The death toll from the southern tornadoes is approaching 300.
I thought of Ayn Rand when I read “Why Is Enough Never Enough?” by William D. Cohan. Cohan asks why highly successful business leaders with loads of money are willing to take crazy chances to make more money. For example,
… why would David Sokol, a multi-millionaire and one of the men on the short list to succeed Warren Buffett, bother using the knowledge he had that Buffett was interested in buying Lubrizol, a large chemicals company, to make an extra $3 million that surely would have no effect on his lifestyle? (The Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating Sokol’s trading in Lubrizol but no charges have been filed against him; he has resigned from Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett’s company.)
Why can’t people who seem to have so much simply be satisfied with what they have, without feeling the need to risk breaking the law to get even more?
He’s not talking about Bernie Madoff and similar sorts who are pure flim-flam artists. He’s talking about people who make it to the top legitimately and then piss it away. Cohan provides some answers — it’s more about being captain of the universe than making more money — but let’s not forget these are the people Ayn Rand believed ought to be captains of the universe because they are better.
Speaking of which, I understand Part I of Atlas Shrugged: The Movie was so bad, the filmmaker has decided to drop plans for making Parts II and III.
Also: “Shiloh Baptist Church receives threats after comments from Sean Hannity”
Rep. Allen West Continues To Purge His Town Hall Meetings Of Any Dissenters
I was cheered to read that the movie was a bomb. I thought about going to see it, simply to cheat my way out of reading Rand’s books (see the film rather than read the book), but thought the better of it. There’s a great reflection on Rand over at Slate (How Ayn Rand Became an American Icon: The Perverse Allure of a Damaged Woman), based on two book length biographies:
Sean Hannity – stochastic terrorist.
Re Rand — I’ve never personally met a Rand devotee who wasn’t a simplistic, black-and-white sort of thinker, of the sort who latches onto ideologies because it’s easier than thinking things through. I also think her “ideas” appeal to people who like to think of themselves as rugged individualists but who in fact have a deep fear of individuality. So they join a herd of faux individualists.
Bernie Madoff, not Maddow. He’s no relation to Rachel.
There are some with tons of money who seem to have enough. I’ve never forgotten what Sean Penn said when asked about money he was giving to charity. His reply was: “What do you do after the first ten million?”
“I don’t believe that it is a coincidence out of all the churches in the country that Obama finds himself sitting in, why is he always in pews listening to such controversial spiritual leaders?†Hannity said.
Maybe because Obama is listening to real spiritual leaders, not the money grubbing bullshit spewing clowns who pass themselves off as men of God but can’t muster the courage to address social injustice. If Obama showed up at the Cornerstone Church to listen to a blowhard yarn spinning ear tickling pig like John Hagee then I’d be really concerned about his spirituality.
I recently recommended to readers here to read Martin Luther King’s…. Letter from the Birmingham Jail..In that letter King mentions what he calls the Church within the Church, referring to those select few who were spiritually in tune to the evils of segregation and spiritually strong enough to come against it openly. Segregation was the issue of the time, but the timeless message that King was making was that any man or women who places themselves as an exhorter of God’s word is charged with the responsibility to speak for social justice and equality.
Hannity is an ass wipe who just doesn’t get it and never will. I can understand the necessity of Obama to throw Rev. Wright under the bus because of the political environment that Obama had to navigate, and it was gracious of Rev Wright not to push the issue defending the controversy that was so twisted from what he actually was saying. But the fact remains that Rev. Wright was right in what he said because according to the scriptures God will judge all men and all nations by the the same measure…without hypocrisy or an American dispensation.
‘Atlas Flinched?’
So, the producer of “Atlas Shrugged” decided not to do parts 2 & 3?
QUITTER!!!
What, no “Apollo Blinked,’ and ‘Hades Farted?’ (Or, “Telemachus Sneezed,” as one website memorably called it).
Would John Galt have quit?
Oh, wait. Yeah, I guess he did.
