Is Paul Ryan a hypocrite?
“We find ourselves always in a world mostly not of our making. If we don’t care for the world as we find it, and we’re really serious about changing it, we’d be stupid not to use the instruments and institutions at our disposal. That the iPhone would not exist had America been transformed into an anarcho-syndicalist participatory democracy when Steve Jobs was a tween does not strike me as a compelling reason for anarcho-syndicalist participatory democrats to refuse to buy smartphones and use them in the service of social justice. Similarly, it’s hard to find the objectionable inconsistency in Mr Ryan paying for school with Social Security survivor benefits, and then later arguing for reforms to the pension system he sincerely believes would have allowed his father to leave his family with even more.” This argument (albeit with regards to Mr Ryan, the other way around) was the rebuttal to former Corby MP Louise Mensch’s idiocy on HIGNFY about Occupy protesters drinking Starbucks. Much as I disagree with Ryan (and I really do disagree with him), I don’t think it’s fair to blame him for using the mechanisms provided to him to affect the change he wants to. (Or we could blame him for it, because he’s a douchebag. I’m torn.)
