The Bad Idea That Keeps on Giving
July 31, 2018 12:51 PM   Subscribe

Scott Timberg (L.A. Review of Books) investigates the pernicious persistence of Ayn Rand and Objectivism in: The Bad Idea That Keeps on Giving.

Timberg writes:
Why should we care, then, about a discredited goofball ideology from deep within the last century? Because Ayn Rand–style libertarianism has probably never been more assertive in American politics than it is today.

What once seemed like the golden age of Rand turned out only to be a warm-up. In the 1950s, you could go to Objectivist salons in New York, where sycophants like Greenspan and future self-esteem guru Nathaniel Branden would gather round the goddess to luxuriate in every word (in some cases, the connection was more than purely intellectual: Branden was one of the polyamorous Rand’s numerous younger boyfriends). In the ’60s and ’70s, you could attend vaguely countercultural conventions across the nation where men would shout conspiracy theories and women would emulate their heroine by wearing broaches shaped like dollar signs. For a while, the Christianity-and-Cold-War strand of the American right headed by William F. Buckley Jr. marginalized the libertarians for their atheism and noninterventionist stance. From the evidence of 1971’s inside-the-whale memoir, Jerome Tuccille’s It Usually Begins With Ayn Rand, this movement was hardly built on solid intellectual ground. The abundance of selfish children driving the ship, part–Veruca Salt, part–Mike Teavee, made this seem like the kind of cult sure to wither of its own ridiculousness.

But with the Reagan Revolution, libertarianism was brought indoors, and the direct-mail New Right that accompanied the movement relied heavily on anti-government dogma. In many parts of the United States — the Sun Belt, the boys’ club of billionaires who fancy themselves self-made heroes, and various enclaves in the capital — Rand’s vision established its second beachhead.

And gradually, the discredited movement that tended to attract nerds and know-it-alls became part of the political mainstream.
posted by Barack Spinoza (72 comments total) 41 users marked this as a favorite
 
The best quote about Atlas Shrugged still remains "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be flung with great force."
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:54 PM on July 31, 2018 [49 favorites]


Is it any surprise that a pseudo-philosophical worldview which explicitly gives license to its adherents to indulge their most selfish impulses turns out to be not just fairly popular, but have the most ardent supporters?

These people have been liberated from the social contract. There's no need for polite society, just what you can get away with. Of course people love it. Objectivism rewards reckless self-regard. Trumpism rewards reckless racism and performative cruelty. The only way to get the genies back in those bottles and is complete social ostracism.
posted by tclark at 1:00 PM on July 31, 2018 [21 favorites]


(Partially posting this in the hope my time-traveling 14-year-old self will see it and decide to read different books that summer.)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:02 PM on July 31, 2018 [35 favorites]


Back in High School, I was told about a content some Ayn Rand promoting group was running to win a small college scholarship if you read The Fountainhead and wrote an essay on it. I figured, why the heck not, found a used copy at the Friends of the Free Library Bookstore, and started reading.

About a third of the way through, I gave up, threw the book across the room, and left it there for a week.

I didn't write the essay.

It wasn't so much the content of the book I found objectionable, it was Rand's writing. God, so many adjectives, so much tortured prose... forget it. Whatever paltry sum the Randroids were offering me wasn't worth the pain.

I think I dodged a bullet. If she'd been a half-decent writer, we might be in a worse societal situation.
posted by SansPoint at 1:11 PM on July 31, 2018 [17 favorites]


The best quote about Atlas Shrugged still remains "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be flung with great force."

That’s a good one, but the best is:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
posted by Sangermaine at 1:17 PM on July 31, 2018 [99 favorites]


I really like this critique of Atlas Shrugged from Scott Aaronson, a sorta-sympathetic reader:
I should look not at what’s in the book...but at what’s not in it...By approaching the donut through the hole, I will try to explain how, even considering it on its own terms, Atlas Shrugged fails to provide an account of human life that I found comprehensive or satisfying.

For Rand, the physical world seems to be of interest only as a medium to be bent to human will...in a book with hundreds of pages of philosophizing about human nature, there’s no mention of evolution; in a book obsessed with “physics,” there’s no evidence of any acquaintance with relativity, quantum mechanics, or pretty much anything else about physics.

