Hold your own Door, Game of Thrones is such Garbage

"I suppose what they say is true; society is to blame... High Society." - Batman:The Animated Series E:47

Game of Thrones (GoT) the most fawned over TV series currently on-air is nothing more than high society twaddle and great man of history bullcrap.

The latest episode Hold the Door, has been reviewed as one of the best and most emotional episodes, causing the writers to go so far as to craft a fake apology about all the door holding jokes which friends would inflict upon each other.

However, as I continue my hate-watching of this series, I had a different reaction to the story of Hodor origins; Revelusion. The sole purpose of Hodor's entire life is to help Bran Stark become great. That is the message of this episode and the series. Hodor has no goals for himself. Hodor has no dreams. Hodor has no agency. In fact, his whole being and back story is so one day he can be sacrificed for the advancement of the noble life of Bran Stark.

Bran uses Hodor throughout the series, but in this episode we learn that Bran has even gone so far as to kind-of travel through time damaging a young Hodor's mind, so that one day the elder Hodor will sacrifice himself, and Hold the Door against a tidal wave of zombies, allowing Bran to escape and to become the next all-wise, all-seeing great and powerful eldritch sorcerer.

This is a classic viewpoint of the rich and the 1%. This is Ayn Rand's vision of Utopia. The mass of humanity is nothing. The goals, dreams and desires of the Elected Ones are the only thing that matter. Throughout the show we are bombarded with this clap-trap. The only characters with purpose, the only characters with agency, the only characters who matter are rich, powerful, noble. Only those in possession of the Sang'Real can achieve and in their achievement it is right and proper for them to use the bodies/minds/souls of the mass of humanity.

Even charcters once believed to be partially of peasant birth (Jon Snow) are in fact secretly the melding of the two of the most powerful bloodlines. In fact inside one generation of Bran's family we have; The Last Greenseer (the most powerful eldritch sorcerer), his sister Arya  becomes a Faceless One (A Ninja/Assassin with added magical powers), and you-know-nothing Jon Snow is the reincarnated/resurrected/literal Song of Ice & Fire, probably destined to be the Prince who was Promised.

Time and again we've seen the GoT World advanced through the actions and lives of the Rich and those with the proper blood lines. Time and again these characters have been placed in completely foreign lands/cultures only to succeed because of their Noble status or their blood-written destiny.

It's the Great Man of History written with a dollop of fantasy. It's Ayn Rand's Galt's Gulch protagonists blithely living lives of consequence while ignoring those in society dying for their fantasies.

Now, rabid defenders of the show often retort that George R. R. Martin is just writing 'like it was', but when you move on from the glib retort about the time in world history replete with ice demons and dragons, if I wanted to read about honorless betrayal and skullduggery in Late Antiquity or the Medieval Era, I'd peruse Byzantinum by John Julius Norwich, or watch The Crusades by Terry Jones, or if I wanted to read about the despoilation and predation of society by the rich I'd read Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano.

Instead people voraciously consume George R.R. Martin's extra rapey repackaged world history, full of quirky names and dragons.

Women Binder Romney and Dishwasher Ryan to star in remake of Say Anything

The Romney-Ryan plan is to screw America and give the money to the Rich. They are, of course, supported in this endeavor by Rich and by the Faux News and Conservative shills who engage in the Great Con Game in which Right-Wing bullshit can never, ever, ever be called lies.

Mitt Romney's wistful recollection of the Binders Full of Women became an instant Internet Meme. But, more important than the Nobody puts Baby in a Binder and I can't squeeze my women into a Trapper Keeper jokes is the fact the whole story was a Lie.

Mika Brzezinski pointed out the story was false on Morning Joe ,

"How is that not a lie?” Can we go there, Halperin? When you say you ‘sought out’ and then it turns that they were brought to you, that’s not the truth. Correct?"

Mark Halperin wasn't having any of it, 

“I just don’t think that’s what this campaign should be about.”

The Truth can be so inconveinent, especially when the Con Man is on the Grift! Mika Brzezinski wouldn't let the issue drop, 

“What? Us calling out facts? It shouldn’t be about that? I’ll totally disagree, it appears, with everybody at this table. It is insulting. At the debate the other night, Mitt Romney talks about how there weren’t enough women and so he sought them out and then ‘binders of women’ were brought to him, which is a whole funny thing, but that’s not true. That was a prepared story. He was prepared to be asked about women and told that story…" 

But, Mark Halperin fullfied his role as Shill in the Great Republican Swindle, 

"I just don't think that parsing individual statment said live during a debate is appropriate."

