly cheating on their spouses (and eventually dumping them for younger models) on the sly. Constantly bitched about welfare and medicare and taxes, etc.
I have tried and tried to make sense of my father's weird reaction of rage and revulsion toward blue collar workers, the poor, men with facial hair, minorities of all types, etc etc etc. The only consistent underlying thing I have ever seen in him that might explain it is clinical narcissism (which he has) and abject terror of EVERYTHING in the world that he can't control, which comes out as either anger or revulsion. And since we can control very little in life, almost everything seems to fill him with fear.
Despite all his material advantages in life, my father attributes 100% of his subsequent business success (which was admirable, no doubt) to his own awesomeness in the face of what he perceives as overwhelming odds stacked against him (basically, just a dick father who died young). He really thinks he had a hard row to hoe, and that he is superior to most other people because he was a business success. It's so weird..
Could most of the conservative mindset just be explainable by fear? Sometimes I wonder...