In Atlas, “rationality” is equated over and over with being certain one is right...The idea that rationality might have anything to do with being uncertain—with admitting you’re wrong, changing your mind, withholding judgment—simply does not exist in Rand’s universe.

When I read The Fountainhead as a teenager, there was one detail that kept bothering me: the fact that it was published in 1943. At such a time, how could Rand possibly imagine the ultimate human evil to be a left-wing newspaper critic? Atlas continues the willful obliviousness to real events, like (say) World War II or the Cold War. And yet—just like when she removes family, personality, culture, evolution, and so on from the picture—Rand clearly wants us to apply the lessons from her pared-down, stylized world to this world. Which raises an obvious question: if her philosophy is rich enough to deal with all these elephants in the room, then why does she have to avoid mentioning the elephants while writing thousands of pages about the room’s contents?

Seriously: to write two sprawling novels set in the US, with hundreds of characters between them, and not a single non-Aryan? Even in the 40s and 50s? For me, the issue here is not political correctness, but something much more basic: for all Rand’s praise of “reality,” how much interest did she have in its contents?
posted by straight at 1:18 PM on July 31, 2018 [58 favorites]


Ah yes, I forgot about John Rogers' neat skewering of the book. I surrender the point.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:19 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


One of the many, many things I do not understand about people is what the draw of the Objectivist strain of libertatrianism is. I too am one of those people who read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager, one fateful summer before my first semester at college. It came highly recommended to me by a friend who I believe started off, as I understand many do, with the Fountainhead. Despite immediately disliking the characters and writing, I read the whole book over the course of a few days. The mystery of "who is John Galt?" was somewhat intriguing but I really just kept going out of morbid curiosity and perhaps vain hope that these reprehensile characters would get heir comeuppance in the end. I was bitterly disappointed by the last page.

These assholes (in the book) destroyed the world economy and ruined countless lives because people or governments had the gall to ask these rich creeps for money? And now, as the article makes clear, we get to live through the real world instantiation of that idea. The rich should have power to shape the world only limited by how rich they are, and any attempt by people or government to reduce that influence or wealth will result in the destruction of the systems of government themselves.

I really recommend going back and playing the original Bioshock and thinking of it as a loose sequel to Atlas Shrugged. It's quite a satisfying picture of what happens when a bunch of rich pricks who are tired of the "takers" go off and try to form a new society of nothing but the "makers". Turns out you need like janitors and garbage collectors and stuff like that for a society to function (and also probably highly destructive genetic enhancements aren't a great idea).
posted by runcibleshaw at 1:21 PM on July 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


To be clear: I was an asshole before I read Rand. I was a hormonal, pubescent teenager after all. But I was definitely a bigger asshole for having read her. Glad I didn’t go into politics or media or anything with that ideology. That’s how you get the ghouls and creeps mentioned in the article. Your mileage naturally may vary also I’m going to stop insulting any version of me with possible access to a time machine. No good can come of th
posted by Barack Spinoza at 1:23 PM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


I've never read the book itself, but have heard about it, and read the article. I think the appeal is quite simple - it gives a literary excuse for people to point to when they want to give into their baser impulse to be selfish shits.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:23 PM on July 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Atlas Shrugged, which is twice as much interest as I could manage.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:23 PM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


runcibleshaw: There was the perfect sequel to Atlas Shrugged well before Bioshock: Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later It's also a lot shorter than the original.
posted by SansPoint at 1:25 PM on July 31, 2018 [20 favorites]


If there's one thing I've learned in the past few years, it's that there is no such thing as a discredited idea. From flat earthers to objectivism, there are always believers for crazy ideas just waiting to find each other and then spread their craziness.