After his mauling by Vice President Biden, Paul 90X Ryan and his family staged a photo-opportunity of them helping out in a Youngstown, Ohio homeles shelter kitchen to show his compassion.

As conflicting accounts emerged, Brian Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, has become the focus of incredible anger as Conservatives have engaged in a campaign of criminal harassment via thousands of phone calls and vicious Facebook posts. Additionally, the shelter is facing an exdous of donors.

Antal orginally stated Ryan "did nothing" but now claims Ryan "did wash several dirty dishes". Conservatives found their j'accuse! moment when they learned Antal has voted in Democratic Primaries!

Looking at the photos you can see Ryan sporting a spotless white apron, eventhough he's supposedly cleaning large dirty stainless pots using a high powered professional spray. Really, the only thing Ryan tried to burnish in this photo-op is his political image.

Now, eventhough I don't like Ryan, I don't think he's stupid enough to just run water over clean pots but, the forced nature of Ryan trying to appear to care about Homeless or Poor people is what is readily evident. To Romney and Ryan the only thing "The Poor" are good for is to be used as club to attack President Obama.

But, in order to get elected Romney and Ryan will Say Anything. It's what they say and do when they think they are amongst friends and the cameras not on that matters.

So, when Mitt Romney says "I know what it takes..." and "I have a plan..." You should believe him. He made them clear in his 47% Speech. 

Romney does have a plan to shift the Tax Burden onto the Middle Class in a final effort to grind us from existence so that his Plutocratic Allies reign over this Nation and it's people in a Neo-Feudalist State.

The 1% Hate Uncertainty

“Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, is never the answer.“ - Hank Steinbrenner, who received $1,200,000,000 Billion dollars in Taxpayer money to finance his baseball stadium. From which those profits will neatly land in his pocket.

The 1% of this Nation hate uncertain elements. What they would rather have is the certainty of the economic model they are confident in; Neo-Feudalism, in which their profits are privatized and protected by Government and their losses are socialized and paid for by the 99%.

But, there are also elements of modern life, pensions, Medicare, the EPA, freeways and schools which represent huge areas of Uncertainty. Your pension would be better off as a private account inside their Wall Street casinos where they can gamble it away and tell you, 'Oops! The Free Market just swallowed your life savings! Sorry, but that's Freedom.' As Republicon Jeb Henserling told America, "I don’t think we can figure out how to outlaw recessions any more than we can outlaw tornadoes or outlaw hurricanes. Economic growth has never gone in one straight line up. It’s a part of freedom."

Schools represent another area of Uncertainty. Schools and Teachers teach the 99% things the 1% does not want them to learn. Note how often this is the cry of David Horowitz, Michele Bachmann, Faux News listeners. Schools are awful places where children learn to make up their own minds instead of absorbing the Neo-Feudalist vision of America. And now unlike what George Carlin observed, the 1% don't even need Americans to be "just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passably accept all these increasingly shittier jobs", for they can increasingly go anywhere in the world to find their labor pool.

So, if it's revealed 1 in 2 Americans live in "Poverty"? The 1% funds Think Tanks to produce the kind of education they want you to have. Poverty? Harumph! Why that doesn't exist in America! Here is this Study which clearly shows the 99% "have an adequate and reasonably steady supply of food". This comes from the mouths of the puffy faces of those who've never, ever missed a meal.

You see the modern One Percenter has fully absorbed the Ayn Rand Economic Philosophy. They are Great Atlases bestriding this Land, this Nation, this World with their awesome Minds. The 99% are to be feared and controlled because, as in Rand's vision, the Common Man is nothing more than a potential Parasite. And once you've started viewing your fellow man as a "worthless eater" it becomes apparent why increasingly, the 1% is comprised of Sociopaths, people unable to express or recognize human emotion.

