Paul Ryan is a very unusual person. He’s a Lenin, Mao, type radical ideologue, a big fan of Ayn Rand’s sociopathic ideas, forcing staff to read her, wanting to remake America into his nightmarish version.
He’s the sort who has spent decades quietly, bitterly plotting and dreaming, without any chance to get his insanity enacted, but ready should the chance arise.
He’s stumbled into the House speakership out of the war within the party, and now he has his blank check president and a Republican Senate.
Ryan appreciates the long view of American history — the way that historic changes by Democrats tend to last, like Social Security and Medicare, and the need for radical change when he can.
Hence his comment after trump won about his plans — the terrifying four words, “Go big, go bold”
That’s Ayn Rand unplugged and unleashed. It’s Ryan looking at how he can roll back democracy and progress to pre-FDR as much as possible. This is historically disastrous, what’s about to happen.
And Ryan in addition to spending years plotting to make America Randian, has no character to retrain any of his harms.
He has shown zero restraint about packaging his changes to kill the poor as packages to help the poor to sell them better.
He had no restraint to force his way into a soup kitchen for a photo op to spread the lie that he was concerned for the poor, a message he knows is needed because it’s the opposite of who he is.
Ryan is a zealot with an utterly evil agenda for plutocracy based on insane ideology.
And we have zero tools outside the filibuster to stop it.
No votes. No protests will change it. No Supreme Court to block a radical but legal agenda. No great more powerful country in the world to intervene in our affairs constructively. Nothing we can do.
Now it’s all about trying to win 2020 (I don’t think 2018 is more than trying to not lose more. The Gerrymandered House districts are still in place.)
I can’t really think of anything to compare since pre-FDR to compare to what’s coming. Even Reagan passed a bunch of tax increases to back off how extreme his first cut was.
The country is going to need opposition to these ideological radicals. It’s like trying to fight against a communist takeover — only not only a real threat but one now elected to run the country.