If you want to truly discredit an idea, you have to work at it every day.
posted by fremen at 1:32 PM on July 31, 2018 [15 favorites]


of course it is the substance of a message that matters, but humans are easily duped by beauty so I guess I could give some benefit of the doubt to espousal of a horrid ideology wrapped in beautiful paper. but Rand was a terrible writer!! just awful. I too did the obligatory reading (age 18 or 19) but I guess I was luckily less susceptible to the message or just too put off by the poor style and offensive content. I get why so many teenagers are vulnerable to that message, but when I encounter grown-ass adults living in the 'real world' who still buy this drivel...well, I hope you don't require my respect or mind if I laugh at your puerile and destructive world view.
posted by supermedusa at 1:34 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Libertarianism is a trojan horse for sneaking bad ideas past intellectuals.
posted by panama joe at 1:38 PM on July 31, 2018 [6 favorites]


1. I was introduced to Rand by my college girlfriend (who, oddly, went on to later become very religious). Honestly, I've always thought she did me a huge favor. Reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and hating them and thinking long and hard about exactly why I hated them and how I could argue against them has been one of the great ongoing mental exercises of my adult life. I think there's no question that doing this has helped my critical faculties a ton, and made me a much better thinker, writer, and arguer. This garbage served as a great mental whetstone.

1a. I actually appreciate We the Living a little bit on its own terms, just as a ground-level view of the Soviet revolution from someone who lived through it. But it's still a pretty intellectually rotten book, albeit one that also contains within it the explanation of its own rottenness (Rand only makes sense as a human being if you think of her entire life as an ongoing overreaction to what happened in her youth).

2. I agree with the sentiment that, intentionally or not, Season 1 of East Bound and Down is the actual best adaptation of Rand, in that Kenny Powers is what you really get from a person who's convinced he's John Galt.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:43 PM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


Libertarianism is a trojan horse for sneaking bad ideas past intellectuals.

I think you mean, “...past people who do well enough on standardized aptitude tests, and are certainly happy enough to tell you all about it, but lack the discipline, rigor, seriousness of intent and soul of an intellectual.”
posted by adamgreenfield at 1:53 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


I post a link to this old comment of mine about the time that POS book nuked my interest in a potential romantic partner in pretty much every Ayn Rand/Atlas Shrugged-related thread.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:59 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I doubt Rand would've have had much staying power on her own. It's more the whole Austrian School/von Mises/Hayek/ axis, with its extremely well-funded pseudo-academic think tanks and political infrastructure (including the international, antidemocratic, pro "freedom", Atlas Network, its name an obnoxious inside joke), and the even more reputable Chicago School and its intellectual offspring... that's where the serious ideological power lies. Rand was just the low-brow comic book form, the libertarian Chick tract, so to speak.
posted by mondo dentro at 2:02 PM on July 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


We the Living is alright. Anthem is okay for what it is (a mediocre midcentury sci fi novella that at least won't take you very long to read).

Anyway, my parents (well, my dad mostly) are academic Objectivists, still in this year 2018, and as a teen I once went to an Institute for Humane Studies summer program. AMA.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:03 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


The closest I've gotten to actually reading a Rand novel (beyond a page of turgid prose or two) is listening to Rush.
posted by Gelatin at 2:03 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


mondo dentro: The difference is that Chick Tracts are at least unintentionally entertaining. And a lot shorter.
posted by SansPoint at 2:03 PM on July 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


Chick Bricks?
posted by Barack Spinoza at 2:07 PM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


I also read Atlas Shrugged in high school, and it converted me to libertarianism. I worked for the federal government in my 20s, and that turned me around. I realized that the government has, needs, and uses power on a daily basis, and it should have first and foremost the needs of people over corporations and rich men who don't really need help when using that power.

What I learned during that intellectual journey is this: The conservative premise that the government is needlessly butting in to people's lives makes internal sense to most people until you realize two things - how much suffering there is in the world, and how few people are doing anything of substance about it. From there you convince yourself that everyone is in it for themselves, or you put your head down and don't think about it, or you become a Liberal.
posted by quillbreaker at 2:09 PM on July 31, 2018 [45 favorites]


Back in High School, I was told about a content some Ayn Rand promoting group was running to win a small college scholarship if you read The Fountainhead and wrote an essay on it. I figured, why the heck not, found a used copy at the Friends of the Free Library Bookstore, and started reading.

About a third of the way through, I gave up, threw the book across the room, and left it there for a week.

I didn't write the essay.

It wasn't so much the content of the book I found objectionable, it was Rand's writing. God, so many adjectives, so much tortured prose... forget it. Whatever paltry sum the Randroids were offering me wasn't worth the pain.