Why would a One Percenter want a functioning infrastructure? They no longer need the American worker or American factory. It's often pointed out we aren't a Manufacturing country anymore but a Financial one, and what the Financial Exploiters want is the ability to move "their" capital anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, to engage in predatory lending, usury and eliminate all banking/financial regulation. The 1% do not see American workers, companies or factories as assets but as giant pools of liquidity waiting languidly, for them to drain and thus quicken themselves with Naked Credit Default Swaps.

Why would the 1% want EPA restrictions? Their water isn't going to be filled with the toxic run-off from fracking. And BP can't be certain a Government inspection of the BP Whiting, Indiana Oil Refinery Plant which routinely dumps a dozen toxic byproducts from oil refining, including benzene, toluene and suspended solids containing mercury, lead, nickel and vanadium, into Lake Michigan will cost them some of their beautiful money. And Massey Energy has to face the uncertainity of how much money the Government will demand they pay for killing their miners by their rampant criminal negligence.

So, much Uncertainty facing the 1%! How does the Melting Pot benefit the psychopathic 1%? They don't need a Nation, they gate off their communities, they hire their own private police services, they have 24 hour Propaganda Networks. If they have bigger problems they band together and instruct their wholly owned Congressmen and Senators to adopt their Views and pursue their issues. The 1% are constantly pushing their Republicon Guards to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, and steal Social Security. Because those SSA funds represent the last Great Pool of liquidity waiting for them to tap.

The 1% don't need you. But, what they do need every so often is to eliminate Uncertainty. And that is why the filthy 1% who deliberately caused the economic collapse and the housing bubble are now trying to convince enough people that it was caused by social programs for the poor and middle class.

Because they need to get their Wholly Bought and Paid for Republicon Party and Pro-Business Democrats elected to eliminate Uncertainty so that they may turn all of America into a Galt's Gulch. But while, they live as Lords, the 99% will live as serfs and wage slaves mining their gold, picking their arugula and quietly dying off when their working years are over.

Because that is Certainty the 1% are Striving towards and Rand's Ultimate Vision for the 99%, for the Common Man, that he toil unobtrusively underneath the feet of the 1% Colossuses and have the courtesy to die quickly and quietly.

Conservative Doublespeak

Conservatives love economic Freedom, that is the freedom to work longer for less pay in 'Right to Work' States.

Conservatives love the Right to Peaceably Assemble, that is for astroturfed false-front organizations to call the President a lying Kenyan Marxist Witch Doctor Muslim not for the OWS to point out systemic economic inequality and social injustice.

Conservatives hate Injustice but not the injustice of destroying ACORN via completely false, manipulated propaganda style videos.

Conservatives are always on the look-out for abuse of authority by Law Enforcement or the Government, except when it comes to police beating and violently rousting dirty-hippies.

Conservatives denounce the playing of the race card, that is until they get to play it. Seriously, though the Herman Cain allegations. I completely understand why Faux News, Ann Coulter, R. Limbaugh are in 100% support of Cain despite the disgusting, icky sexist behavior he has committed for decades, Cain has promised to lower their taxes by millions. But, why does any so-called family values conservative support him? Is it really as simple that he has identified himself as a (R)?

Conservatives Support the Troops, except when the Veterans get home and are left to their own devices, end up homeless, jobless, emotionally distraught and commit suicide, those Veterans get told to 'Get a Job'.

Conservatives always want lower taxes, except for the payroll tax which doesn't aid the Richest 1%

Conservatives love Freedom of Speech, that is the freedom to call the President a N-Slur, not the freedom to point out the facts that CEOs make over 300 times what the average worker makes, that's Class Warfare.

Conservatives pull themselves up by their boot-straps without any of this evil socialist assistance, just like Adam Carrola and Joe the Plumber, except of course Adam Carrola's mother received welfare and Joe the Plumber received welfare assistance, too. Typically, Andrew Breitbart's crowd picked up the recent Adam Carrola rant about OWS and now suddenly find him to be "refreshing", "epic", and his rant is "awesome dissection" which "nailed it" by a comedic genius!

Conservatives think actors, musicians and comedians should just "Shut Up and Sing", unless that actor, musician or comedian is a conservative, in which case they need to be given constant media exposure.

Conservative love the writings and philosophy of Ayn Rand, even though they've never read any of it and even though Rand was an ardent Atheist who championed abortion all throughout any pregnancy.

