VP Nominee's Dance of Veils Hits Thin Ice As David Sirota Asks "Who Is Paul Ryan?"

 “A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.”― Chris Hedges

War is Peace. Selfishness is a virtue. Only the wealthy know what is good for the rest of us. Democracy is tyranny, if we let the poor take part in it. Charity is an evil weakness. The wealthy deserve everything, including our tax money; the rest of us can live off the crumbs they leave along the road to the next Wall Street crash.

A cynical take on life? A stark political landscape? Welcome to world view of Ayn Rand. It is also the enthusiastically held world view of Paul Ryan, chosen this week as the Republican party's vice-presidential nominee for 2012.

Ryan has gone pubic on video many times promoting the ideas of Rand, 20th century author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness. Her rather lengthy books pit self-made characters against the forces of Collectivism. The rich do everything for the poor, and the poor have no gratitude. Government poverty programs not only are a problem, they are the enemies of liberty. You get the picture.

Flash forward to 2012, and Ryan the VP candidate now has to bring forth a "regular guy" image and and deny his real plan to take our elders' Social Security and Medicare and throw it down on the Wall Street gambling table. Get ready for lots of veils to be thrown over us.

Several well-researched reports have come out during the past week about Paul Ryan's strange ideology and radical actions in Congress. Enjoy as David Sirota pulls a veil from Paul Ryan's "I'm For the Little Guy" song & dance.

Understand here, that ShiftShapers takes very little interest in the daily, ugly, money-engorged horse race of 2-party campaign politics in the U.S. Candidates on both sides have broken promises. Some get in office and make so many concessions to their opponents that we may as well have voted for their opponents and been done with it.

What concerns us and interests us is the work of pulling apart our denial of the disasters we are creating, and tearing away the veils put over us by people who would have us create even new ones. 

We aren't dealing any more with old-time corruption- being hoodwinked by snakes in the grass, working in cahoots. We've got people picking our pockets while leaving us - and much of the world - sick, broke, hungry, and one suspicious look away from pepper spray or prison.

Posted by: Jor-El