MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT



Paul Ryan wasn't voted the most likely to succeed by his Janesville, Wisconsin, high school peers. In fact, according to the Washington Post, his classmates selected him as the “biggest brown-noser" in 1988.



That may be why he now appears to many as someone with the appearance of an earnest eagle scout, but with the inner balefulness of Eddie Munster. Ryan carefully cultivates the sincere demeanor of someone who would take the time to help an elderly woman across the street, but he's likely be to pick pocketing her as he is doing it. That pretty much serves as an anecdotal image of what he is doing when he assures seniors he is out to save Medicare and Social Security, knowing full well that his intention is to dismantle them as safety nets that are secure and efficiently run.

After all, Ryan (who BuzzFlash at Truthout has shown to be an out and out liar about universal healthcare when he claimed that single payer coverage has failed in every nation in which it has been tried, when the opposite is the documented truth) has a goal that differs from ensuring a minimal subsistence and sound health coverage for the elderly; his aim is to maximize profits for the private sector, even if it means creating potential havoc and poverty for those who have reached retirement age.

Ryan is quite simply a believer in something akin to Ayn Rand's anarchistic capitalism. Both the acolyte and his idol basically advocate the theory that the veneer of civilized communities should be peeled back and that we should return to the ungoverned days of cave men and women bashing each other's brains out to survive and prosper. The only difference is that now it would be a bit more subtle: seniors and the poor in general would just be left to die off without any assistance, while the "fittest" accrue fantastic fortunes.



That may sound over-Draconian, but it's not. That's what Ayn Rand believed, although she eventually went on Medicare and accepted Social Security, just as Paul Ryan financed his college, in part, off of Social Security payments after his father died. Hypocrisy is a hallmark of the Paul Ryans of the world, as it was for the woman whose pre-civilization Darwinism he worshipped.

Cunning and brown-nosing may be Paul Ryan's most noteworthy skills. As we have noted he is a master of sanctimonious smarm. His only unalterable political position is to position himself for higher office, which he has done through promoting an Alice in Wonderland austerity budget that Paul Krugman calls a "fraud."

If Scott Walker is a creation and fully-funded governor for the Koch brothers and the interests of the ultra-rich corporatists, Paul Ryan, from the same state as Walker, is their national deliverance, their crusader who will seize the promised land of unfettered economic and social dominance by the rich and powerful elite.

Paul Ryan heralds the end of Constitutional democracy as we know it. He champions a power structure where the wealthy supercede any rule of governance that was established with the creation of the United States as a model of self-rule, where every citizen is equal at the ballot box and has equal rights before the law.

In the '60s, many elderly in the United States could not afford medical care and lived in squalid conditions. The implementation of Medicare changed that considerably. Now the youngest children in America represent the poorest segment of our population, not our senior citizens.

For Paul Ryan, aspiring brown-noser in chief, no individual or demographic will be spared the harsh life-draining reality of anarchistic capitalism and governance by a plutocracy.

In a Romney administration, Mitt will just be a figurehead. As Grover Norquist noted this year in a Daily Beast article entitled, "Norquist: Romney Will Do As Told":

We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

Paul Ryan's high school classmates may yet be proven wrong. He may succeed, were Romney to win, at reaching the highest levels of power in the US and ruining millions of lives through Darwinian fiscal and social policies, while destroying the Constitution in the process.

That may be a satanic success story, but give the devil his due.