That's your modern conservative movement. So beset with obvious contradictions, shameless liars and evil charlatans that I can understand why Conservatives cling tightly to them. Because if the Right ever stopped to analyze what it is they are championing the opening of the Doors of Perception would cause a psychotic break of Galtian propotions.

The 99% Shrugs. Going Galt is exactly what OWS and #Occupy are Doing!

Ayn Rand that scion of selfishness and thievery thought she had perfected an ideology for the blood-sucking parasitic Plutocratic class to use in furthering their oppression of the True Producers of Wealth the 99%.

Well, now the roles have been reversed. OWS is "Going on Strike". OWS is suceeding in highlighting the enormous Income Inequality between the Real Producers of Wealth in this Nation, the 99%, and the Moocher Class; That cadre of Politicos, Bankers, Yakuzas on Wall Street, the Corporate Media and the Members of the Brandy Snifter Class. The 1%, the Biggest Moochers in History.

The 99% produce the Wealth, the 1% suck off the wealth and elevate frauds, charlatans, grifters and bullies into the Political and Media Class to Legitimize, Justify and make their Theft of Trillions Lawful.

What they #Occupy Movement has realized is their Direct Actions make them the "True Atlases". The #OccupyMovement knows the 1% have survived only by creating a System in which the largesse they enjoy is not gotten through superior talent, hard work or imagination but through an ever increasingly byzantine structure of wealth transfer.

Corporations are the biggest moochers in history.

Over the last three years, 78 corporations had at least one year where they paid no federal income tax at all, while 30 corporations paid ZERO over the entire three years. Even though those 30 Corporations made $160 billion in profits over that period.

Halliburton and their subsidiaries received Billions in No Bid Contracts from their Moocher buddies under the Bush Administration.

These Corporations, Lockheed Martin ($61 Million) Boeing ($644 Million), Northrop Grumann ($410 Million), admitted to stealing Millions via fraudulent contracts through the DoD.

The Corporations, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil receive Billions in Tax Payer dollars from the US Government via subsidies which were crafted as early as 1916.

All of these Moocher Corporations are protected by the Republican Party, many members of the Democratic Party, increasingly Paramilitary Police Forces and a Corporate Media World which shields and succors them.

And these Political and Media Attack Dogs defend their Moneyed Masters with cries of Socialism! We do have in America is Socialism. For the 1%.

So, 99% it's time to Shrug Off the shackles of the Moochers. It's time we tell the Plutocrats, the 1% who have survive only by Plunder, only by stealing the fruits of our labor, it's time to tell them no more. The Free Ride on the Backs of the 99% is Over!

The 99% Shrugs!

Update:
I found this Libertarian Blog Post by Wayne Allen Root, a few months back. It is hilarious the level of ideological blindness, effete ignorance and fantastical escapism which has crept into the hard right over the years. Root writes;

The lesson of Atlas Shrugged is that without the $100,000+ earners paying into Social Security, there are no pensions for the poor and lower middle class. Without the wealthy owners of million-dollar mansions paying $25,000 and $50,000 annual property tax bills, there is no funding for public schools. Without the wealthy paying into Medicare, there is no “free” healthcare for the elderly. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no discoveries to eradicate polio or create miraculous cancer and AIDS drugs. Without capitalists motivated by profit, there are no jobs, period! That is what happens when the producers of society go on strike to protect themselves from the looters.

First off, there are so many errors. Jonas Salk famously did not patent his polio vaccine. Social Security taxes are capped at $106,800 so the + Earners that Root so worries about aren't paying anything extra for the poor and lower middle classes he so disdainfully hates.

For far too long We the 99% have allowed these so-called Capitalists get away with calling themselves the Productive Class. Well, they aren't. Mitt Romney, these Hedge Fund "Managers", aren't creating anything. They are Theives and Fakes, playing number games and killing American Jobs to increase their financial bottom line. So, the Strike has Begun Mr. Root but it is against You and Your Class of Criminals we the 99% are Striking!

Ayn Rand is wrong (I know shocking)

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong. ~ Ayn Rand

There's no need to demonstrate her entire philosophical edifice is flawed, I've already demonstrated Rand's Magnum Opus was little more than an attempt to justify her sexual proclivities (see my Ayn Rand Objectively Wrong post here) and her utter hatred for the common man.

