Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter X: In the Name of the Best Within Us

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter X: In the Name of the Best Within US

Pages: 1147 – 1168

Summary: Dagny, Hank, and Ragnar break into the secret facility and save John Galt.  Dagny confronts a guard and gives him a philosophical ultimatum.  At least that’s what Rand probably intended.  Unfortunately, it comes across like yet another dogmatic Abbot and Costello routine.

After saving John Galt, they fly back to Galt’s Gulch.  Kay Ludlow reads Aristotle, Judge Narragansett works on rewriting the Constitution, and Hank and Francisco discuss the creation of new locomotives and the high rates Dagny will charge.  (Women, am I right?)

Finally, John Galt prepares the path to re-enter the “outside world” by drawing a dollar sign on the desolate ground.

Sorry, this never stops being funny.

Lest we forget, Eddie Willers got stuck on a train in the middle of nowhere.  After numerous frustrations, he says the titular line of the chapter amidst yet another hissy fit.

Reflections: It’s been a long turgid road, but we finally made it.  We finished Atlas Shrugged before it finished us.  There’s not much to say except that this was the most overrated piece of garbage since The Phantom Menace.  At least the Phantom Menace had a pod race and a decent light saber battle.  If anything, Atlas Shrugged works as a primer of how not to write a novel.  Even leaving aside Rand’s childish philosophy and her bloated ego, the novel is entirely lacking in characterization and drama.  One needs those things in novel writing if the novelist doesn’t want to put the reader to sleep.

The philosophy itself is a failed attempt at cod-Nietzscheanism: Galt as the heroic Übermensch beyond the ken of ordinary looter morality; ferociously anti-democratic; and achingly nostalgic for Greco-Roman classical ideals.  (I would compare Ayn Rand to Leni Riefenstahl, Nazi propagandist and filmmaker, except that Riefenstahl had talent.)  In the end, Objectivism comes across like a gilded Satanism.  Like Satanism, Objectivism fuels a hackneyed rebelliousness.  Extolling the virtues of greed and selfishness may sound badass at first blush, but this is just worshipping gold instead of Satan.  (At least professed Satanists like Marilyn Manson have talent.)

What do you expect from a “philosopher” who names herself as a unit of South African currency?

Objectivism is as badass as Pat Boone donning a leather jacket and doing Metallica covers.  George Carlin puts it another way.  On the topic of feminism, he states, “Changing your name isn’t a radical act.  Castrating a man in a parking lot is a radical act.”  When one owns media conglomerates, has Congressional leaders in their pocket, and possesses extreme wealth, it is rather silly having one think of oneself as a rebel.

In the end, what Atlas Shrugged needed was a good editor … or two.

Finally, the calls for freedom and personal pleasure eventually lead to things like Dave Foley’s “Groovy Teacher.”

If Objectivism is about anything, it’s about doing heroin and having affairs with 18 year olds, or very mature 17 year olds.  That would explain the behavior of Silvio Berlusconi and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

The band Karma Rocket from the TV series Party Down sings their hit “My Struggle,” voicing the pain and anguish of Objectivists in their struggle to act like greedy selfish babies.  What better way to end an analysis of this horrendous book?

Quotes:

• “Calmly and impersonally, she, who would have hesitated to fire at an animal, pulled the trigger and fired straight at the heart of a man who wanted to exist without the responsibility of consciousness.”  Makes me think of that Austrian vegetarian and animal lover who had serious deficiencies in people skills.

• “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade …”  Good to know Objectivists are in favor of slavery, child pornography, and heroin trafficking.  If it’s what the market demands …

 

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter VIII: The Egoist

“You do not become an author just by using the language to call a cabinet minister unfit for office.”

“There are writers who can express in a mere twenty pages things I sometimes need two whole lines for.”

Karl Kraus (1874 – 1936)

Reflections: The nature of fictional storytelling requires emotional and narrative pay-offs.  Starting with John Galt’s speech, Atlas Shrugged moves into the dénouement.  This is where all the deck-stacking and intellectual dishonesty of Rand’s project reveal the flaws and fractures within her attempted “philosophy.”

While all the characters get shuffled into place, John Galt prepares to escape the clutches of the evil looters.  The looters, in their idiotic desperation, call for John Galt’s help.  The tables are turned and the looters are revealed as having a bankrupt philosophy.

When Galt is finally detained by Thompson’s men in a section of the Wayne-Falkland Hotel brimming with military men, Galt still refuses to help.  Despite Galt’s two-hour speech, Mr. Thompson still doesn’t get it.

In this exchange between Galt and Thompson, we get to the essence of Atlas Shrugged, the very nubbin for why it exists in the first place.

“Okay, I’ll tell you.  You want me to become Economic Dictator?” [Galt]

“Yes!” [Thompson]

“And you’ll obey any order I give?”

“Implicitly!”

“Then start by abolishing all income taxes.”

“Oh, no!” screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet.  “We couldn’t do that!  That’s … that’s not the field of production.  That’s the field of distribution.  How would we pay government employees?”

“Fire your government employees.”

“Oh, no!  That’s politics!  That’s not economics!  You can’t interfere with politics!  You can’t have everything!”

Galt crossed his legs on the hassock, stretching himself more comfortably in the brocaded armchair.  “Want to continue this discussion?  Or do you get the point?”

Do you hear that?  It’s the sound of a balloon deflating.  This alleged confrontation distills the philosophies of both camps, yet it’s so … so … anticlimactic.  Galt is so perfect, smart, and heroic; Thompson is so conniving, weak, and contradictory.  It is the immovable Idealist versus the unstoppable force of the Looter Hordes.

Narrative sterility aside, the essence of Objectivism is now revealed as Rand’s distaste for the income tax.  The fucking income tax!  I read over one thousand pages for this!  Seriously!  (I feel like James Taggart, all exclamation points and apoplexy.)  Nevertheless, let’s take a step back, since I don’t want to give myself an aneurysm, least of all for this book.

Yes, yes, the gulags and purges were terrible, but look!  Don’t you see!  Their taking away my income!

Like anyone who has had to pay taxes, I understand the resentment and hatred people level at the Internal Revenue Service.  Money earned through hard work, etc.  But to write a 1100 page book against the injustice of the income tax is sort of silly.  Like building a cathedral to why Justin Bieber sucks.  It’s ridiculous and rather petty.  Added to this is the Randroid perception that this is the Greatest Novel of All Time.  (It would be, if you’ve never read any other book.  One would also think it the Greatest Novel of All Time as a natural and logical opinion.  Don’t worry, Objectivists, Scientologists hold the same opinion about Battlefield Earth.  They’re both good at buying in bulk and rigging literature polls.  But Objectivism is totally, totally not a cult.  ***Stifled laughter***)

The trick is buying the books in bulk.  Also works when selling subprime mortgages as loans.

