At The New Republic, Jonathan Chait reviews two new books about Ayn Rand — Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns and Ayn Rand and the World She Made by Anne C. Heller. Via Burns and Heller, Chait’s review nails Randism and the Randbots who still worship at her altar. Just a snip:
When Rand condemned a piece of literature, art, or music (she favored Romantic Russian melodies from her youth and detested Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms), her followers adopted the judgment. Since Rand disliked facial hair, her admirers went clean-shaven. When she bought a new dining room table, several of them rushed to find the same model for themselves.
Chait calls Rand’s ideas “inverted Marxism.” He notes the degree to which her novels “oddly mirrored the Socialist Realist style, with two-dimensional characters serving as ideological props.” Like Marxism, Rand’s Objectivism “failed for the same reason that communism failed: it tried to make its people live by the dictates of a totalizing ideology that failed to honor the realities of human existence.”
Yes, Rand hated Marxism, and her ideas were relentlessly reactionary to Marxism. But because Rand’s life and work were shaped entirely by reaction, she was never really free from the things she opposed. Marxism still ruled and defined her, even as she imagined herself liberated from it. Hers was an utter failure to find equanimity.
Anyway, the larger point of both books is the degree to which Rand’s unbalanced ideas still haunt our political discourse. In particular, we are hobbled by the idea “that the United States is divided into two classes–the hard-working productive elite, and the indolent masses leeching off their labor by means of confiscatory taxes and transfer programs.”
(An aside: Culturally, IMO there is something profoundly un-American about Randism. Although we’ve always had our Calvinistic undercurrents, through most of American popular culture since the age of Andrew Jackson our national mythos was about the triumph of common men — yes, usually men — over the inbred, indolent elite. Americans may have admired George Washington, but we identified with Davey Crockett, Daniel Boone, and Huckleberry Finn. Our ur-myth was about the savvy, weather-beaten cowpoke who proves to be a better man than the wealthy, educated city slicker. Now our ur-myth is about winning American Idol.
But notice how the once-admired cowpoke has been replaced by the likes of Joe the Plumber, a man plucked from obscurity not because of his weather-beaten independence but for his usefulness to the elite cause. Wurzelbacher became a pet of the elite because he embodies their sterotypes of a working man while parroting their worldview. In truth, he is close to being a white Step’n Fetchit.)
Chait’s review goes on to demolish most of the assumptions on which Randism is based, particularly the myth of the “self-made man” and the belief that wealthy people are wealthy because they work harder than poor people and therefore are more deserving.
Now, the part that intrigues me is the way so many obviously ordinary, poorly educated and un-affluent Americans have somehow bought into this nonsense. Think of the people presented in the video in the previous post. There is nothing “elite” about this crew. In large part, the rank-and-file of the tea partiers are from the “indolent masses” so devalued by Randbots. IMO what we’re seeing here are two different social-political pathologies finding common ground in opposing progressivism.
The tea-partiers also are locked inside an ideology that says some people are more deserving than others. But in their world “deserving” is not defined by wealth and status, but by race and culture. This is discussed by Michael Lind in “Uninsured Like Me.” See also, Glenn Greenwald’s “Who are the undeserving “others” benefiting from expanded government actions?”
What’s beneath wingnut hysteria is not just racial hatred but a sense of racial/nativist entitlement. They are obsessed with the idea that progressivism means taking something away from them and giving it to people who are undeserving (i.e., not white, especially not native-born white).
Having come from a working-class white background myself, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve met in my life who were neither wealthy nor especially industrious, and who were invested with the usual number of faults and moral weaknesses, but who saw themselves as being uncommonly hard-working and virtuous because they were white people with jobs. Such people deny their own vulnerabilities — economic catastrophe couldn’t happen to them — and somehow identify with the self-interests of people who are far more wealthy and insulated than they are. Hence, working people without health insurance somehow are persuaded to oppose health care reform.
(Sign at Saturday’s 9/12 demonstration: “I work hard so Obama voters don’t have to.”)
Odds are that some minority of Saturday’s 9/12 crowd have no health insurance themselves. They are, in effect, choosing to do without decent health care for themselves than to share a benefit with the Other. They are disproportionately and irrationally obsessed with the issue of illegal immigrants getting a taxpayer-funded benefit, and they would rather sacrifice cost-effectiveness than begrudge so much as an aspirin to a migrant worker. As I wrote recently, we Americans are spiting ourselves to death.