I think I dodged a bullet. If she'd been a half-decent writer, we might be in a worse societal situation.


This could have been my comment, word for word. I was actually a little humbled by this book, in that previously I had prided myself on my ability to finish any novel, no matter how large and weird.

But I hadn't counted on the power of terrible, terrible prose to defeat me.
posted by emjaybee at 2:13 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]




I think I dodged a bullet. If she'd been a half-decent writer, we might be in a worse societal situation.

I wonder if the bad prose is part of her success? Her clumsy writing keeps the books from being tainted by any acceptance from those pointy headed literature professors. That way readers can think of themselves as rebels and free thinkers.
posted by octothorpe at 2:47 PM on July 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


Just imagine how much more influence she might have had if her writing wasn't awful? It's a funny thought experiment.
posted by ovvl at 2:49 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


in pronouncing the author’s name remember that Ayn rhymes with “mine”, not with “sane”.

despite the prose she’s actually a writer of weirdly compelling plots, sort of Dan-Brown-esque in that way. this is a big part of her success I think.

also better to get a case of objectivism in one’s teen years and be inoculated imo. symptoms can be much more severe in adulthood.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:09 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


imagine how much more influence she might have had if her writing wasn't awful? It's a funny thought experiment

You may say I'm an Objectivist
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as owned
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 3:20 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


I literally had a colleague try to tell me two days ago that you can solve incels with Ayn Rand: after all, once they read her, they'll understand that no one is obligated in any way to anyone! He was a bit startled when I suggested that there might be more overlap in those two ideologies than he suspected. I had to further point out that it seems quite popular to me for people to read Rand and feel gleefully justified in not deciding that they themselves are obligated

I am rather proud of myself for not laughing directly into his face.

Honestly, I think I get the appeal. I wasn't so bothered by Rand's prose when I read Anthem and then Fountainhead; I was deeply bothered by the cardboard inhumanity of her characters. But this gentleman waxed enthusiastic to me about the romance woven into both Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and how elegantly it was intertwined with the philosophy. The book he read was nothing like the one I have read, and he seemed to think that the characters were human and engaging and gripping.

It seems to me that if you don't have very much experience with fiction reading intertwined with philosophy or unreliable narrators--identifying with non-PoV characters, for example, and you feel as though Objectivism secretly frees you from all these constraints you don't feel like you have personally bargained for, and you have never thought very much about whether anyone else you rely on feels personally obligated to you, Rand might be appealing. She sells this fantasy that you would be one of her hypercompetent captains of industry in the new world order, and if you have always been a bright kid and never really been smashed down to size by people around you--if you are confident in your own unsung genius--that can be a really appealing fantasy to buy into.

It's a myopic fantasy, but confidence sells--especially confidence paired with the sort of face people associate with success. And it turns out that for a bunch of people, confidence can indeed be wrought by secretly deciding you don't owe anyone else because you are just being dragged down by their jealousy. So that confidence can can convince other people that you are much more capable than you actually are, and by the time anyone realizes, you're long gone. Which tends to reinforce the confidence...
posted by sciatrix at 3:42 PM on July 31, 2018 [12 favorites]


sciatrix, I applaud you for not laughing out loud when your colleague used the word "elegant" to describe anything about Ayn Rand's writing. I thought the Fountainhead was way trashier than Valley Of The Dolls.
posted by queensissy at 4:17 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


It ought to be worth mentioning the terrible, dwindling trilogy of movies that were made out of Atlas Shrugged, but I don't know whether it is. They certainly deserve to be MST3K'd, but I don't know if MST3K deserve them.

It's very odd. If I were asked what I thought my aspiration for society should be - and no one has ever been stupid enough to ask me that, but if I were - I think it would be to achieve as much personal freedom for as many people as possible. Thing is, the only system I've seen so far get anywhere near to it is social democracy. I don't see that Libertarians would actually be free in their ideal society, as they'd be obliged to expend energy, time and money on things that in a social democratic system would be delegated to the society as a whole. At no point in my life has the NHS been a limitation on my freedom - in fact its existence bestows freedom upon me.