Ironically, Rand’s philosophical novel resembles the logorrhea of Dave Sim, except Sim has talent as a comic book artist.  Ayn Rand (neé Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) is just another paranoid megalomaniac who changed her name to sound tougher to her adversaries.  Wait a second … paranoid megalomaniac … name change … sounds a lot like this guy.

“Complain about the income tax all you want, I’ll be pummeling the Nazis into a slurry and sending the first man into space … with the occasional famine and purge.  Have to think of the bottom line in all this.  It’s not personal, it’s business.”

To adapt Stalin’s quote to the parlance of our time, “One unemployed person is a tragedy, a million unemployed people is a statistic.”

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter VIII: The Egotist

Part III: Chapter VIII: The Egotist

I Blow Minds.

Summary:

After John Galt’s speech melts the airwaves, the looter elite at the Wayne-Falkland lose their collective shit. They bicker and freak out until Mr. Thompson declares that Galt is just the man to right the listing ship of state. It turns out Mr. Thompson is a pragmatist above all, and willing to overlook all of Galt’s windy “theory” in order to exploit his clearly singular mind.  So the government starts a campaign to find Galt and give him the power of economic dictator. Meanwhile, Galt’s incendiary rhetoric and the continual collapse of the economy lead to an upsurge of violence across the country, as the people strike back against government goons and their civilian lackeys.

After trying to lure Galt out of hiding with strategic loud-speaker begging, the government finally nabs him by following Dagny to his apartment in New York. Of course, he’d been hiding in plain sight as a common laborer at Taggart Transcontinental, with his own apartment filled with a hidden science lab. As soon as Galt sees Dagny, he knows that the feds are just behind, so he makes her swear that she’ll disavow him when they come. If Thompson and company think that Galt cares for Dagny, they’ll threaten to harm her if he doesn’t help keep their failing system afloat. Heavily armed guards so up, Dagny points an accusing finger at Galt, and he’s spirited away to the Wayne-Falkland, but not before his lab self-destructs.

Across a starving land, government buildings burn as looters and home-grown militias vie for power. In New York, a parade of luminaries try to talk John Galt into taking over economic planning. Mr. Thompson offers riches and power, Dr. Ferris threatens to euthanize everyone over 60 years old, and Dr. Stadler just blubbers all over the place. All the while, Galt holds fast against these entreaties: if they order him to sit at a desk that says “ECONOMIC DICATOR,” he’ll do it, but they can’t force him to think for them.

Dagny plays her part as a new convert to Mr. Thompson’s expedient vision and, in order to make sure that the government doesn’t just kill Galt, advises the Head of State that Galt can be convinced, given enough incentive and time. Thompson attempts to force Galt’s hand by holding a massive dinner at, where else, the Wayne-Falkland to announce Galt’s cooperation and the creation of the John Galt Plan. On the night of the event, Dagny watches the assembled reptiles smarm their way around the dais, giving windy, contradictory speeches before Galt’s final remarks.  In front of a national television audience, Galt jukes out of the way long enough for everyone to see that his ‘secretary’ has a gun pointed at him, and says directly into the camera, “Get the hell out of my way!”

Reflections: Wait, are there really less than a hundred pages left? Praise Xenu! There IS light at the end of the tunnel! I’ve honestly forgotten that there was a time in my life when I wasn’t reading this book. Who is president? Have we landed on Mars yet? What’s with these young people and their saggy pants and raps music?

Quotes:

“‘That wasn’t real, was it?’ said Mr. Thompson.” That head of state never misses a trick.

“The attendants of a hospital in Illinois showed no astonishment when a man was brought in, beaten up by his elder brother, who had supported him all his life: the younger man had screamed at the older, accusing him of selfishness and greed–just as the attendants of a hospital in New York City showed no astonishment at the case of a woman who came in with a fractured jaw: she had been slapped in the face by a total stranger, who had heard her ordering her five-year-old son to give his best toy to the children of neighbors.” So apparently the looter method of coercion through guilt-trips is giving way to the Galtian ethic of random violence. Incidentally, that ‘best toys to the neighbor kids’ vignette is a reference to the primal scene of Ayn Rand’s philosophical development. Apparently, her parents made a similar demand of her when they were living in Russia. Needless to say, she never got over it.

“‘I will perform any motion you order me to perform. If you order me to move into the office of an Economic Dictator, I’ll move into it. If you order me to sit at a desk, I will sit at it. If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue.’

‘Oh, but I don’t know what directives to issue!’

There was a long pause.

‘Well?’ said Galt. ‘What are your orders?’

‘I want you to save the economy of the country!’

‘I don’t know how to save it.’

‘I want you to find a way!’

‘I don’t know how to find it.’

‘I want you to think!’

‘How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?'” Physical assaults and passive aggression, the two mightiest weapons in the Objectivist arsenal, apparently.

“‘The John Galt Plan,’ Wesley Mouch was saying, ‘will reconcile all conflicts. It will protect the property of the rich and give a greater share to the poor. It will cut down the burden of your taxes and provide you with more government benefits. It will lower prices and raise wages. It will give more freedom to the individual and strengthen the bonds of collective obligations. It will combine the efficiency of free enterprise with the of a planned economy.'” Alright, Ayn, that’s a pretty good distillation of the sort of political rhetoric that has led to record deficits, record spending, and all-time low income tax rates.

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter VII: “This is John Galt Speaking”

“Well, this certainly looks like a lot of words, in record time, I’m very impressed…Unfortunately, I am also disgusted. This is incoherent drivel! This is a total redo, and I’m assuming I need it right away.” — J. Peterman



J. Peterman or John Galt? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

Part III: Chapter VII: “This is John Galt Speaking”

Reflections:

Well, that was pretty much exactly what I expected…and yet, so much worse.  Karl aptly covered the dramatic and literary failings of “the speech,” so I won’t shoot the broad side of that particular barn. I’m also not going to attempt a point by point refutation of Rand/Galt’s legion of philosophical failings. I may not have a life, but I do have to eat, sleep and move my bowels for the next month, so that’s right out.   John Rawls went through all the trouble of writing A Theory of Justice, after all.  Just go read that.

Go ahead, it shouldn’t take long. The whole thing is probably shorter than Galt’s speech.