So the Randbots and the 9/12ers view the world in different ways, but they’ve come together in lunatic solidarity nonetheless.
This toxic compound is all the more dangerous because it is funded by powerful corporate and media elites. Hendrik Hertzberg writes,
This sort of lunatic paranoia—touched with populism, nativism, racism, and anti-intellectualism—has long been a feature of the fringe, especially during times of economic bewilderment. What is different now is the evolution of a new political organism, with paranoia as its animating principle. The town-meeting shouters may be the organism’s hands and feet, but its heart—also, Heaven help us, its brain—is a “conservative†media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News. The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful—they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party†to murderous totalitarians—but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism—the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.
Our national forefathers vowed to create “a more perfect Union,” but we have never really overcome the divisions of race and class that have plagued us from the beginning. I’d like to close by pointing out that Canada is at least as racially diverse as the U.S., yet Canadians seem able to govern themselves sanely. In the Washington Post, Jonathan Malloy argues that what makes the difference between the U.S. and Canada is that the two nations are operating under different national myths. “Canadians, who have a highly fragile and internationally ignored national identity, understand instinctively that health care says a lot about a country’s heart and its understanding of itself,” Malloy writes.
I fear our country’s heart is a cold one, and if it’s heart doesn’t warm up soon the U.S. is destined for a long and steep decline.
“…taking something away from them and giving it to people who are undeserving (i.e., not white, especially not native-born white).”
I really don’t know where this racist theme is coming from, because I don’t see it. The first part of that, the “taking from them and giving to the undeserving” part,has been around for a very long time; in fact has been part of the foundation for the conservative movement. Having a black President did not create this, nor did it send it screaming into the street. What sent it into the street has been the size of the defecit (not of the President’s making, and totally necessary at this point, but easily fear mongered nonetheless) and the reckless ranting of talk radio and the less responsible portion of the conservative movement.
I grew up in the Deep South fifty years ago and I have seen racism. People who are racist do not hide behind euphamisms, they come right out and say that they hate and despise members of another race; they take pride in it. During the Democratic primaries, people who were interviewed came right out and said they could not vote for “a Black.” There was no evidence of the feared and much talked about “Bradley Effect.” Chris Matthews et.al. are saying they see racism in the Teabagger movement because they have never seen racism; they do not know what racism looks like. I have seen it, and this is not it. This is the blather of news media creating drama.
The first part of that, the “taking from them and giving to the undeserving†part,has been around for a very long time; in fact has been part of the foundation for the conservative movement.
Yes, it has been around for a long time, and it has profoundly racist roots. It’s a big reason the New Deal was killed by the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s; most white people were fine with government entitlements like the GI Bill and Social Security as long as they were reserved for whites. But when Lyndon Johnson, in effect, broadened the New Deal to benefit African Americans, white Americans in large number left the New Deal Dems and migrated to the Southern Strategy Republicans. This is something I’ve written about quite a lot in the past; see also Michael Lind. The whole “tax and spend liberal” rant took hold and propagated because Democrats came to be associated with welfare programs that benefited blacks. I am old enough to have watched this happen with my own eyes.
People who are racist do not hide behind euphamisms, they come right out and say that they hate and despise members of another race; they take pride in it.
That used to be true, and in some parts it may still be true. But it used to be socially acceptable, even mandatory (see Huckleberry Finn) for a white person to be racist. Now the message that overt racism is bad has gotten through to a majority of whites. So today racists deny they are racists and even accuse other people of racism. It’s still racism, although these days it is directed less at U.S.-born blacks than the dreaded Latino immigrant, legal or illegal.
I grew up in a legally segregated, all white town, and I grew up with the overt and in-your-face racism of which you speak. But I see plenty of racism-that-denies-it-is-racism on the Right today.
“Now the message that overt racism is bad has gotten through to a majority of whites. So today racists deny they are racists and even accuse other people of racism.”
