From a killer she once called an “ideal man” to a political movement built around radical self-interest, the roots of today’s assault on government run deeper and darker than most Americans realize.
I read both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" in college back in the early 80s, along with her pocket edition, "Anthem" (which, among other things, foretold the use of "they/them" as a singular pronoun!) I found the stories profoundly disturbing yet extremely compelling. That was her genius, such as it was, as a writer. She pumped out volume after volume of fentanyl for the mind. So no, I'm not a bit surprised by any of the crap that's happening now. Dismayed, disheartened, enraged and shit scared, yes. Surprised, no. One can sort of understand where she was coming from because of what happened to her father but she took it to extremes, cranking the volume past "11" to more like "20". And now all these swaggering tech bros imagine that they're the next Howard Roark or Dagny Taggart. This is what comes of taking grim fairy tales literally.
Apart from being a homewrecker who banged another woman's husband from 1954-1968, Ayn was a pretty slick cultist . . . On the order of Jim Jones, without the cyanide-laced Flavor Aid [it was not Kool-Aid].
She is, post mortem, doing to the US middle class what that hero of hers did to his captive.
It seems the more horrific the life experience, the more horrific their fiction. Anthony Burgess wrote the novel "A Clockwork Orange" after his pregnant wife was sexually abused by 4 US GIs in 1944, during a London wartime blackout.
She lost the child and ultimately her life. Audiences got Kubrick's horror show.
We lose democracy and get Musk-Thiel-bought techno-fascism and Big Brother. Thanks a bunch, Ayn.
#VOTE to build a Presidential Wing of St. Elizabeth's, which opened in 1855 as the “Government Hospital for the Insane”, the first federally operated psychiatric institution in the United States.
#HOW did DT's seemingly healthy doctor kick the bucket so young? Dr. Harold Bornstein was Trump’s physician from 1980 to 2017 and died on January 8, 2021, at age 73. ... 73 ?!!!
#DRAIN all Kushner and Trump accounts. Note: Jared went begging for $ 5,000,000,000 more when he was supposed to be begging for peace in the Middle East.
Nearly all of the people I know who are self-proclaimed hardcore Republicans boast of being Ayn Rand fans. That serves to validate Thom's post today in my book.
Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan were part of the Hollywood group joyfully blacklisting innocent performers, writers, artists, etc. during the heyday of their manufactured communist scare. Their association with Alan Greenspan, etc., speaks volumes. We owe it to ourselves and the nation to listen closely and respond accordingly, starting with the elevation of those who are most pointedly their diametric opposites and the rejection of those who aren’t.
Your story is incomplete without telling the macroeconomic story that travels along side it. I'm 80 yrs old. Ayn Rand grew up in an America that represented 50% of world GDP - today it is less than 25%. You know this story, tell it. Ayn Rand IS the story of capitalism. Our history is her history! Study the history of "imperialism" and then study the economic history of the United States. Unregulated capitalism is Darwinian. We are Darwinian. The Axial Age is gone, dead!
This "philosophy" of Ayn Rand is ultimately self-destructive. If everyone should just be out for themselves, even at the expense of everyone else, what else could result but Thomas Hobbes' "war of all against all"? Rules, honesty, trust, and compassion exist for our own mutual benefit and survival. Our strength as a species is in our reliance on each other; this is something the Rand followers will never understand.
A historical horrifying excerpt of “evil is as evil does” we are witnessing in real time. Thank you Thom and ALL, for your knowledge & educating is keeping me sane !!
Strictly my opinion, but what I've seen of the MAGA universe MAGAts, by and large don't know or care who Ayn Rand was. certainly the hard core libertarians in MAGAverse do, as does the Broligarchy, but the common (and aren't they common) MAGAts, well they are not economic men and women, because they are still in the second tier or higher of Maslow's heirarchy of needs
They all drive big trucks, have cell phones, watch Fox news on a TV set via Cable or Satellite, have full bellies, a fridge full of cold beer, chicken and steaks to bar b que, despite their complaints none have yet to wear a hair shirt and really feel the pain inflicted by Randian economics.
MAGAts,, even the farmers who voted for him, the civil servants that voted for him, the car dealers and salesmen who voted for him, mom and pop and their corner deli that voted for him, did so, not because of libertarian principles, but for culture war principles. At least some Hispanics are , albeit too late, having second thoughts, same with Farmers and others, but we will shortly see if enough have deprioritized the culture war. or if religion, race, ethnicity and sexuality still reign supreme in their little febrile minds.