Incidentally, speaking of fascistic cranks, I was tempted to make this an FPP, but thought it might be a bit thin and inconsequential: in light of people finally asking where the right-wing think tank The Institute of Economic Affairs get their money from exactly, someone linked to a 2011 Adam Curtis blog post about how they formed, featuring Hayek, murder, chickens, Screaming Lord Sutch, and Radio Caroline and with a walk-on part for Margaret Thatcher.
posted by Grangousier at 4:20 PM on July 31, 2018 [14 favorites]


Oh God I read the comments
posted by thelonius at 4:26 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


the comments are the mopiates of the asses
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:29 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


I read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager, which I've mentioned previously; it took me quite a while to notice that most of its fans thought it was "a blueprint for the future" instead of "random post-apoc sci-fi epic story."

I rarely meet Randites in real life - I can't think of any in the last couple of decades - which I think is too bad, because I enjoy arguing with people who like to think of themselves as "enlightened" but their basic philosophy is one that condones open cruelty to the most vulnerable populations. (Online, they tend to stay to their own enclaves; they're not willing to participate in discussions where they can't ban people who disagree with them.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:38 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bob the Angry Flower for the win. I need to print that and post it up somewhere in my office.

I just feel lucky that age 14 is when I found Terry Pratchett, then by 18 I found the Illuminatus! trilogy - and the trio of Zamiatin's We, Brave New World and 1984. At which point I was suspicious of all authorities, but also (thanks to Pratchett) equally unimpressed by revolutionaries. I trust witches instead.
posted by jb at 4:40 PM on July 31, 2018 [5 favorites]


The best quotes were posted... so here's the best send up:

"But John, shouldn't we proofread the sleeve before going to print..."

John Aglialoro slammed his fist on the desk. Six foot nine, he was a dominating presence. "Damn it, Sheila! Did Hannibal proofread crossing the alps? Are you going to let every inch of red tape slow you from building the world that only we can build? If you choose not to do your job, then walk out that door, but let me tell you one thing: BASIC QUALITY CONTROL IS SOCIALISM."

A quivering mass on the floor, Sheila could only stare agape at the paragon of self-determined industry above her. "I'll print it," she said. "But kiss me."

But he was gone, a bold vector of Virginia tobacco smoke hanging in his wake.


posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 1:49 PM on November 12, 2011
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:50 PM on July 31, 2018 [13 favorites]


Corey Robin with a burn for the ages:

“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabobov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand,” Robin begins. “The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”

(from the linked essay)
posted by Barack Spinoza at 4:58 PM on July 31, 2018 [17 favorites]


I'm no Ayn Rand, I can admit when I'm wrong. And I was wrong -- another "best quote" was still outstanding.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:08 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


jb I think I was saved by discovering Illuminatus Trilogy at same time as Rand. Not a difficult choice...
posted by supermedusa at 5:15 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


The closest I've gotten to actually reading a Rand novel (beyond a page of turgid prose or two) is listening to Rush.

no, it would be Rush as covered by a bunch of teenagers in a garage who've just found some parent's secret half gallon stash of smirnov's and can't really play anyway but play the same damn song for hours and hours and ...

rush were decent musicians - rand was NOT a decent writer
posted by pyramid termite at 5:21 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


I think I've told this one before, but..

I noticed a car in the other lane with a "Who is John Galt?" bumper sticker, and wound up alongside it at the next light. I looked over at the driver and, with a wry half-smile, rolled down my window. So did he.

"Who is John Galt?" the driver asked, expecting a fellow-traveler.

As dramatically as I could, I let my expression melt into one of bored disappointment, and replied (as the light changed, oh god could I ever have this timing on something that mattered),

"A fictional fucking character!"
posted by notsnot at 5:21 PM on July 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


"Who the fuck does John Galt think he is?"
posted by Grangousier at 5:24 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


"An entitled douchenozzle."
posted by emjaybee at 5:29 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


“Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabobov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand,” Robin begins. “The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.”

You have to be so completely ignorant to give credibility to her pretensions to be a great philosopher, like believing that she first formulated the principle of non-contradiction
posted by thelonius at 5:45 PM on July 31, 2018


You have to be so completely ignorant to give credibility to her pretensions...