And whoddathunk an unwatchable movie about an unreadable book wouldn’t grab the public’s interest? That there wasn’t much of an audience, besides RandNuts, to watch a film where impossibly rich people endlessly yammer at cocktail parties and dinners about steel and choo-choo trains, and how nobody understands them or loves them, especially riff-raff like the audience members, except other impossibly rich people who are endlessly yammering at other cocktail parties and dinners about some other shit?
And moonbat,
I wouldn’t recommend reading the book, since you didn’t see the movie. Get a lobotomy instead.
Or, if you really want to get the “Rand” experience, pull all of the money out of your account, and play in piles of it, then go sexually assault a woman, and convince yourself she enjoyed it, club a baby seal or two to death, then mug an old woman in a wheelchair on her way to the bank and steal her SS check, beat her husband on the head with his cane when he comes to help her and grab his wallet, and go back to your home, add that to the money already there, pontificate for 90 pages about how much better you are than anyone else and how they’ll miss you when you’re gone, take your money, and move to a “self-sufficient” ranch somewhere in what’s left of the wilds of America, and wait for the untermenschen to tear at their hair and rend their garments, moaning, wailing, and shrieking at the fact that you left, and what, oh what are they ever going to do without you there to guide them?
Wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Keep waiting.
Are they begging for your rich ass to return yet?
No?
They’re not ready.
Keep waiting.
“Maybe because Obama is listening to real spiritual leaders, not the money grubbing bullshit spewing clowns who pass themselves off as men of God but can’t muster the courage to address social injustice.”
To paraphrase a great man in a great moment (I am sure Mr. Hannity could provide a precise quote.)
“You have turned my Father’s house into a den of thieves.”
It is unfair to judge a group on the basis of interactions with a handful of individuals.* BUT, the few Randians I have known were difficult people to get along with. This
would mainly be due to the “oil and water” nature of our personalities and sensibilities, so I am at equal fault. They saw me as a useless DFH (guilty as charged!) and I saw them as arrogant, simplistic and insufferable dweebs. So we just agreed to disagree.
Anecdote:
I came across a comment where a Randoid was assertively waxing eloquent on “Ricardan equivalency” and was able to muster the unselfishness to provide a link to Wikipedia. When I read the article I was astonished at how much the article refuted the very points the Galtian commentor was using as his argument, including a simple declarative sentence which indicated that “even though the concept bears his name, he does not appear to have believed in it.” Okay, it’s not that simple a sentence.
But, it seemed to me that the commentor was convinced like many conservatives, of the validity of the concept and simply filtered out everything but the black and white and the power of David Ricardo as a free market icon. We all have a tendency toward confirmation bias, etc. But, this fellow and perhaps many Randians, have a particular gift for it.
* But, hey, whoever said this world was “fair”.
I also think her “ideas†appeal to people who like to think of themselves as rugged individualists but who in fact have a deep fear of individuality. So they join a herd of faux individualists.
It’s just like high school, isn’t it? Kids first discover their nascent sense of individuality at that age, and what do they do? Join a clique. Few teenagers, and I daresay nearly all Randians haven’t a clue as to what real individuality is about.
Wonderful comment about Rand, found at DailyKos a few months ago:
I used to argue with Rand fans online, trying to get them to comprehend that it is not actually true that the only possible source of oppression was the government.
At one point I managed to get one of them to agree that there could be a situation where a person had no choice but to do whatever a corporation told them to do (I think I was referencing company towns at the time) … and this idiot tells me, in all seriousness, no that person does indeed have a choice, they could just choose to go ahead and die. I thought the guy was being sarcastic at first, but no, turns out he believed that was actually a much better alternative than having government regulations that would have prevented the situation occuring in the first place. And, all of his objectivist friends smiled and nodded and agreed.
I stopped arguing with them after that.
-me
What motivates these greed heads is having more than the other greed heads. That’s why a 90% top tax bracket worked beautifully. The motivation to out-do fellow captains of industry was still intact and the society had the tax money to build the interstate highway system, public schools, universities, water and sewer, the space program and so much more. It was a win-win situation as the infrastructure actually helped generate a bigger and more prosperous economy.