I read both "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" in college back in the early 80s, along with her pocket edition, "Anthem" (which, among other things, foretold the use of "they/them" as a singular pronoun!) I found the stories profoundly disturbing yet extremely compelling. That was her genius, such as it was, as a writer. She pumped out volume after volume of fentanyl for the mind. So no, I'm not a bit surprised by any of the crap that's happening now. Dismayed, disheartened, enraged and shit scared, yes. Surprised, no. One can sort of understand where she was coming from because of what happened to her father but she took it to extremes, cranking the volume past "11" to more like "20". And now all these swaggering tech bros imagine that they're the next Howard Roark or Dagny Taggart. This is what comes of taking grim fairy tales literally.
Apart from being a homewrecker who banged another woman's husband from 1954-1968, Ayn was a pretty slick cultist . . . On the order of Jim Jones, without the cyanide-laced Flavor Aid [it was not Kool-Aid].
She is, post mortem, doing to the US middle class what that hero of hers did to his captive.
It seems the more horrific the life experience, the more horrific their fiction. Anthony Burgess wrote the novel "A Clockwork Orange" after his pregnant wife was sexually abused by 4 US GIs in 1944, during a London wartime blackout.
She lost the child and ultimately her life. Audiences got Kubrick's horror show.
We lose democracy and get Musk-Thiel-bought techno-fascism and Big Brother. Thanks a bunch, Ayn.
#VOTE to build a Presidential Wing of St. Elizabeth's, which opened in 1855 as the “Government Hospital for the Insane”, the first federally operated psychiatric institution in the United States.
#HOW did DT's seemingly healthy doctor kick the bucket so young? Dr. Harold Bornstein was Trump’s physician from 1980 to 2017 and died on January 8, 2021, at age 73. ... 73 ?!!!
#DRAIN all Kushner and Trump accounts. Note: Jared went begging for $ 5,000,000,000 more when he was supposed to be begging for peace in the Middle East.
Nearly all of the people I know who are self-proclaimed hardcore Republicans boast of being Ayn Rand fans. That serves to validate Thom's post today in my book.
That only tells us what pond you swim in. I swim in a pond with the minnows, that are eating by the Jacks', and are oblivious to that fact
Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan were part of the Hollywood group joyfully blacklisting innocent performers, writers, artists, etc. during the heyday of their manufactured communist scare. Their association with Alan Greenspan, etc., speaks volumes. We owe it to ourselves and the nation to listen closely and respond accordingly, starting with the elevation of those who are most pointedly their diametric opposites and the rejection of those who aren’t.
Your story is incomplete without telling the macroeconomic story that travels along side it. I'm 80 yrs old. Ayn Rand grew up in an America that represented 50% of world GDP - today it is less than 25%. You know this story, tell it. Ayn Rand IS the story of capitalism. Our history is her history! Study the history of "imperialism" and then study the economic history of the United States. Unregulated capitalism is Darwinian. We are Darwinian. The Axial Age is gone, dead!
This "philosophy" of Ayn Rand is ultimately self-destructive. If everyone should just be out for themselves, even at the expense of everyone else, what else could result but Thomas Hobbes' "war of all against all"? Rules, honesty, trust, and compassion exist for our own mutual benefit and survival. Our strength as a species is in our reliance on each other; this is something the Rand followers will never understand.
A historical horrifying excerpt of “evil is as evil does” we are witnessing in real time. Thank you Thom and ALL, for your knowledge & educating is keeping me sane !!
Strictly my opinion, but what I've seen of the MAGA universe MAGAts, by and large don't know or care who Ayn Rand was. certainly the hard core libertarians in MAGAverse do, as does the Broligarchy, but the common (and aren't they common) MAGAts, well they are not economic men and women, because they are still in the second tier or higher of Maslow's heirarchy of needs
They all drive big trucks, have cell phones, watch Fox news on a TV set via Cable or Satellite, have full bellies, a fridge full of cold beer, chicken and steaks to bar b que, despite their complaints none have yet to wear a hair shirt and really feel the pain inflicted by Randian economics.
MAGAts,, even the farmers who voted for him, the civil servants that voted for him, the car dealers and salesmen who voted for him, mom and pop and their corner deli that voted for him, did so, not because of libertarian principles, but for culture war principles. At least some Hispanics are , albeit too late, having second thoughts, same with Farmers and others, but we will shortly see if enough have deprioritized the culture war. or if religion, race, ethnicity and sexuality still reign supreme in their little febrile minds.