Among the myriad logical and historical fallacies on display in the Galt speech (the Dark Ages were dark because of a strike by intellectuals? For realsies?), the most annoying for me is Rand’s deeply misinformed conception of scientific and technological progress. Rand seems to live in the grammar school universe where every major innovation on the road of human progress is the result of a single individual applying their brilliance to a particular problem.

Theodoric of York knew that he shouldn’t have just slapped leeches on his patients, but his brain was on strike against the Catholic Church.

Eli Whitney “inventing” the cotton gin. Samuel Morse “inventing” the telegraph. In reality, of course, no invention in the history of humanity has a single author. Whitney and Morse, as well as Edison, Marconi, and every other famous inventor in human history, made their names and fortunes by innovating within an existing line of research being carried out across the years and by countless individuals. More importantly, their inventions came in the context of all the human knowledge that came before them. As brilliant as he was, Thomas Edison could not have invented an iPod. Not because he wasn’t smart enough, but because he didn’t have access to the corpus of collective human scientific advancement that occurred in the 20th century. Isaac Newton may have been the smartest man in human history, and he spent thirty years trying to turn lead into gold because he didn’t know what the hell an atom was. Not to mention the fact that he whiffed big-time on that whole “relativity” deal.

Isaac Newton: Father of modern physics and alchemist.

At one point in Galt’s speech, Galt challenges  his lumpen audience to imagine what would happen if they had to survive by themselves in the untamed wild without the guiding intelligence of their betters. I’m guessing they’d do just about as well as Hank Rearden or Johannes Gutenberg: they’d scratch out a living for a while on grubs and tree bark, then die of exposure. Hank isn’t making any Rearden metal out of leaves and rainwater. Even more ridiculous is Galt/Rand’s parallel claim that corporate employees owe the same debt of gratitude to their bosses as the rest of us owe the inventive geniuses who make our comfortable lives possible.

The Cotton Gin: NOT invented by Eli Whitney.

In 1957, when Atlas Shrugged was first published, the President of the Ford Motor Company was Henry Ford II. Now, whatever claim to genius that Henry Ford Senior may have had (it’s not like the dude actually invented the automobile: he simply devised a more efficient way of manufacturing someone else’s invention), it didn’t necessarily extend to his son. Henry Ford Junior had the good fortune to be born the son of an industrial magnate. His crowning achievement as President was the introduction of the Edsel. Yet according to Rand, the employees of Ford, who significantly differed from the President of their company only by an accident of birth, owed him their entire devotion and should have been happy with any wage he chose to offer them.  Every human being benefits from the collective intellectual and physical efforts of every other person, both past and present. Now, Rand might be willing to concede that point, but still hold that these efforts and intellectual products must be traded on an open market by individuals. Fair enough, but that’s not how Rand conceives the creation of human knowledge in the Galt speech. Instead, she posits an alternate universe where every human mind operates in a locked, lightless cell, uninfluenced by any other intelligence. Rand can’t acknowledge the self-evident fact of intellectual interconnectedness even when it wouldn’t necessarily invalidate her view on the correct way to structure an economy. Once again, we’re confronted by the fact that what Rand is peddling in the seemingly endless pages of Atlas Shrugged isn’t philosophy, it’s pathology.

Without the visionary genius of Henry Ford Junior, we never would have had the chance to buy the Edsel.

Atlas Shrugged: The Trailer, or a Prolegomena on Heavy-handed Political Satire in Film

Well … that was underwhelming.  But I’m hardly one to judge a film based on a trailer.  It does remind me of Avatar, especially the dourly over-serious tone and the weapons grade self-righteousness.  The inevitable release of Atlas Shrugged, Part I, after decades in development hell, reveals an old truism about Hollywood.  It is show business.  And business is all about capitalizing on trends.

Let’s take a step back from this and examine the phenomenon more closely.  With the release of the trailer, there will be the motley crew of jellyfish-like leftists waving their hands in the air, gnashing their teeth, and yammering on about such-and-such apocalypse.  The pro-business Right will gloat, drink their martinis, and wallow in the glow of their success.  Finally, finally, finally, after decades of oppression from the Communist Velvet Mafia that secretly controls Hollywood, they released a film based on the book by Ayn Rand – Peace Be Upon Her – that shows the virtue of making money and being selfish.  (The previous sentences had a light dash of sarcasm.  Although given the hyperventilating, anti-intellectual, psychotic-off-his-meds tone of the national political discourse, how can ya tell?)

The focus of this essay will be the phenomenon of the heavy-handed political satire film.  And Ayn Rand can be particularly heavy-handed when it comes to getting her point across.  I’m surprised copies of Atlas Shrugged don’t come with a trowel.

After reading nearly 1000 pages of Atlas Shrugged, one can only hope that the screenwriter has trimmed a little bit from this bloated text.  And perhaps added a joke or two.  Just because one is making a political point doesn’t mean one has to be dour and serious.  The American film going public has a short attention span.

Upon reading Atlas Shrugged, I came to the realization that it resembled Avatar.  The only difference is the politics and that is superficial at best.  Rand’s book is about a miracle metal, Cameron’s film is about Unobtainium.  The tone is what is most bothersome about Avatar.  The CGI and creature design created an amazing array of visuals and a gorgeous alien world, the narrative sucked!  The alien became less alien when the Navi became the Blue Indian Stand-ins riding atop Blue Horse Stand-ins.  The facetious put-down calling the movie Dances with Wolves IN SPACE was true.  The narrative copied Dances with Wolves down to its condescending, retrograde, and racist White Man Set Them Free theme.  The additional stereotyping of the two major human sub-groups into flat caricatures made it even worse.  Every military-type figure was a dumb jarhead and every scientist-type figure was a pansy-ass bookish nerd.

Avatar remains an example of how not to do heavy-handed political satire.

By all accounts, the film They Live shouldn’t work.  Written and directed by cinema master John Carpenter, They Live focuses on an apolitical construction worker who discovers a magical pair of sunglasses.  When he put them on, he sees a zombified world controlled by ghoulish aliens.  The ghoulish aliens espouse beliefs almost exactly the same as Reagan Republicans.  The film’s musical score is simple, the plot equally so.  It stars “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and Keith David.  Carpenter lays on his criticisms of Reagan’s economic and social policies with a trowel.  Anyone with half a brain would be able to pick up on the satirical element.  Yet the movie is Pure Awesome?

Why is that?

John Carpenter, like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Maya Deren, owns a seat in the Cinema Pantheon.  He created the slasher genre with Halloween.  He directed the action-comedy-martial arts cult classic Big Trouble in Little China.  Throughout his career, he worked with Kurt Russell, a vocal libertarian.  Kurt Russell is made of pure Awesome.