Well, yeah. But there's quite an audience for the "intellectual" dark web charlatans, so such ignorance isn't a rarity.
posted by mondo dentro at 6:06 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


The mystery of "who is John Galt?"

The historical John Galt (well, one of several, I should imagine) was a a Scottish poet and city planner who emigrated to Canada and founded Guelph, ON, now a small city an hour and change west of Toronto. It is a dreaming hippieish farm town which, to the eternal schadenfreude of Canadian Randists, is where the Communist Party of Canada was founded.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:27 PM on July 31, 2018 [21 favorites]


I also remember that contest and reading the book because of it and never getting around to writing the essay. However, I find the book to be hilarious wackadoodle fun to make commentary on. It amuses me. I kind of wish I could write up what I find interesting/amusing/ridiculous about it, but if I did that, I'd get stalked, doxxed, swatted, and murdered, so.

I read Anthem and We The Living and remember next to nothing about them other than: dull and not as wacky as The Fountainhead. Nothing sounds even remotely entertaining about Atlas Shrugged so I won't touch that one. I did read The Early Ayn Rand, which is a hoot because you would not believe that she used to write in a well...more fun fluff(?) style way back in the day. Don't remember much about it but I think there was a romantic comedy in there?
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:40 PM on July 31, 2018


I am now pondering the notion of a Randian romcom.

My mind is experiencing a blankness that I have never managed to achieve in meditation.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:44 PM on July 31, 2018 [10 favorites]


When I was in finance-ish, the apparently accepted way for older men to announce (never ask lol) to younger women that they had decided to mentor them was to deliver a hardback limited or signed or otherwise special edition of an Ayn Rand book

I took great pleasure in putting them out on the curb

Every time
posted by schadenfrau at 7:00 PM on July 31, 2018 [18 favorites]


schadenfrau: The books, or the older men? Because if it's the books, why would you risk them falling into the hands of impressionable children? (Or adults with minds like children.)
posted by SansPoint at 7:05 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm generally here for any fun Rand pile-on, but this particular article seemed to be mostly warmed over invective and reminders that Randians are crawling the halls of power. It's old wine, hauled out to make a negative review sound fresh.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:07 PM on July 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


In retrospect I should have done something creative with the books, like bake them into bewildering casseroles that I then forced those men to eat

But alas

I just wanted them gone
posted by schadenfrau at 7:19 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


Those Russians sure did play the long game when it came to destroying the US government. Introduce an insdious socio-political philosophy some time around mid 20th century, let its acolytes work through the turn of the century to whittle-away at the underpinnings of government, then, finally, get a mindless bully elected President who will willingly burn the rest of it down.

Well played.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:51 PM on July 31, 2018 [7 favorites]


The closest I've gotten to actually reading a Rand novel (beyond a page of turgid prose or two) is listening to Rush.

no, it would be Rush as covered by a bunch of teenagers in a garage who've just found some parent's secret half gallon stash of smirnov's and can't really play anyway but play the same damn song for hours and hours and ...

rush were decent musicians - rand was NOT a decent writer


I definitely assumed this meant Rush Limbaugh. Could be wrong, but Limbaugh is certainly a cult of personality wannabe just like Rand was.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:56 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


Peart moved away from the Rand lyrics fairly early. But, like they say, you fuck one sheep......
posted by thelonius at 8:10 PM on July 31, 2018 [9 favorites]


When Kid Ruki was in middle school, she had an assignment to write a biography or do something or another with an author from an assigned list. By the way she was talking, it was obvious that she had selected her author to please her parents (and even more obvious that she hadn't read past Rosenbaum on Wikipedia) and she was a little stunned by our involuntary reactions to hearing her say Ayn Rand. I still feel a little twinge of guilt about that, but on the other hand, she was properly horrified after we apologized for our reactions and explained Objectivism to her.
posted by Ruki at 8:16 PM on July 31, 2018 [4 favorites]


Peart moved away from the Rand lyrics fairly early. But, like they say, you fuck one sheep......