I agree, I too grew up in segregation, but of a slightly different variety. Gary Indiana in the 1960’s had changed in what seemed like overnight to a majority black city. Many where southern blacks that moved to Gary in the 50’s for the steel mill jobs. So the small white population (around 30%) pretty much walled themselvess off in the east and south sides of town. Anyway even back in the 60’s and early 70’s the white racist (we had black ones too, another topic) had to keep his or her bias’s hidden in mixed company (school, work), but when the atmosphere was free of the “others” the racism would fly. I feel the same is true today but much more refined. Just sit down and watch FAUX for a full day (best done on an empty stomach) and you will see how the modern white racist weaves a tapestry of hate right out in the open but in code. Glen BecKKK took a little bit of the lid off when he called Obama a racist (“So today racists deny they are racists and even accuse other people of racism”). That was the bloody chum in the water, ever since the 9-12 zombie racists are tuned in everyday to get their 60 minutes hate. And now BecKK has moved onto SEIU and ACORN. I don’t know how one can possibly look at all of this “discontent” on the right and not see it for what it really is. It’s easy to say the outrage is all about the deficits, I too am concerned and I actually think Obama should consider suspending some of his stimulus (the wasteful part), but anyone with even half a brain (teabaggers) and not completely compromised by racial hate (not teabaggers) can see that Obama has little to do with our current fiscal woes, the man has been in office for 8 months, we had around 10 trillion in dept last year we have 11 trillion now (700 billion in bailouts initiated by the previous administration), so the dimwitted tea baggers are outraged by what?
…but anyone with even half a brain (teabaggers) and not completely compromised by racial hate (not teabaggers) can see that Obama has little to do with our current fiscal woes, the man has been in office for 8 months, we had around 10 trillion in dept last year we have 11 trillion now (700 billion in bailouts initiated by the previous administration), so the dimwitted tea baggers are outraged by what?
They never heard about the exploding debt during the Bush administration. What they knew about Bush they got on Fox News – he’s a patriot who’s keeping America safe from terror by fighting them over there. And he cut our taxes.
Now that we have a Democrat in office, they’re hearing all about our soaring debt and about who’s at fault. They’re incurious, willfully stupid, willing to believe anything they hear from a God-fearing Republican leader like Glenn Beck. They’re not even capable of understanding how they’re being used. It’s pathetic.
Bill H – if this rage is about the deficit, then explain, please, why it didn’t arise during the eight years Bush created this deficit out of a budget surplus?
Why didn’t it arise when Bush sent millions in cash to Iraq in the form of shrink-wrapped bricks, that were offloaded onto pallets and then promptly disappeared?
Why didn’t it arise when our tax dollars went to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton cronies, to build showers that electrocuted our troops? To turn Walter Reed Army Medical Center into a hellhole?
Why is it about an “African” in the White House, if it’s not racist? Why is it about “Muslim,” if not about bigotry? Obama isn’t even a Muslim, but the ragers continue to insist he is.
Why is it about name-calling, if it isn’t about blind hatred? It’s impossible to be a “socialist” and a “Nazi” at the same time, so wtf is that all that about?
Why are all the ragers’ accusations based on lies? Why is your own comment apparently written from Jupiter?
You’re astonishingly naive if you think racists don’t hide behind euphemisms. You appear not to have noticed that the country has changed some in the last 50 years; unless they want to go full skinhead– tattoos, weaponry, social ostracism and all– euphemisms are all they have left.
First, I agree with Maha that there is a strong racist undercurrent to those who protest the direction of the administration and that the more overt racism of our youth has been driven into the undercurrent referenced. I also agree with Dave that a strong element is the uneducated and wilfully ignorant nature of the non elite protestors–that is what makes them so easily manipulated by the elites. At root, however, I think the dominant theme among the non elite protestors is fear. Fear of exactly what Obama campaigned on–Change. It does not matter that if they were rational thinking creatures they would welcome the change, it is simply that no matter how bad their lot is, it is not bad enough to overcome the fear they have about change. It is precisely their non elite status that makes them so fearful. The most tribal groups are those who fear the competition of the other tribes the most. The elites see the other tribes as opportunities to be exploited.
I lived in the South for almost 10 years. As an African-American friend of mine esplained to me a few years ago, it all comes down to (sorry about the language), the niggers.
He said the native white people would never tell you about this. But it comes down to this, after I asked him why white Southerners vote against their best interests: “If you ain’t better than a nigger, who you better than?” He explained that for almost 100 years Southern whites could deal with any level of poverty by saying to their families, “Look, at least we ain’t as bad off as them nigger’s.” And it was then verified by others, even whites when I told them what I’d heard. They’d say something to the effect of, “Yup, that’s what my Grandfather used to say.”