The magic of They Live occurs because of its light touch.  The political criticisms remain trenchant and serious, but the overarching story has huge dollops of the ridiculous.  The sunglasses?  Casting a WWF wrestler?  The really, really, really long fight scene?  The obviousness?  The ridiculous aspects become resolved with its bent humor.  The film wouldn’t work by casting Robert Redford as the lead.  This is hardly Dog Day Afternoon or Godard’s Weekend.

But seriousness isn’t a roadblock to an effective film with heavy-handed political satire.

Mislabeled as a thriller, Land of the Blind (Robert Edwards, 2006) lays the satire on thick.  In the film, Emperor Maximilian II runs a banana republic-type country.  Tom Hollander portrays Maximilian as a garish cartoon dictator, equal parts savagery and incompetence.  (Hollander also played a cold-blooded technocrat in a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.)  Maximilian’s world involves wealthy elites who don’t speak the native language, police setting monks on fire, blackface routines, and the Emperor helming atrocious action movies.  The Emperor also keeps charismatic political dissident John Thorne in prison.

Thorne used to work as a writer.  Then through the incompetence of Emperor Maximilian II and populist anger, Thorne is released.  Here is the pivotal point where Land of the Blind stands out among political satires.  The de rigueur critique of rightwing regimes has a long tradition in Hollywood.  The only thing easier than satirizing a Southern preacher figure is to satirize a rightwing dictator.  That’s easy money.  In the film, once Thorne gets power, things actually get worse.  Thorne, played by a bearded arrogant Donald Sutherland, turns the unnamed country into a theocratic hellhole, akin to post-Revolution Iran.  Land of the Blind succeeds in showing the awfulness of rightwing and leftwing regimes.  Hardly an endorsement for the mealy-mouthed centrism so beloved to voters in the United States, the film shows that regardless of where one goes on the political spectrum, the extremes will only bring poverty, atrocity, and despair.  (Something the mass of American devotees of the “lesser of two evils” method of voting should consider the next time they enter a voting booth and do their obligatory duty to further this republic into a neck-deep swill of corruption and incompetence.)

“Why’s he calling me meat? I’m the one driving a Porsche.”

The heavy-handed political satire can be done well on film.  It takes a light touch and a humanistic vision of society.  Like Crash Davis said, “Strike-outs are boring … and fascist.”  Atlas Shrugged has a lot of strike-outs in it.  I don’t agree with its philosophy, but sweet Christ! does it have to be so boring?  That’s the cardinal rule in Hollywood.  A movie flops not so much from any political consideration, but because it bored the audience.

Atlas Shrugged, Part I, good luck!  But if you bore your audience, it’s your own damn fault.  A book based on the philosophy of making money should at least have the good sense in actually making some money.

By the way, where’s Angelina Jolie?  Can’t Objectivism buy A-Listers or are Coen Brothers character actors (John Polito for the win!) the best that can be done?

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter VI: The Concerto of Deliverance

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter VI: The Concerto of Deliverance

Summary: Strange doings are afoot at the Rearden Steel plant.  The workers are demanding a raise, there’s a phantom tax lien placed on Hank’s assets, the parasitic Rearden family are clamoring for money, and a high conclave of Looters, including Wesley Mouch have summoned Hank for a meeting in New York.  What’s it all about, Alfie?  Turns out, the government ghouls are trying to leverage Hank into signing off on a Steel Unification Plan modeled on the disastrous Rail Unification Plan.  All caps on steel production will be lifted, and all steel profits will be pooled between producers.  Rearden, being all smart and stuff, instantly realizes that the whole thing is a scam meant to enrich Orren Boyle’s goldbricking ass at the expense of the uber-efficient Rearden mill, and that the end result will the be the bankruptcy of Rearden Steel.   Hank tells the assembled slapdicks to get bent and drives back to the mill…where a pack of “workers” (actually government thugs under the direction of Cuffy Meigs) has set fire to the plant.  Rearden’s REAL employees, who of course worship their brilliant boss, have rallied to the plant’s defense, shooting it out with the looters.  Outside the mill, Hank finds the bullet-riddled body of the young government stooge who had slowly been coming around to the Hank/Dagny/Galt way of thinking.  In a hilariously protracted death rattle of exposition, the young man, who Hank called “Non-Absolute” in a rare fit of terrible humor, explains that the government stooges had come to him with their plan to foment violence at the Rearden plant as a pretext for a looter takeover of the factory.  Hank tries to carry the kid to safety, but he dies in Hank’s arms, even after Hank told him specifically not to. What a dick.

Not even vampire Pee Wee milked his death this much.

So Hank jumps into the fray, is waylaid by a pair of thugs but saved at the last moment by “Frank Adams,” a new employee at the plant and a crack pistol shot.  Sure enough, “Frank Adams” turns out to be Francisco d’Aconia undercover.  They share a meaningful look, and set the stage for Francisco to finally tell Hank the truth about Galt’s Gulch.

Reflections: After poor, young Non-Absolute dies in his arms, Hank lets rip with a blistering internal condemnation of the brainwashing of students in America’s public educational institutions.  According to Hank, Non-Absolute wasn’t killed by some government thug, he was killed by the mental poison fed to him over years of so-called education, which left him unable to fend for himself in the cutthroat world of adulthood.  This segment is typically tedious Rand, but it goes a long way towards explaining this book’s continued popularity among teenage boys.  For instance, behold this bravura paragraph:

“From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. ‘Don’t ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!’–‘Who are you to think? It’s so, because I say so!’–‘Don’t argue, obey!’ –‘Don’t try to understand, believe!’–‘Don’t rebel, adjust!’–‘Don’t stand out, belong!’ –‘Don’t struggle, compromise!’–‘Your heart is more important than your mind!’–‘Who are you to know? Your parents know best!’–‘Who are you to know?  Society knows best!’–‘Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!’–‘Who are you to object? All values are relative!’–‘Who are you to want to escape a thug’s bullet? That’s only a personal prejudice!'”

“You’re not the boss of me!” –Ayn Rand/every fifteen year old in America

Doesn’t this sound exactly like the inner monologue of every half-bright, hormone-addled teenager to ever sulk their way through the halls of a junior high school?  Hyperbolic, resentful, deeply put-upon, devoid of perspective…I certainly recognize the thought process from my own stifled and falsely-grandiose pubescence.