The world is, the world is / Love and life are sheep / Maybe as his eyes are wide
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:28 PM on July 31, 2018 [3 favorites]


The younger Paul is such an Atlas Shrugged–pounder that a rumor flourished for years that his first name came from the family’s favorite author.
It's only a rumor? I had assumed it was fact, so obvious is the connection.
posted by nnethercote at 8:32 PM on July 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


ricochet biscuit: Looked at from the right angle, 50 Shades of Grey is a Randian romcom.

Aslo, jb mentioned Terry Pratchett up-thread. Is anyone else convinced that "Spike" from the Moist Von Lipwig books is meant to be Ayn Rand, only she had her early life ruined by rapacious capitalism instead of communism? I don't know. It just all seemed to fit too well when I read the books.

Somewhat in that vein, there's also a bit from Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" (yes, I'm invoking Nietzsche contra Rand) where he talks about how a philosopher's job is to vivisect the dominant morality of the day. A philosopher in an age of specialization will advance generalism as a model for humanity, in an age of individualism, humility and self negation, etc...

Rand's rabid attacks on collectivism or anything that smacked of communism would have been appropriate for the philosopher she thought herself, by Nietzsche's standards at least, had she stayed in the Soviet Union. Unfortunately she expounded her ideas in America, where communism was never exactly the dominant value system.
posted by Grimgrin at 12:13 AM on August 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


I haven't read Ayn Rand for the same reason I haven't drunk bleach: I can learn from other people's mistakes.
posted by bryon at 12:54 AM on August 1, 2018 [13 favorites]


There's unfortunately a lot of Objectivists within the libertarian movement so I like to amuse myself by telling them that they should stop taking romance novels so seriously.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:04 AM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]


Add me to the list of avid readers whose first “I can’t possibly finish this” book was by Rand. First semester of college, handed to me by a guy whose eyes lit up when I asked what he was reading. Being unable to finish this book made me rethink myself as a bibliophile. Also nudged me a step further along the path of not caring that I was going to disappoint a dude (vastly counter to my upbringing), that my time and mind were more important than obliging him.

Skipping the dose of toxic objectivism was a bonus I only learned about later.
posted by Nancy_LockIsLit_Palmer at 3:26 AM on August 1, 2018 [3 favorites]




What is remarkable about most personality cults is how they make a promise to a believer, explicit or implied, and it always involves elevated prestige. When prophecy fails them or when the wealth doesn't materialize, they respond by proselyting their faith to others, especially strangers. Whether they do this to lessen their pain, as psychologist Leon Festinger described, is beside the fact that they are also salvaging their lost prestige in the act of converting others. In essence, they are perpetuating the personality cult through themselves, like a pyramid scheme. The promise of prestige makes anything a religious movement, as a form of idolatry, because they are only preparing themselves and their attitudes to be worthy of the wealth they desire from the universe. They expect magical results from the commitment to be toadies for the rich and look down on others for them, to please the magical source. Never mind that the shortcut may actually backfire and prevent them from achieving moderate success, which is not what they are aiming at, but is required to achieve their grand success.
posted by Brian B. at 7:29 AM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


Brian B., you’ve just described Amway to a T.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 8:29 AM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


I saw the Fountainhead on TV in the early part of the first half of my twenties sometime in the late part of the first half of the 1980's. I had no idea what it was. When I saw the scene with Gary Cooper drilling in the quarry with a pneumatic rock drill watched by hot and bothered Patricia Neal I could only think that it was some kind of satire. Never read any of her writing, don't expect I ever will, unless I'm in the toilet at the reeducation camp and need something to wipe my ass with.
posted by Pembquist at 3:03 PM on August 1, 2018


Years ago, during a move-out inspection of an apartment, I had to suppress a doubletake when my soon to be former landlord said she found Atlas Shrugged to be "very sexy." I changed the subject, but she kept coming back to it. And since you're wondering, yes, she did find a way to avoid refunding most of my deposit.
posted by EatTheWeek at 3:34 PM on August 1, 2018 [5 favorites]


This might be the place to point out that Zack Snyder's next film will be a remake of The Fountainhead.
posted by octothorpe at 3:50 PM on August 1, 2018


Where's Verhoeven when you need him?
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 10:01 PM on August 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well he's 80 years old so I don't know how many films he's got left in him.
posted by octothorpe at 6:41 AM on August 2, 2018


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