The Civil Right’s movement helped to start to level a horrible playing field. It took away whatever little superiority the whites had (and still have, as a matter of fact). And, rather than feel solidarity with the native black population, with whom they had historical and economic similarities, they felt like they were backed into a corner.
This, “If you ain’t better than a nigger, who you better than?” now applies to the feeling towards immigrants, legal and illegal. ‘Jesus, if you ain’t better than a nigger, at least you could be better than a Spic.’
It appears that human nature has always had a desire to feel superior to some “other.” Hence, wars, slaves, indentured servants, etc.
I don’t know if this explains everything. But it made an impression on a lifelong New Yorker – not that we’re angels, by any means.
This need for superiority may be a universal human traint. One that many religions try to stop by talking about equality before God, and helping those beneath you.
I just don’t think Americans are ready for this. I agree with maha, this country’s heart is a cold one. And, I don’t see it warming up anytime soon. And the results may be disasterous. Probably will be…
It’s actually not “at least.” In 2006 the US was 74% white and Canada was 80% white. It’s close, but Canada is not more diverse.
Everyone should read “The Political Mind” by George Lakoff.
It explains alot.
“If you ain’t better than a nigger, who you better than?â€
Right, but like politics all racism is local. Blacks were a convenient scapegoat in my community. Once southern blacks had inhabited Gary in significant numbers intolerant whites started moving out in droves, aka white flight. The mass and sudden migration caused property values to plummet, tax revenues soon followed and before you knew it Gary looked like a war zone (still does to this day). Of course the “niggers” were the scapegoat, when in reality it was white intolerance and ignorance that caused the city to decline, but hey if you aint better than a nigger who are you better than?
They never heard about the exploding debt during the Bush administration.
Actually, the Righties I know personally were very well aware of it. They justified it as the cost of the War on Terra. Now, though, they’re angry.
[L]ike politics all racism is local.
Where I live, the “enemy” is Mexicans and Vietnamese. And the mythical liberal unicorn.
What’s beneath wingnut hysteria is not just racial hatred but a sense of racial/nativist entitlement. They are obsessed with the idea that progressivism means taking something away from them and giving it to people who are undeserving (i.e., not white, especially not native-born white).
The mere suggestion of doing something for everyone will inevitably provoke the hysteria because someone undeserving will benefit. It has always been this way with those at the bottom badly needing to identify some run beneath themselves. There is a manic competition for “not the bottom.”
This deserving thing is most interesting. The elitist tautology has people being deserving because they have more and because they are deserving they should have more…circular reasoning at best. Not only are their answers self-serving but their questions are too. The question of what makes a better society, one pondered since the time of the ancient Greeks, is heresy to them and seen as a threat to their predominance however marginally true it might be.
However, the lower-class concept of their own deservedness, while equally inventive and illogical, is different — it is: we work, go to church, pay taxes and aren’t looking for handouts but “those people” (pick your minority/ethnic group du jour) aren’t like us. They can’t explain their deservedness in terms of what they have gotten and therefore deserve more of. They explain it in terms of how bad some other group is. They need a prop…a scapegoat.
Both lines of reasoning are bad for most of us.
Thems some strange bedfellows, eh? And, as always, they are exploited by the status quo and are just too ignorant and blind to the facts to know they’re being snookered. I keep hoping for a Willie Stark figure (All the Kings Men)…one of their own who will read them the riot act and sic them on those who are really abusing them.
I can find one point of agreement with them and it is the bailout (this idea of too big to fail has to stop). They resist the fact that it was not just Obama. Memory is short and most recently Obama has fed the beast not tamed it. Now it owns him and it is hard for him to stop with his latest classification of certain banks:
While Obama wants to name some banks as “systemically important†and subject them to stricter oversight, his plan wouldn’t force them to shrink or simplify their structure.
Sorry, I strayed from the topic but maybe not as much as it might seem. Whatever racism there is it is exacerbated by the perception that Obama does not stand up to monied interests. As confused and ignorant as they might be there are intelligent, well-informed people who concur with them on that point.
Obama can ill afford widespread opposition on key policy points that ranges from lower to middle class.
“They’re incurious, willfully stupid, willing to believe anything they hear from a God-fearing Republican leader like Glenn Beck. They’re not even capable of understanding how they’re being used. It’s pathetic.”
One of the best definitions in a nutshell that I’ve seen.
I also appreciated c u n d gulag’s comments (though I see that my lesson on apostophes has gone unheeded, but let’s not quibble).
