[...] when he's punching himself in the head publicly you
can't help but wonder if maybe we should reevaluate our
faith in his ideas [...]
We should reevaluate everyone's ideas then (which is probably just as well), because nobody is perfect. Most people have some deeply-seated issues, very successful and very public people almost always have even harsher personal problems. It's what enables them to stand out, to move further than most of us. So, yes, of course RMS has some kind of disorder, most entrepreneurs have some kind of disorder, most CEOs probably too.
There is a quote from the West Wing that rings in my ears whenever a public figure shows some kind of flaw and someone like you inevitably demands that flaw invalidates everything they stand for:
Because we’re all broken, every single one of us, and yet we pretend that we’re not. We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to this fantasy that there’s this perfect life and that our leaders should embody it. But if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plane than the rest of us, well we’re just asking to be deceived.
There is a quote from the West Wing that rings in my ears whenever a public figure shows some kind of flaw and someone like you inevitably demands that flaw invalidates everything they stand for:
Because we’re all broken, every single one of us, and yet we pretend that we’re not. We all live lives of imperfection and yet we cling to this fantasy that there’s this perfect life and that our leaders should embody it. But if we expect our leaders to live on some higher moral plane than the rest of us, well we’re just asking to be deceived.