Rand speaks to the particular worldview of adolescence not only with her hot-house prose, but in the general thrust of her philosophy.  Your average white American is most likely never going to feel more repressed and controlled than during the time of their secondary education.  The mechanisms of social control are never more visible than when you spend every moment of your day under the thumb of parents and teachers.  Also, your lack of personal freedom is coupled with a complete absence of personal responsibility.  It’s the perfect environment to generate fantasies of unjust restraint and limitless genius, and Rand channels that sensation masterfully.  Hopefully, most of the tragically oppressed mega-geniuses who spend their teen years railing against the hegemony of mediocrity mellow out a bit when the dead hand of educational/parental authorities lifts and they finally come to realize the limits of their thought-to-be limitless intellects.

Quotes:

“He remembered her hammering derision of his work, his mills, his Metal, his success, he remembered her desire to see him drunk, just once, her attempts to push him into infidelity, her pleasure at the thought that he had fallen to the level of some sordid romance, her terror on discovering that that romance had been an attainment, not a degradation.  Her line of attack, which he had found so baffling, had been constant and clear–it was his self-esteem she had sought to destroy, knowing that a man who surrenders his value is at the mercy of anyone’s will; it was his moral purity she had struggled to breach, it was his confident rectitude she had wanted to shatter by means of the poison of guilt–as if, were he to collapse, his depravity would give her a right to hers.” Women! Amirite?

“‘Have you anything left to loot?  If you didn’t see the nature of your policy before–it’s not possible that you don’t see it now.  Look around you.  All those damned People’s States all over the earth have been existing only on the handouts which you squeezed for them out of this country.  But you–you have no place left to sponge on or mooch from.  No country on the face of the globe.  This was the greatest and last. You’ve drained it.  You’ve milked it dry.  Of all the irretrievable splendor, I’m only one remnant, the last.  What will you do, you and your People’s Globe, after you’ve finished me?  What are you hoping for?  What do you see ahead–except plain, stark, animal starvation?'” –Hank Rearden

“I’d like to live, Mr. Rearden.  God, how I’d like to!…Not because I’m dying…but because I’ve just discovered it tonight, what it means, really to be alive…And…it’s funny…do you know when I discovered it?…In the office…when I stuck my neck out…when I told the bastards to go to hell…There’s…there’s so many things I wish I’d known sooner…But…well, it’s no use crying over spilled milk…Over spilled anything, Mr. Rearden.'” –Non-Absolute

“On the roof of a structure above the gate, he saw, as he came closer, the slim silhouette of a man who held a gun in each hand and, from behind the protection of a chimney, kept firing at intervals down into the mob, firing swiftly and, it seemed, in two directions at once, like a sentinel protecting the approaches to the gate.  The confident skill of his movements, his manner of firing, with no time wasted to take aim, but with the kind of casual abruptness that never misses a target, made him look like a hero of Western legend–and Rearden watched him detached, impersonal pleasure, as if the battle of the mills were not his any longer, but he could still enjoy the sight of the competence and certainty with which men of that distant age had once combatted evil.”  NEVER MISSES A TARGET! Of course not!

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter V: Their Brother’s Keeper

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter V: Their Brother’s Keeper

Reflections: This book has gone beyond a chore to read and has officially become a punishing ordeal.  There is not a single moment of prose in this chapter that doesn’t simply reiterate points made somewhere in the previous 900 pages of concrete turgidity.  The government is a vampire.  “Altruism” leads inevitably to mass suffering.  Dagny Taggart is a hot piece of tail who is the only person worthy of receiving the sacred member of John Galt.  It was kind of funny when Rand put John Maynard Keynes’ famous line “in the long run, we’ll all be dead,” in the mouth of the vicious, small-minded, absurdly named government commissar Cuffy Meigs.  Suck it, Keynes!  At least we’re one chapter closer to the end of this nightmare.  And now…Conway Twitty!

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter IV: Anti-life

Reflections:

Yep, that about sums it up.

The personification of American Objectivism.

Reflections: Double standards, anyone?  Let’s break it down with some bullet points.

Adultery

• Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden: When our Objectivist Heroes cheat on their spouses, it is a guilt-free, life-affirming act of awesomeness.
• James Taggart and Lillian Rearden: When looters commit adultery against their respective spouses, it is a hideous act of obscene nihilism.

Domestic Violence

• Hank Rearden: Threatening to beat down his wife, Lillian Rearden, like a hoodlum for insulting the moral character of his mistress, Dagny Taggart, is not only justified, but morally correct within the Objectivist philosophy.
• James Taggart: Actually smacking his wife Cherryl in the face is a horrible, horrible thing that drives Cherryl to suicide.

Murder/Suicide

• Looters stuck in a tunnel: Asphyxiated due to the inadequacies of their relativist nihilist egalitarian philosophies.  The novel tacitly approves of their deaths when one examines the hateful terms given to the men, women, and children in the train stuck in the Winston Tunnel.  Because they espoused the wrong philosophies, they deserved to die.
• Cherryl committing suicide: Because Cherryl had the innate yearnings to be like Dagny and achieve the status of an Objectivist Hero, her death was tragic and horrible.

[No funny caption.]

It becomes apparent that the act itself is not what counts, but the intention.  Could this be extrapolated to political assassination?  According to Objectivism, murder is bad for all sorts of reasons.  But … but, if the target was a vocal opponent of a dishwater weak health care reform bill that allegedly takes away their economic freedom, then would a political assassination be justified?  The fact that Ayn Rand praised murderers, sociopaths, and the genocide against the Native Americans does not help those who seek to distance themselves from the latest acts of political violence.

Now let us praise great men: Objectivist Edition.

Here is a passage from Rand’s journals gushing over murderer William Edward Hickman:

[Hickman] is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness — [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people … Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should.

It does seem strange, in light of recent events, that the same group that supports Rand’s deregulatory dogmas is the same group of people that claim to be Christians.  Again, does this sound familiar?  The political violence, the murderous rhetoric, the conservative religiosity.  Add beards and add jumbo jets aimed for major New York City landmarks.  Am I making too broad an inference or is this simply a case of pointing out that the Objectivist Emperor does indeed have no clothes?

 

Update #1: The Arizona assassin’s favorite books included those of Ayn Rand.  Now before you get on your “hip hop music causes violence” high horse, let’s make one thing clear: Banning books / music / video games, etc. because of an alleged link between their content and real violence will do nothing.  I take the opposite approach.  I would encourage everyone to read Ayn Rand, especially to understand how Objectivism cultivates a sociopathic mindset.  (Generalizations are a bad thing … usually … most of the time.  I’m not implying all Objectivists are cold-blooded snipers … in the same way Objectivists don’t generalize that those for moderate health care reform are dedicated Communist cadres.)

 

“This ___ just got real.”