As far as multiculturalism goes, my home town, Toronto, is the most multicultural in the world. I believe that’s a verifiable fact. It’s true that, generally speaking, we see fewer blacks in Canada as compared to the States, but just take the subway in Toronto if you’re white. You’re REALLY in the minority. I’m not saying this is a bad thing at all. Toronto just has the most ethnic groups all living together anywhere on the planet.
On the other hand, we do have segregation, some of it purely economic (at the primary school my kids went to in our middle-class mid-town neighbourhood, there were probably fewer than 10 blacks and perhaps another small handful of non-whites), some of it by choice: I once got lost in the suburb of Brampton and couldn’t find someone who could speak English to get me back on the right road–it’s wall-to-wall Sikh.
And finally, with respect to health care: that’s how we define being Canadian. Whenever we want to distinguish ourselves from Americans, we say “health care” and leave it at that.
I love my health care!!
Canadian reader,
PLEASE HELP ME WITH APOSTROPHE’S (APOSTROPHES?)!
AAAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHH!!!!
*Puts on dowdy teacher’s hat*
Now class, more than one “apostrophe” would be… what? TWO APOSTROPHES… without an apostrophe… very good!
And if something belonged to the apostrophe… let’s say, THE APOSTROPHE’S PURPOSE… it has an apostrophe, right? Excellent! You’re all doing so well!
And if it’s a contraction, like THE APOSTROPHE’S A REAL PAIN IN THE ARSE, FOR SOMETHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A FRICKIN’ FLY SPECK, well, that’s short for “the apostrophe IS,” isn’t it?
Do you all see what I did there? Can anyone see where I slipped in another rule, for the ends of words? Right, class, an apostrophe goes on the end of the word, if you’re droppin’ your Gs like frickin’ Sarah Palin.
Tomorrow, we’ll work on it’s versus its, which is very confusing to everyone. Class dismissed!
(And now you are all better writers than Ayn Rand. Oh, hell, you were already!)
Oh, and as for Rand as a writer, she is insipid.
Her prose is flat.
Her plot’s plod along like an ancient, lone dray horse pulling a battlship.
Her characters one dimensional, at best. Any less, and they’d be characters made of ether.
As for humor, I think reading an account of The Spanish Inquisition would provide more ho-ho’s per page than all of her writings combined.
Her love scenes are jejune, and could have been written by robots, if there were robots who could write jejune love scenes back in the day.
Her ‘moral philosophy’ is short of anything recognizable as morality, and has no philosophy except for the childlike, ‘Keep your hands to yourself:’ “MOM!!! He’s touching ME!! Make him stop touching me! Now, Mom, he’s hogging the popcorn! MAKE HIM STOP! IT’S MINE!!! If you don’t make him stop, I’ll piss in the car seat and throw up on Grandma. THEN, you’ll make him stop! I’ll stop this whole stinking, stupid trip!!!”
All in all, Doctor Seuss is a far better and wittier writer for adult’s than she could ever dream of.
If Brad Pitt is serious about making a movie of “Atlas Shrugged,” or, as I refer to it, “Assless Buggered,” he is smoking way more potent pot than he should, and needs to quit. And if Angelina isn’t happy about that, I wish she’d leave him and ‘Go Galt’ with me.
Joan,
Russian, my first language, has no apostate linguistic sleigh’s-of-hand like ‘apostrophe’s.’ The spelling is also phonetic. Of course, the word for “Hello” is ‘Zdrastvooyte,’ so you can tell why the nation was so isolated for so long.
“Hi!”
“Zdrastvooyte!”
“Bye!!!”
I think I’m an ok writer outside of “THEM!” A bit given to hyperbole and overexageration, but ok.
I’ve read “Strunk and White” and the NY Times usage guides when I studied journalism in college. But, still, apostrophe’s elude me like a unicorn does a right-wing optimist. I swear, I have a better chance of explaining Heidegger’s Uncertainty Principle to Glenn Beck using a top hat, a scarf and a rabbit, than I have of understanding the damn things.
But please, don’t let me stop the lesson. Maybe I can finally learn the rassa-frassa, #^$&ing things from you and Canadian Reader.
Thanks for trying. 🙂
re the debt – I wish I could give you links, but our country decided to put everything on the national credit card in a big way, starting with Reagan. It was a sea shift in national philosophy. If the Democrats were – fairly or unfairly – labeled “tax and spend”, the Republicans could fairly be labeled “something for nothing”.