This demonstration also does not rest on Rand's hypocrisy of accepting Social Security and Medicare from the US Government, under the name Ayn O'Conner, her jilted husbands' last name.

Instead I will demonstrate and simply that her 1st premise is fundamentally flawed and by her own Objectivist standard her entire Philosophy crumbles.

So here it is. Rand stated one as one of her basic premises: A is A.

Well, A is A is wrong. Just ask any High School Physics student; What is Light? Is light is a wave or a particle?

Well, Light is both a wave and a particle, so therefore A is not A. Rand's theories are really sociology but she liked to pretend and convince everyone that they were hard science.

Robert Anton Wilson amusingly related a story about light and Quantum Mechanics,

With quantum mechanics, you can prove that light is made out of particles experimentally. You can build up a whole mathematical theory of light traveling in little particles called photons, and you can do experiments, and the experiments will give you a pattern showing that light is traveling like particles. We've also got a whole mathematical theory built up showing that light travels as waves, and we've got experiments that will show you that light travels as waves.

As one physicist in the 1920s said, 'It looks as if the damn light is waiting to see how we're going to do the experiment and then deciding which way it's going to travel.' The modified Copenhagen view is light is neither waves nor particles until we look, and then it adjusts itself depending on what we're looking at it with. An electron is not anywhere until we look, and when we look, the electron decides to be somewhere as long as we're looking. As soon as we stop looking, the electron is everywhere again.

No Chinese raised on I Ching has ever found quantum mechanics puzzling. It's only puzzling to people raised on Aristotelian logic where things are either A or not A. In the I Ching, things are A and not A at the same time.

Quantum physics undercuts the entire mendacious objectivist philosophy. So objectivists... Check your premises.

Why do conservatives love Ayn Rand?

Rand's Atheism was a key component of her metaphysical outlook and she had no qualms about declaring religious believers or anyone who spoke of Faith to be without Reason or utterly irrational.

Rand was also pro-abortion all the way up until delivery day. "Observe that by ascribing rights to the unborn, i.e., the nonliving, the anti-abortionists obliterate the rights of the living: the right of young people to set the course of their own lives." And "Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the not-yet-living (or the unborn)."

Rand had no problem with non-traditional marriage and extra-marital relations between people, indulging in an open affair herself. Conservatives are often seen with signs; Marriage = 1 Man +1 Woman and conservatives rail that this is traditional marriage. "The plea to preserve “tradition” as such, can appeal only to those who have given up or to those who never intended to achieve anything in life. It is a plea that appeals to the worst elements in men and rejects the best: it appeals to fear, sloth, cowardice, conformity, self-doubt—and rejects creativeness, originality, courage, independence, self-reliance."

Additionally, conservatives have been clamoring for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as 1 man and 1 woman and have succeeded in getting laws brought forth in 31 states. But, while Rand was personally offended by homosexuality she clearly was opposed to government determining what two adults did with their own bodies, "I do not approve of such practices or regard them as necessarily moral, but it is improper for the law to interfere with a relationship between consenting adults."

I have a hard time understanding why so many Tea Party members want to Go Galt as they would no doubt be the ones left to die on the train tracks or left outside the Invisible Gulch...

So, why exactly do conservatives claim to love Ayn Rand?

Republicans don't like to serve those extra 2/5ths persons

Bartender: "Hey! We don't serve their kind here!"
Luke: "What?"
Bartender: "Your droids. They'll have to wait outside. We don't want them here." ~ Discrimination rears it's ugly head even a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...

Sharron Angle and Ayn Rand Paul are two of the most vocal Republicans to push forward the Republican Party agenda of removing the illegal 2/5ths of a person unconstitutionally added by Liberal activist judges.

The vast majority of conservatives and Republicans are bigots and racists. Every day the Republican Party is exposed for racism which permeates their party. David Bartholomew, the chair of Virginia Beach's Republican party, sent forth a typical racist Republican joke email which is so vile I wont repeat, but you can view it here.