 

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter IV: Anti-Life

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter IV: Anti-Life



Chapter Four: Ayn Rand and Edward Albee have a boring, long-winded baby.

Summary: Chapter Four finds the unfortunate reader thrust back into the unpleasant company of James Taggart.  He presides over a grim collection of government cutthroats and foreign dignitaries all celebrating the impeding nationalization of D’aconia Copper by the soon-to-be People’s State of Argentina.  This move will somehow give Taggart unprecedented power and wealth, even though the world economy is collapsing.  Of course, none of this makes poor Jimmy happy, because he’s a joyless sack of failure.  We also learn that, even though he’s obscenely rich, he’s not the right KIND of rich for Rand: it doesn’t really love money, after all.  He’s driven by self-loathing and resentment of his betters, nothing more. Back at home, James is confronted by his closet-Randian wife Cherryl, who is in the painful process of realizing that all the things she admired about Taggart and Taggart Transcontinental were the work of Dagny, and that James is a resentful, whiny freeloader.  They fight, she apologizes to Dagny for cursing her out at the wedding and has a sister-to-sister-in-law chat about the virtues of selfish love, and to top it all off, she comes home to find James in bed with Lillian Taggart!  They fight again, James smacks her in the mouth, and Cherryl flees into the night. After a painful trek through the ruins of New York City, finding herself alone and trapped in a world run by vampires, where achievement and talent will be crushed and exploited, Cherryl ends the chapter by fleeing from the “altruistic” hectoring of a social worker into the welcoming embrace of the (East?) river.

Don’t do it, Cherryl! There’s a Gulch! A Gulch!

Observations: In case you were somehow craving further explications of Rand’s theory of love, this chapter is lousy with ’em.  It’s interesting, because while some (okay, most) of Rand’s arguments are self-refuting (art can only be appreciated by the artist, essentially), others are just empty.  For example, in this section, Rand rails endlessly against then notion of loving people for no reason.  She’s arguing against Jim’s assertion that “love is it’s own cause.”  But every single person who has ever been in love fell in love for a reason. And they know what it is! And relationships end when people stop providing the “reason” for that love to each other.  Seriously, who goes around demanding to be loved, but not due to any attributes of their own?  Can we explain Rand’s psychotic egotism as the product of a traumatic childhood spent around needy, talentless assholes?  That’s that most charitable theory I can come up with.

Quotes: “‘This is not an old-fashioned grab for private profit.  It’s a deal with a mission–a worthy, public-spirited mission–to manage the nationalized properties of the various People’s States of South America, to teach their workers our modern techniques of production, to help the underprivileged who’ve never had a chance to–‘”  –James Taggart.  Okay, we have to settle this once and for all: does Rand condemn altruism in this book, or is she arguing that altruism doesn’t exist, and is simply a way for the dull masses to exploit the brilliance of the elite?  Does she not realize that these are separate propositions?  Is she fundamentally incapable of visualizing a truly selfless act, and therefore fails to credit the existence of said?  Sadly, this question will remained unanswered.

“Knowledge did not seem to bring her a clearer vision of Jim’s world, but to make the mystery greater.  She could not believe that she was supposed to feel respect for the dreary senselessness of the art shows which his friends attended, of the novels they read, of the political magazines they discussed–the art shows, where she saw the kind of drawings she had seen chalked on any pavement of her childhood’s slums–the novels, that purported to prove the futility of science, industry, civilization and love, using language that her father would not have used in his drunkenest moments–the magazines, that propounded to cowardly generalities, less clear and more stale than the sermons for which she had condemned the preacher of the slum mission as a mealy-mouthed old fraud.  She could not believe that these things were the culture she had so reverently looked up to and so eagerly waited to discover.  She felt as if she had climbed a mountain toward a jagged shape that had looked like a castle and had found it to be the crumbling ruin of a gutted warehouse.”   Concise as always, Ayn.  And “dreary senselessness” is the best description for this book I’ve yet come across.

“‘I know that it was you who ran Taggart Transcontinental.  It was you who built the John Galt Line.  It was you who had the mind and the courage that kept all of it alive.  I suppose you thought that I married Jim for his money–as what shopgirl wouldn’t have?  But, you see, I married Jim because I…I thought that he was you. I thought that he was Taggart Transcontinental!  Now I know that he’s…some sort of vicious moocher, though I can’t understand of what kind or why.  When I spoke to you at my wedding, I thought that I was defending greatness and attacking its enemy…but it was in reverse…it was in such horrible, unbelievable reverse!…So I wanted to tell you that I know the truth…not so much for your sake, I have no right to presume that you’d care, but…but for the sake of the things I loved.” –Cherryl Taggart.  And “Atlas Shrugged” skirts with the only thing that could make it even crudely interesting at this point: lesbianism.

Don’t fight it, Cherryl!

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter I: Atlantis

Time to bring on the Awesome!

Summary:

Atlas Summer: Part III: Chapter I: Atlantis

Pages: 701 – 750

John Galt

Summary: Dagny meets John Galt.  Awaking from her plane crash-induced slumber, she is rescued by John Galt.  But not after describing John Galt’s physical attributes for several pages in terms that border on religious ecstasy.  It made me feel like God to read it.  God from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”

“Get on with it!”

Thus opens a chapter chock full of Big Reveals, Pay-offs, and Philosophical Puffery.  Galt tells Dagny she crashed because she was fooled by a visual projection.  After helping her into a car driven by none other than Midas Mulligan, he gives her a tour of Mulligan’s Valley, otherwise known as Galt’s Gulch.  During this thinly veiled attempt at exposition, she sees other “destroyers” who left their businesses.  Now they are working menial jobs and heartily enjoying themselves.  Extracting oil from shale is also witnessed, because the looters have got their hands on Wyatt’s light sweet crude.  Dagny also sees a three-foot tall solid gold dollar sign, Francisco D’anconia’s idea of a joke.  She also sees the Mulligan Mint and the tiny solid gold and silver coins it produces.

The sequence reaches its climax when Galt shows her his power plant that runs on static electricity.  He also shows her that she cannot enter it.  This is because it has doors operating on voice recognition machinery.  Galt repeats the oath inscribed above the doors and the doors open.

Now requiring a cane for walking, Dagny attends a dinner populated by the former “destroyers.”  They give speeches that awe Dagny, even though they are basically Objectivist boilerplate.

Composer Richard Halley begins:

Judge Narragansett continues:

Midas Mulligan chimes in:

Then John Galt uncorks a speech, short, damn near microscopic by Rand’s standards:

Hugh Akston adds in:

Dr. Hendricks talks about the evils of state-run medicine:

And Quentin Daniels has his say:

In the end, each tells of a new world-saving technology or idea, but since they are on strike, they refuse to share it with the outside world.