This use of debt accelerated under GW Bush, and sadly it will quadruple, from what I’ve seen under Obama. Of course, he’s stuck with cleaning up the monumental mess and failures of the last few decades of conservative misrule. And so from a numbers standpoint, everyone should be alarmed about this run up of debt under Obama, but he didn’t start the snowball.
Righties – particularly lower class righties – don’t mind when a good Republican like Bush runs up the national credit card, because he’s killin’ Muslims and makin’ Amurika safe. As Stirling Newbury put it (sorry no links) righties view military spending – no matter how harebrained – as an entitlement. And so GWB’s deficit spending is OK.
Great article, and great comments.
Sorry guys. I make part of my living writing. I just can’t stand seeing apostrophe abuse. It’s a professional deformation.
Joan16: good first lesson.
c u n d gulag: Just try to remember for now that the “s” signifying a plural does NOT take an apostrophe before it, as in:
1 right-wing idiot, 2 right wing idiotS (notice there is no apostrophe)
1 sensible American, 2 sensible AmericanS
AH! By (anyone but George), I’ve think I’ve got it! Or, at least that small part of it. Thank’s! (just kidding – thanks).
But I still hate the ^&%$ing thing’s (things). 🙂
God, do I feel stupid. But, keep it coming.
All I really know is that “apostrophe” is a beeyotch to have to type repeatedly.
I vote we rename it the “flying comma.” That sounds so much cooler! And less intimidating.
We love ya, Gulag!
What I’ve never heard mentioned, let alone explained, is why Rand’s character, Dominique, in The Fountainhead, had to be portrayed as so beautiful, her beauty was effortless, or something to that effect (it’s, as in “it has,” requiring an apostrophe, been 33 years since I read it). It may seem waaaay beside the point of this discussion, but I’ve always wondered. Just a display of the author’s ego, since the character was obviously, uh, she?
What I’ve never heard mentioned, let alone explained, is why Rand’s character, Dominique, in The Fountainhead, had to be portrayed as so beautiful, her beauty was effortless, or something to that effect….
As with all her thinking, Rand’s notions about men and women were trite, and a far cry from the facts of her own life. She pretended to celebrate the intellect and talent of naturally-gifted people, while ignoring the value of labor. She proclaimed the architect to be superior to the stonemason, arguing that without the architect, stonemasons would have no work; in fact, without the stonemason, the architect would only have drawings. She failed to see how each benefits from the other. She argued that women should surrender themselves to a naturally-gifted man (*ahem*), and serve him in the cause of his accomplishments; but in her own life she was weak and needy, and her long-suffering husband, a talented painter, sacrified his own artistic gift to build up the Cult of Ayn Rand. So, by a rational standard of fairness, not specific to either gender, she was also a complete failure.
I view Ayn Rand pretty much the same way I view L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. Even if Rand’s followers don’t jump up and down on Oprah’s couch, they’re still fools. If a person espouses a way of choosing to live, and then is incapable of living by her own precepts, how gullible are her followers? If she has no talent, but proclaims talent as the supreme measure of human worth, how can we even begin to measure her layers upon layers of “fail”?
Many Republicans huddled around Wilson, some hugging him, some shaking his hand, and after he spoke, a few members of the public in the House galleries clapped, drawing a warning about violating the chamber’s etiquette rules.
Let’s have a national love a racist week… We can make Wilson an honorary Grand Dragon, and buy him a new hood for keepin’ the niggra in his place. Maybe we should burn a cross in Wilson’s honor?
Joanr16,
“…why it didn’t arise during the eight years Bush created this deficit out of a budget surplus?”
Lots of reasons. One is that the media didn’t flog almost daily it on the front page/first five minutes. It also was not accompanied by ~10% unemployment, the stock market crashing, a stimulus bill and several trillion in handouts to Wall Street. It didn’t happen after 5000 deaths and billions spent in eight years of endless war, regardless of who started those wars.
When you pile disaster upon disaster you reach a breaking point and hysteria erupts. The hysteria is aimed at whatever caused the break, and it doesn’t matter what led up to it nor what color the guy is who promoted the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Yes, there is some racism there. More by far than I would want to see. It is shameful and heartbreaking. But one racist sign in a crowd does not make the crowd racist. There was one rifleman in the crowd at Dealy Plaza in 1963; does that mean that Dealy Plaza was “a crowd of shooters?”