However, more disconcerting than the individual racists who inhabit all levels of the Republican Party and all manners of conservatives is the effort by Tea Party groups to use naked aggression and threats to keep minorities from voting. Here's a sample of Tea Party Tolerance and conservative non-bigotry:

"You liberial scumbags should be hung by the neck in public ! We are on to your voter fraud. Keep it up you MOTHER FUCKERS and you will soon be put down for a long dirt nap! Your nothing but a bunch of white guilt ridden assholes, NIGGERS and greasy mexican spics!

Angle when confronted about her blatantly racist Watch out for the illegal mexican stealing college scholarships from wholesome white peoples campaign videos told the Hispanic crowd they looked a little more Asian to her. Angle sounds a little Ass-ian to me.

Rand Paul is livid that Corporations are not allowed to discriminate based on race or ethnicity and would not have voted for the Civil Rights act. "I don't like the idea of telling private business owners... But at the same time I do believe in private ownership." Paul believes in a Free Market were conservatives are free to tell certain people we don't serve your kind here.

Angle and Paul and so many others in the Republican Party are vile or ignorant racists but Racism is not the driving power behind the party. The real goal is to get these ignorant fiends elected so the Corporate Plutocrats can eliminate all assistance to the poor and Middle Class.

If the Republicans wrest control of Congress in 2010, they are coming for your Social Security. The Republican "Roadmap for America's Future" details plans to steal as much as 50% of Social Security benefits. The Moneyed Masters of the Republican Party have wanted to get their hands on Social Security for years. They want that money flushed into Wall street were they can make it disappear to Switzerland through algorithms and derivatives.

And with Republican victories this year they'll get it...

Ayn Rand Paul Wimp

John Galt never cried even when he was being Water Boarded (i.e. tortured). Galt not only had the wherewithal to retain his thought processes he used them to cause the torturers to flee in terror.

But Rand Paul hasn't even "won" a general election and he's already crying about the Liberal Media Talking to him.

How is Rand Paul going to battle Al Qaeda when a Rachel Maddow confrontation leaves him blubbering and sputtering? How is Rand Paul going to destroy the Federal Reserve when MSNBC makes him cry and retreat? How's he going to defend himself against the Washington DC's Illegal Initiation of Force when he can't even make it through a Neil Cavuto interview without whining?

The Clownish Chicken Hawk Tom Tancredo looked positively manly in comparison when he ran away from Markos Moulitsas.

Of course, Rand Paul is the perfect Ayn Rand Objectivist as he is a fake Doctor, who hates the common man, loves slavery and will work tireslessly to defend and enthrone Corporate Monsters as the Controllers of America.

Ayn Rand Paul

Even though his name is not dervied from the Anti-Human Ayn Rand, Paul has certainly imbided and assimilated her evil views. Rand's worldview treat the vast majority of humanity as vermin. Ayn Rand celebrated the beautiful people. To Rand humanity, the common man, was nothing but potential parasites and therefore unreasonable, not grounded in her reality, irredeemable and not worth saving. The Common Man is nobody special.

But, besides anti-human Objectivism, Rand Paul also believes in Corporatist Supremacy. A large enough Corporation, BP for instance, can do whatever it pleases (Fuck the Planet!) and it's Un-American to dare criticize them.

Rand Paul had barely won the Republican nomination for Senator in Kentucky* than he was out proudly trumpeting his support for the Kleptocracy, shielding BP and enunciating his firm belief that minorities need to be returned to slavery.

Poor Poor Business, Rand Paul will rise as your Defender!

Paul's beliefs will allow Business the Right to Destroy whole swaths of the Earth and keep the majority of Americans in their place working themselves to death to make more profits for the Plutocrats he so admires.

*- Rand Paul's primary win also highlights the Battered Republican Voter Syndrome as it shows conservatives love of Aristocracy and Hereditary Rule and hatred of Meritocracy and the Founding Fathers.

Ayn Rand Objectively Wrong

There are certain books which supposedly need to be read early on in life in order to appreciate them. Mostly this is due to the mind of the reader being immature enough to be warped by the unhelpful, improper or evil message of the book or thought process.

"Give me a child for his first seven years and I will give you the man" ~ Jesuit Maxim.

Of course, when the Jesuits were allowed to brainwash and indoctrinate the boy early on he'd retain their warped teachings all his life.

So I never got around to Ayn Rand's two works until my mid-twenties. And having trudged through the long hard slog of Atlas Shrugged the most pertinent fact about the book, to me, was which character I most readily identified with.