They offer her a choice that she is free to choose.  The chapter ends, cliffhanger-like, with Galt escorting her to a room ironically named “the Torture Chamber” to contemplate her choice.

Observations:

Reading Atlas Shrugged felt a lot like this.

Well, this is it folks.  We’re finally into Part III: A = A, Tautologies Gone Wild!  I understand it isn’t summer anymore.  The objective reality proves the fact.  Unfortunately, for the Objectivist True Believers, apparently we’re still fighting the Cold War.  Maybe we can send them a care package, since they are in the same ideological desert island as the Japanese soldier who still thinks he’s fighting the Second World War.  It is reminiscent of unreconstructed Communists pining for the Good Ole Days under Stalin.  Too much nostalgia is never a healthy thing.

Tea Party Patriots, Russian-style.

There will be a slight change-up in format.  While one of us will take the appropriate chapter summary, both of us will comment on the chapter.  And hopefully we can get this done by next summer.  (Potential reading selection: Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard.)

After hundreds of pages, the reader finally sees the flipside to Rand’s criticisms.  A place beyond criticism.  A place without pain.  Utopia.  Rand has it both ways now, exposing the agonies and idiocies of the Looter Dystopia and the glories and pleasures of the Objectivist Atlantis.  Rand is not the first philosopher to develop a fictional paradise.  Plato wrote The Republic and populated it with a ruling caste of philosopher-kings.  Thomas More wrote Utopia in the 16^th century.  A more ambivalent example is Aldous Huxley’s society of hierarchy and numbed pleasure, Brave New World.  The Scots science fiction writer Iain Banks explores the limits of post-scarcity anarchist socialism in his Culture series of novels.  And one would be remiss to neglect mentioning the strong strain of libertarian science fiction.  So when Rand is called a utopian, this is not a criticism.  A utopian setting provides opportunities for the writer to show what society would be like if her philosophical precepts were followed to a degree and with a purity impossible in everyday reality.  (Doing so in a chapter laden with zero-dimensional characters repeating speeches we’ve read before … that’s a criticism.)

Rand does succeed in one case with her anarcho-capitalist utopia.  One word forbidden in Galt’s Gulch is “give.”  Good thing, because I could give less of a crap about these characters.  Although calling them characters is too charitable by half, since they all sound like Ayn Rand.  Agitprop ventriloquism for third-rate boardroom philosophers.

Because this chapter had a lot of material to deal with, I’ll be focusing on three specific topics with Sidebars.

Religious Sidebar

Rand spends a lot of page space describing the physical attributes of one John Galt.  For a philosophy premised on rationality and standing in opposition to supernaturalism, the opening passage came across as naked hagiography.  John Galt seemed like a combination of Warren Buffett, Thomas Edison, Alexander the Great, Confucius, Jesus, and Macho Man Randy Savage.

Throughout the chapter Rand uses terms associated with either organized religion or its close parallel, the cult of personality.  It sounds like North Korean Communists praising Kim Il-Sung.  Perhaps a paragraph or two describing Galt is an understandable fanservice, but this was ridiculous.  And contradictory.  And off-putting.

North Korean hero Kim Jong Galt.

Despite having the usual qualms about the philosophical content of the chapter, the tone was far more aggravating.  Ayn Rand writes with an unbridled preachiness that puts her with similar American writers … Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Billy Graham.

John Galt’s quest to “stop the engine of the world” seemed very similar to William F. Buckley’s famous call to arms from National Review in 1955: “A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

The religious tone is not that surprising, since Rand writes with the liturgical cadences found in other personality cults.  Since this novel uses all the heavy-handed pedestrian tactics of Soviet Socialist Realism, one finds that only the content has changed.  The Individual has been substituted for the Collective and trains have been substituted for tractors.  It’s a brilliant reversal of the Stalinist personality cult.

An Objectivist cathedral.

In keeping with the liturgical atmosphere, Dagny can only witness the Miracle Motor working when she says the Oath in a genuine, authentic way.  In the novel she looks upon “an ancient temple (the power plant) – and she knew what rite was the proper form of worship to be offered on an altar of that kind.”  Temple?  Worship?  Rite?  Altar?  So much for the ferocious atheism Rand espouses.

Certain religions, fraternal organizations, and political movements rely on a system of controlled access.  Dagny lacks the prerequisites to become an Objectivist Grand Master.  One only hopes the Rearden Metal Decoder Ring™ isn’t too expensive.

But like any deviational proletarian in a Communist Utopia, she requires re-education.  (Read: longwinded speeches by idealized stereotypes.)  The speeches at dinner are nothing but this.  While some would see this as a personal validation of their heroic Objectivism, it plays like a bully saying to a weakling, “Stop hitting yourself.  Stop hitting yourself.”

Ironically, in this novel that fetishizes hard work and industriousness, the Objectivist philosophy elucidated in these speeches comes across as entirely unearned (at least in the narrative sense).  The parade of straw men, the absurd storyline that bears no relation to reality, the remedial worldbuilding, and the complete lack of characterization make Dagny’s entrance into Galt’s Gulch a Pyrric victory.

The constant hammering for rationality veers towards idolatry.  Objectivism is rational in the same way the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea is democratic, for the people, and a republic.  (For those playing the home game, it’s actually a sclerotic hereditary monarchy that mistakes a delusional messiah complex for Communist orthodoxy.)  Just because one parrots the line “Objective reality” enough times, doesn’t necessarily make it so.

Like a religion or personality, it also tries to weave its disparate strands into a Unified Field Theory.  In the chapter, Objectivism is seen as a moral philosophy, science, personal code, and interior design aesthetic (Bauhaus meets Frank Lloyd Wright).  However, since this is a utopian text, everyone can follow this philosophy perfectly and it all works out in the end.

The final bit of religiosity of Objectivism is in the Surgical Guilt Trip.  Following the epic speeches by the Objectivist Heroes, Dagny is given a choice.  She can convert to Objectivism or not.  Technically, the characters are indifferent about the matter.  They are happy in their anarcho-capitalist commune.  It tries to have it both ways, being proselytizing and not.  (Oddly contradictory, eh?)  Given Rand’s heavy-handed methodology (see above), the reader would absolutely have to adopt the Objectivist philosophy.  This is true, since all those who oppose the strong, muscular, innovative, hardworking, attractive Objectivist Heroes are weak, flabby, college-reeking, intellectual, neurotic, nihilist, moral relativist Looter scum.  (It is a provocative and mature perspective on the matter.)