“There was one rifleman in the crowd at Dealy Plaza in 1963; does that mean that Dealy Plaza was “a crowd of shooters?—
Well that a ridiculous comparison isn’t it. The crowd at Dealy plaza had no idea that the shooter would be there did they. The folks who attended loonapoluza certainly knew the crowd that would show up. These teabagger parties have been happening all summer, this was just the grand finally orgy of hate. Come on get real Bill H, you don’t have to call someone a nigger to be a racist!
I’m sure this is brought out in the books you mention, but Ayn Rand was also an atheist. I suspect many right-wingers would find that deeply offensive if they knew. However, much of the problem with our national political dialogue is ignorance. As the video in the previous post so vividly illustrates, these people are simply uninformed and ignorant.
Sam — All true Randbots also are atheists, since free-thinking individualism requires absolute loyalty to Rand’s beliefs. Those who disagree with Rand are slaves to the groupthink of the masses. (sarcasm off) Still, I think some selective elements of Randism have permeated all of the Right, including the religious part, although they don’t always recognize it as Randism.
But one racist sign in a crowd….
Bill H, there wasn’t just one racist sign on Saturday. Or even a minority of racist signs. They were all over the place. They’ve been all over the place, at teabagger rallies all over the country… 4/15/09, 9/12/09, and in between, and since. You don’t see them because you don’t want to. And you know what? I can’t say I blame you.
I look at endless photos of the crowds. I read their signs. I listen to their videotaped rants. I read their sad, sick troll comments. And they make me want nothing more than to construct a bunker of denial in my head, as you have done, and go live there. But I can’t, because that would be consigning the country to the ragers.
It didn’t happen after 5000 deaths and billions spent in eight years of endless war, regardless of who started those wars.
Correction: this rage didn’t happen during those 5,000 deaths; the Bush-era war protesters were like lambs compared to the teabag crowd. No, the rage is happening now, “after” those lives and billions were already lost, and Obama is being blamed for Bush’s sins by the same people who either enabled or kept silent for Bush. Which makes my point, not yours. You cannot use the argument that people are now, suddenly, after 6 1/2 years and 5,000 deaths, realizing that we’re at war in Iraq, and it’s been a ginormous clusterbleep. I don’t care if they live in a rabbit hole and only ever watch Fox News and visit Freeper websites. They have eyes, ears, and brains. They have the same moral responsibility as other Americans. So do I. So do you.
Your arguments that there are various other purposes to these “tea parties,” town halls, and random shrieks and shouts, come apart with a puff of breath. It’s not the deficit. It’s not health care. It’s not the wars. It’s not even remotely the same form of protest we had from 2002 through 2008. Furthermore, this rage effectively silences the legitimate war, deficit, and pro-public option protesters, who wouldn’t go within a hundred miles of the rager assholes. Denying their reality just gives the ragers a longer lifespan.
I used to use Rand’s book ANTHEM as a quick reading in a high school class to illustrate several literary terms and to demonstrate inelegant language and structure. It was common for students to find it childish, but it did show polemical writing and the failure of art hobbled by a side purpose valued over the excellence of the form. The fact that high school students recognized ANTHEM as a literary failure says something about Rand’s popularity among the ‘baggers.
Joanr16’s “Correction” paragraph above really nails the protest issue. Can you imagine if a progressive had shown up at a W rally carrying a gun, even with legal papers? We need to publicize a list of the Reagan/Bush contributions to the present situation. Oh, I forgot! It would be regarded as a fiction or a distortion.
Jimmy Carter, my most-valued former President, has nailed the racism aspect of this whole moment. I recently listened to the speech that is commonly despised as a lowering of expectations and found it prescient. If we had been guided by it, we would be much better off today.
We cannot let the frightened ignoramuses govern. How will we get them out of the Congress and the Senate?
BRAVO, maha. A ‘cold’ country indeed. Are we really going to legislate that if you are an illegal in America and without health insurance, you and yours will be refused treatment at an American hospital?
Interesting how Rand started out championing the individual, but later marginalized those who weren’t ‘her’ individuals. Sounds more like a school of sociopathy to me. Or maybe she unwittingly fell into the mental trap which only free-thinking, capable and altruistic associates can help resolve? But whatever, I’ve heard it said that not all objectivists are sociopaths, but all sociopaths are objectivists.