Lying, cheating, and stealing: Getting to Know the Catfish Noodler

Whatever happens, the next President and Vice President of the USA will be narcissists. That is a given. In order to run for such high offices, any politician in any party must think so highly of themselves as to be clinically diagnosed as a narcissist.

Narcissism is defined as a personality disorder in which the individual believes “that the world revolves around them…[the] condition is characterized by a lack of ability to empathize with others and a desire to keep the focus on themselves at all times.”[1]

This is old news. It is the same deal for all politicians. Democrat. Republican. Wing Nut. Whatever. This phenomenon was explained in my earlier June 2, 2012, blog entitled "Ignorance."

In the distinguished roster of exciting Republican Vice Presidential picks: Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle, Spiro Agnew, and others too obscure to remember, we have a newbie, a US Vice Presidential candidate who takes self-worship to even higher altitudes as an outspoken advocate of a bizarre political belief that glorifies narcissism as a superior way of life. Sometimes propagated under the less clinically pejorative term, “Objectivism,” this quack philosophy is the invention of the eccentric Russian-American atheist weirdo, Ayn Rand. (Real name: Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum.)

Photo of Ayn Rand Courtesy of Wikipedia

Ayn Rand, one of the most curious crackpot fruitcakes ever to grace the planet, is the guru for Romney’s VP pick, Paul Ryan. (She is also the guru for other influential leaders: Alan Greenspan, Ron Paul, Jack Kemp, and Rand Paul—who is actually named after her—among others.) Republican politicians and conservative hacks like Glenn Beck have acknowledged her dominating influence on their lives and recommended her novels.

According to the newly minted VP candidate, Rand's works are required reading. Ryan said : “I grew up reading Ayn Rand, and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are." He especially liked her book entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness." [2]

Paul Ryan

With all this Ayn Rand worship now at the top of the ticket, it is it important to learn more about the new VP pick's guru.

Rand was part of the McCarthy purge, eliminating leftist writers and actors from Hollywood. Her magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," sets forth her bizarre philosophy in the form of a lengthy novel. Written under the influence of powerful drugs, the sophomoric book was booed from the beginning by literary critics, but it survived in high schools around the country by word of mouth.

Rand’s grandiose delusions and astounding misconceptions were largely propelled by her 30-year addiction to amphetamines. Charles Murray pointed out, “As anyone who has had the experience knows, a good way to get a really, really distorted sense of reality is to swallow a couple of Dexedrines.”[3]

I can personally testify to that. My whole college experience was a titanic struggle between two chemical influences, amphetamines (the little blue and red pills) and alcohol. (Some hormones also. Cannabis came later.)

For decades, Rand’s books were regarded as suitable only for naïve teenagers trying to emerge from the confusing period of childhood and adolescence. One writer summed it up: “Rand is probably best read by those still young enough to miss the implication of her beliefs: neither charity nor compassion nor common cause have any value when compared with the transcendence of the individual mind”.[4]

Despite, or maybe because of, all this criticism from the intelligencia, Ayn Rand is now having a curious resurgence. Tea Party nuts wing now revere her as the true source of their political doctrine and system of ethics. A new kind of ethics that advocates the primacy of selfishness over the interests of others.

Rand despised the very concept of altruism or charity. Her utopia was a brutal dog-eat-dog world of bullies gloriously clawing their way to the top as they broke the backs of weaker mortals and sent their jobs offshore. She described her philosophy as the promotion of a strong man’s individual happiness over the group (society) as the absolute objective of life. She recast narcissism as “rational egoism” or “objectivism,” always praising the “virtue of selfishness.”

Rand’s language was tough. She used words such as “refuse” and “parasites” to describe the poor, while celebrating millionaire businessmen as heroes.[5]

How tough was she?

One of her early heroes was the serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of a 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Didn’t shock Ayn. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to her biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten by Hickman that she modeled the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street, on him.[6]

What did she admire about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities. “Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” she wrote, gushing that Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.'”[7]

Gore Vidal described Rand’s viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality.” [8]

But never mind. Rand’s antisocial adolescent pseudo philosophy is still the key source of Congressman Paul Ryan’s thinking, according to his own proud claims. He credited her as “a central inspiration for his entry into public life.” He told the Weekly Standard in 2003 that he gave his Congressional staffers copies of “Atlas Shrugged” as Christmas presents. Speaking to a group of Ayn Rand acolytes in 2005, Ryan said, “…the fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” [9]

There’s more. Guess what Ryan’s favorite sport is?

He likes to stick his fist down the throats of catfish. It's called "noodling," and it involves catching a catfish with one's bare hands. "We walk around the banks looking for holes, and you get your hand inside the fish and they kind of come up on your hand. And then you just squeeze wherever you are on that fish and pull it out," Ryan told the Times last week. "I know it sounds a little crazy, but it's really exhilarating."[10]