Don’t listen to what they say, act for the public benefit using the twisted motivations of these folks. And because they are twisted, regulate, regulate, and regulate some more.
gulag…Great comment..I got a good laugh from it. 🙂
It’s just like high school, isn’t it?
Very true,moonbat..When I see video footage of Paulie Ryan and that other kid from Wisconsin trying to peddle their harebrained economic ideologies I automatically have flashbacks of student council meetings in high school.
An American’s fundamental ethical problem is that equate creation of wealth with the creation of money – that is why they do not like or understand Rand 🙂
The CEO culture created in this country did not exist at the time of Rand. The financial interests with congress has created these super powerful positions. Thus the is the money-spinner and not a person who is primarily responible for his employees.
Its interesting that the critics rate it at 9% whereas the audience gives it 85% – go figure 🙂
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/atlas_shrugged_part_i/
The sentence is nonsensical. I have no idea what you are trying to say.
It has been with us in various forms since at least the late 19th century. That pre-dates Rand.
Again, you aren’t expressing yourself clearly. I can’t make out what your point is.
Actually that makes sense. Probably at least 85% of the people who bothered to see the film are Randbots.
I know hundreds have died, but it needs to be said: Storms Kill Over 250 Americans in States Represented by Climate Pollution Deniers.
Interesting to see if the severe weather changes anything.
moonbat,
Yes, what an absolute horror show. I can’t believe the wholesale destruction. Entire blocks flattened as if an angry child swiped this hand across a model landscape.
But it’ll change nothing. It still snowed in DC this past winter, and Al Gore’s still fat. Oh, and Jesus had something to do with it because someone in those towns wasn’t living a Jesusy enough life.
Here’s an article that pretty much shows us how f-ed up our press is. This is from, the now surprisingly good, Dana Millbank:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-the-journalist-prom-got-out-of-control/2011/04/28/AFla9PCF_story.html?hpid=z4
On last ghen I’ll shut up:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jjmnolte/2011/04/28/exclusive-atlas-shrugged-producers-intend-to-complete-trilogy-cnn-msnbc-reject-their-ads/#more-470676
The good news, is that they may still make the 2 sequels to “Atlas Shrugged,” despite losing money on the first one.
Somewhere, Ayn Rand isn’t just ‘shrugging. She’s probably cursing at them wondering how to explain to these morons that LOSING money isn’t exactly Galtian.
Warning: The above link does take you to Breitbart’s site.
One last “THING…” it’s supposed to say, obviously. My laptop had a strange hic-cup just when I was about to hit ‘submit.’
Ok, now I’ll shut up!
Maha – the way you tore up my writing proves again to me that the Left/Liberal/Progressive whatever you call yourselves lack any basic philosophy and the purpose you serve is to oppose the right elements. And everybody is after the $$$ 🙂
Explanations for you :
1. Understand the difference between creating wealth and money.
2. Owner of an industry is different from today’s fiananciar backed CEOs.
3. The CEO’s are owned by financiars – supported by congress legislation.
4. BTW Rand hated Republicans and refused to accept the Liberatarian position – go figure …
I didn’t “tear up your writing.” You didn’t express yourself clearly. Your sentences were garbled; the syntax was a mess. I had no idea what you were trying to say. If I wanted to be snotty, I might say your writing proves you aren’t very bright.
Regarding your explanations — I agree with your first three points; I’ve said the same things myself, especially #3. We’re all owned by the financial sector these days. There remain a lot of parallels between today and the late 19th-early 20th centuries, however. It’s more extreme now, but it’s not completely new, either.
The Republican Party was very different back when Rand was in her prime, so her not liking Republicans doesn’t surprise me. However, “libertarians” as we know them today are a relatively recent invention, and in fact I’d say she invented them. There have been people calling themselves “libertarians” since the 18th century, of course, but earlier versions of libertarianism didn’t necessarily resemble what we think of libertarianism today. Our current version of libertarianism in the U.S. emerged in the 1950s, and Rand was a major influence.
I’m banning you, btw. Good bye.
At any rate Gore is correct concerning climatic change, right? Or is he? He says it was human-caused, not simply earth’s standard cycle over 1000’s of years. You think?