The Either-Or mindset goes berserk when Objectivism is criticized as irrational by the same people that criticize the obvious shortcomings of Soviet state planning.  (I’m one of them.  Communism is crap.  So is Objectivism.  Learn to deal with it.)

In summary, for a novel so adamantly against the irrationalities and superstitions of religion, it comes across as really preachy.

Technological Sidebar

Almost makes the annexing Poland thing and the David Hasselhoff thing forgivable.

This brings us to the VW L1, a futuristic concept car with ridiculously good fuel economy.  One of the fascinating aspects of Atlas Shrugged is its look at technological change.  Despite its clunky name, Rearden Metal signifies how technological progress can become a society-changing activity.  In 2002, Volkswagen released the L1 (meaning 1-litre) concept car.  This compact vehicle was made of magnesium alloy and carbon fiber, but also boasted incredible fuel efficiency (1.36L/100 km or 208 mpg).  It will go into limited production in 2012.

Then again, Germany has socialized health care and strict environmental regulations.

This is instructive, since Atlas Shrugged has the characters whining endlessly about regulations and losing money.  In the real world, Germany has spun the straw of environmental regulations into the gold of automotive innovation.  (Additionally, since the company wasn’t saddled with paying employee health care, it had more money to invest in research and development and employee salaries.)

Not to be outdone, Japan recently introduced the Nissan Leaf, a car boasting similar fuel efficiencies.  The United States, half a decade behind in hybrid car technology, will probably react by rebooting another nostalgia brand a la Mustang or Camaro, accuse consumers of anti-Americanism, and ask for another bail-out.

Military Sidebar

Another thing Galt’s Gulch lacks is a military or a police force.  Since Rand’s anarcho-capitalist utopia is full of well-behaved and industrious citizens, neither police nor military is necessary.  But considering how much stress is placed on Galt’s oath of individuality, one wonders how long this community will last if there is an invasion?  The military ethos is about protecting your fellow soldier.  Galt’s oath is “Every man for himself.”  It remains difficult to square that circle.

If it’s one thing the Greatest Generation has taught us, it’s “Every man for himself!”

It is a truism that an army marches on its stomach.  This feeds back to the Technological Sidebar.  The individual soldier remains well fed with MRIs, but the modern demands of the military have involved the US military going against the truism.  Instead of soldiers marching on foot, the truism should be applied to the vehicles in which the soldiers travel.

Military planners and weapons designers need to make energy efficiency part of their design brief.  This is not because of any environmental issues per se, but because efficient weapons win wars.  A military without a dependency on oil is a staggering prospect.  Apart from small-scale weapons like unmanned drones, energy efficiency has only had limited application.  Two cases are nuclear powered ships and the turbine engine in the M1 Abrams main battle tank.  One of the main memes throughout the War on Terror has been the primitivism of Afghanistan.  The same can be applied to the US military’s overreliance on outdated and inefficient transportation technologies.  While the spy satellites and communications systems are new and effective, our vehicles have gas mileage as bad as a 1954 Chrysler sedan.  Maybe our foreign policy would be a lot more useful if our weapons systems didn’t get 4 miles to the gallon?

Another aspect of militarism espoused during the Cold War was that all military innovation occurred in industrial democracies.  The truth is our missile and space programs benefited from the Germans we used.  Likewise for the Soviets who used their own Germans for the same purposes.  One should remember that Nazi Germany invented jet technology.  Military innovation isn’t a democratic monopoly.

The free market isn’t the only route to technological innovation.  Tyranny and conquest work too.

During the twilight years of the Soviet Union, military designers came up with the ekranoplan.  A massive vehicle with similarities to seaplanes and hovercrafts, it hovered above the water and traveled several hundred miles an hour.  It flew just below radar height.  Some versions even possessed missile launchers.  A nightmare to Pentagon military experts.  Luckily, the Soviet Union withered and died before these frightening things could ever be used offensively.  Luckily, the free market Russian Republic is now able to sell ekranoplans to any international terrorist with enough pocket change.  (Unfortunately, the Cold War kept things simple.  A worldwide free market and fragmentary political alliances have made things trickier.)

“It’s a boat!  It’s a plane!  It’s a — are those missiles?”

“You just don’t get it, do ya Scott?”

Stray quotes taken out of context by someone who doesn’t get it:

• “The angular planes of his cheeks made her think of arrogance, of tension, of scorn – yet the face had none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene determination and of certainty, and the look of a ruthless innocence which would not seek forgiveness or grant it.”  “Ruthless innocence”?  WTF?  This movie clip has lots of ruthless innocence.

• “[T]he place had the primitive simplicity of a frontiersman’s cabin, reduced to essential necessities, but reduced with a super-modern skill.”  Objectivism as an interior design aesthetic.  Like feng shui, but with more innocent ruthlessness.
• “He had brought an object she had never seen before: a portable X-ray machine.”
• “But that tractor has cut an eight-hour workday down to four –”  Know any farmers with four-hour workdays?
• “I SWEAR BY MY LIFE AND MY LOVE OF IT THAT I WILL NEVER LIVE FOR THE SAKE OF ANOTHER MAN, NOR ASK ANOTHER TO LIVE FOR MINE.”
• “I merely got fed up with the job of running a slaughter house, where one drains blood out of healthy living beings and pumps it into bloodless half-corpses.” – Midas Mulligan.  Um, that’s not how a slaughter house works.  That’s how a blood bank works.  Er … “My business is blood transfusions.” – Midas Mulligan, at the beginning of the paragraph.  If you want to know how a slaughter house works, ask this architect:

• “What we are now asked to worship, what had once been dressed as God or king, is the naked, twisted, mindless figure of the Incompetent.” – John Galt.
• “I saw him lying at the foot of an altar, with his blood running down into the earth – and what stood on that altar was Lee Hunsacker, with the mucus-filled eyes, whining that he never got his chance …”  How Lovecraftian in its overwrought awfulness.
• “The purpose for which I had chosen my work, was my resolve to be a guardian of justice.  But the laws they asked me to enforce made me the executor of the vilest injustice conceivable.”  — Judge Narragansett.  Judges do not enforce the law; they interpret it.  The unpleasantness during the Civil Rights Era erupted because the Southern states refused to enforce what the Supreme Court interpreted as the law.
• “Please tell me your reasons,” she said, with a faint stress of firmness in her voice, as if she were taking a beating, but wished to take it to the end.  (“Baby, hit me one more time.” – Objectivist American Princess™ Britney Spears.)

I guess I wasn’t put on this Earth “to get it” …