I know I am not a Ragnar Danneskjöld super engineer able of crafting a Super Stealth Ship, or have the chess mastery of Francisco d'Anconia to undercut and play a 20 year deep Global Game of Intrigue, or possess the Hank Reardon intellect to invent an entirely new alloy, or the comic book super powers of John Galt himself so I identified with Dagny Taggart's loyal assistant, Eddie Willers.

Eddie represents the common man in Rand's book and philosophical worldview. And it clearly shows that Rand views the mass of humanity as dogs, hard-working enduring and loyal creatures but not possessing many other positive traits and with the ability to be turned to good or evil by how they are treated. Dagny Taggart was obviously Ayn Rand herself.

And how does Dagny (Rand) treat her loyal assistant, the common man, as the "evil" society crumbles? She leaves him to fucking die on the train tracks! Because that is what Objectivism holds the mass of humanity is nothing and the few brilliant beautiful people are everything. And even amongst the select few there exist a pecking order. Amongst the elect there are some even more Objectively Superior and those people need to be allowed special privileges.

A majority of the reason Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged was because of her desire to justify her sexual mores. I don't care, fuck whomever you want to fuck, but for Rand to rationally indulge in her sexual proclivities she had to wrap it in the aura of her Philosophical Magisterium as part and parcel of the Whole Objectivist Truth. In the novel, Hank Reardon and Dagny become lovers because they seek refuge from the "evil" society in each other's arms; having not fled to Galt's Gulch. Well, when Dagny's plane crashes, Reardon flys around trying to spot the wreckage. But after The Strike and upon being reunited with Dagny the two happily parts ways as if nothing ever happened between them because Dagnay has moved on to ride Galt's mega-phallus???

In her writings Rand often berates altruism and several philosophers (most noticeably Immanuel Kant) as evil and teaching an anti-human thought system. Because it undercuts and destroys the Individual, who is everything. Well, it is Rand's Objectivism which is truly anti-human. Objectivism goes: Reason is the highest, the individual is everything, reality exists A is A, yet Rand doesn't respect and in fact hates most common individuals. No Individual, even Randian Super Heroes, exists or succeeds ex nihlo.

I believe myself to be fairly intelligent and not given to evil but not having the spark of Randian superiority so to Rand I'm common. And that's when Rand's Objectivism shows it's true anti-human streak. The commons are nothing but potential parasites and therefore unreasonable, not grounded in reality, irredeemable and not worth saving. The Common Man is nobody special to Rand.

I'm Nobody. Nobody Special. Not like you.
Everybody is Special. Everybody. Everybody is a Hero, a Lover, a Fool, a Villain. Everybody. ~ Evey and V, V for Vendetta, Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Gonna Go Galt

"It seems to me that one of the predictors of a happy versus an unhappy outcome, has to do with the role of the elite or the decision makers or the politicians, or the rich people within the society. If the society is structured so that the decision makers themselves suffer from the consequences of their decisions, then they are motivated to make decisions that are good for the whole of society. If the decision makers can make decisions that insulate themselves from the rest of society then they are likely to make decisions that are bad for the rest of society." - Jared Diamond, Interview with PBS 02/12/2009.

All the people talking about "Going Galt" do just that they talk, pout and throw tantrums but they never, ever leave. So, ruck up and leave already. Go... Go... Go... However, remember to bring some long underwear when you make your "Capitalist" Wunderland in the Colorado Rockies, because none of you has the comic book abilities of a John Galt.

None of those threatening to leave are the mythical supermen producers of Atlas Shrugged they are the parasites. The bankers, the high priced lawyers, the lobbyists, the brokers, the bureacrats, the Jim Cramer short-selling paper shufflers, who demanded deregulation in order to bilk trillions out of the US and then when everything crumbled wanted a bailout.

And society won't miss your sorry ass. The niches you currently exploit will quickly, readily and easily be exploited by someone else.

Of course the parasitic plutocrats never leave because it's a hollow threat, a childish temper tantrum in order to get more billions from the government. So go on and hold your breath until you get your way because we all know you wouldn't last a month away from civilization.

Update 03/12/09
John Amato at Crooks and Liars highlights Stephen Colbert's Galt Exodus.