The Establishment (and Ayn Rand's) Point of View

(originally published in Feb 2015 as A Very Long Way from Galt's Gulch. I'm republishing this in response to a conversation happening in ek hornbeck's diary Why Corbyn Will Win)

Recently I had reason to spend a lot of time interacting with the federal government. My errand involved me walking the corridors of a federal agency, and to relieve the tedium, I found myself noticing people’s office décor. One man’s door said tersely, “The house is burning. Let us warm ourselves.” Another quoted Asimov saying that anti-intellectualism in America consists of the notion that democracy means that my inaccuracy is as good as your facts. One woman had turned her reception desk into an oasis of green: live plants everywhere, pictures of her family and friends, a gathering of little plastic bugs in constant motion.

Then I noticed an office that sported the immortal question, “Who is John Galt?”

I have to admit I was seriously taken aback. This was a federal employee. I want to maintain anonymity, so I’m not going to furnish any further clues to the person’s identity except to say that my stunned disbelief was later exacerbated by discovering that the person in question had worked for the federal government all their life.

OK, there’s no rule against libertarians or Randians working for the federal government, because those of us still clinging to the tattered notions of a civil society believe in people’s right to make a living regardless of their political opinions. In fact, we believe that other people’s political opinions only fall within our purview under very specific circumstances: when they lead to abuse of our own rights, or when we’re debating in public space: at which point, if you love democracy, or even the Republic, you pray for the biggest rip-roaring argument possible. Democracy must be rational, should be civic, and can even be polite, but it should never walk on eggshells.

But downtown Washington DC is a very long way from Galt’s Gulch. As a matter of fact, it may be impossible to get any farther from Galt’s Gulch. I mean, isn’t Washington DC the place where all the lights of civilization go out while the people watch from Galt’s Gulch as the world falls into darkness, in the most self-congratulatory narrative spectacle I’ve seen outside the Left Behind novels?

The connection there is more than incidental. There’s something fundamentalist Christians and Randians have in common, which is a voyeuristic fetish for apocalypse. The select few get to sit behind their walls and watch while the rest of the world falls into torment, darkness, and death. "We were so right," is what their response seems to be; "All this just proves how much better we are than them." It’s also worth noting that this self-congratulatory nastiness actually reverses the central premise of Christianity, which is God subjecting himself to torment, darkness and death so as to extend a message of transformation and salvation to the world. But this is the place where Wall St, fundamentalist Christians, and Randians come together: the notion of meritocracy. The sheep get saved and get to live in bliss; the much more numerous goats get flung into hell—and the central message is that this is just, right, and indeed inevitable. ("The fact that all those people lost their houses just proves I’m smarter than they are," said the Wall St broker anonymously to a journalist in 2008.) In other words, if you were a sheep, you wouldn’t be suffering; the fact that you’re suffering proves you’re a goat. Into the fire with you. Isn’t that what happens to waste?

Be very careful when people say they want to eliminate waste.

Oddly enough, the notion that one could suffer because other people are suffering, or because the world is suffering, seems to have missed these people entirely. The central fact of Christianity itself depends on this premise: For God so loved the world, the Bible explains, he turned himself into a human being and suffered one of the worst deaths humankind has devised. All because he couldn’t stand watching something he loved destroy itself.

I’m talking a lot about Christianity for someone who hasn’t been a Christian for nearly 25 years. But at the risk of sounding like a right-winger, it’s an inescapable truth that Christianity is a large part of the cultural background of this country and its ideas and stories have seeped into even secular parts of the culture. Some of those ideas and stories have migrated thus in their most twisted versions, and I’m arguing that one of these is the central argument of our time: the notion of the elect. The chosen people. This is a concept inextricably tied to the notion of an inferior, unwanted majority, and as such, it is anathema to democracy or even republicanism of any kind.

It also explains why most of the rich are so willing to allow climate catastrophe to destroy the planet’s capacity to support human life; they know they aren’t going to drown in the Lake of Fire; that doesn’t happen to people like them. They’ll get to watch while all the inferior dross burns away. Why any decent human being would want to watch such a thing is a question that is increasingly difficult to ask, as the moral framework for that question gets whittled away by the notion that only fools ask questions about human decency anyway. Sure, we tortured some folks, but don’t get all sanctimonious about it. (If you believe in the elect, “torturing some folks” isn’t a problem; the chosen people don’t get tortured. Only goats face the fire.)

You can apply this framework, this overarching narrative, to almost every piece of perfidy that’s been done in the public sphere in the past 30 years. The two-tier justice system is another example. The elect have already been pre-judged innocent and good; that’s why they’re the elect. You can tell who they are by their skin color, the size and number of their bank accounts, and whether or not they carry a badge. You can also tell who they are by whether or not they inconveniently disagree with the arbitrary division of sheep and goats, and use words like “unfair,” “unconstitutional,” and “atrocity.”

But the interesting thing is that the original parable of sheep and goats didn’t go like that at all. I’m quoting from a memory long past, but I remember some words like “`Depart from me, ye cursed, into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink; I was sick, and without a home, and you did not take me to your house; I was naked and you did not clothe me; I was in prison, and you did not visit me.’ And they will say to him, `Lord when saw we you hungry, or thirsty, or in need, and did not minister unto thee?’ And he will say, `Inasmuch as you did it not unto the least of these my brethren, you did it not unto me.’”

I don’t believe in hells ordained by gods, nor in separating humans into sheep and goats and throwing the baddies into the fire. But if you accept the terms of the story, what defines a goat is their inability to see the connection of all things, the identification of the highest with the lowest, and to act with decency, compassion and generosity out of that knowledge.

I doubt there are many people on this board who have any fondness for the Kerrys, but along with assorted quotes from the Bible, Ursula LeGuin, Tolkien, James Joyce, and the Declaration of Independence, this quotation from Teresa Heinz lives in my head and heart. She is talking about the lesson she learned from her first visit to the rainforest:

The most amazing experience for me was to stand beneath the jungle canopy towering 120 feet overhead. It truly had the feeling and simplicity of a gothic cathedral. The trees were like pillars, often anchored by buttress-like roots. They grew in a mere six inches of soil. You couldn't help but wonder what sustained them, and then you looked at the ground and saw the interplay of mosses, ferns, mushrooms, insects and animals, and you began to understand the beauty and complexity and interdependence of life.
We are, all of us, like those trees. Even they depend on the kindness of strangers, and so it is for us.
No matter how high we may sometimes soar, no matter how invincible we may sometimes feel, we are all fed and nurtured and sustained by complex webs of connection. We all truly are in this together.
That, of course, is the essential but too often forgotten wisdom that lies at the heart of all the world's great religions-that we should love others as we love ourselves. And it is the wisdom at the heart of all true charity and philanthropy.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Understanding and articulating a point of view so far from the establishment point of view.

Apparently some of the aristocrats also understand that what is happening is total garbage. Not that that does us any good.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

mimi's picture

an upbringing there and her biography before she married Heinz explain her being a "child of the old British and Portuguese ancestry" in colonial times.

Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira was born in Mozambique, at the time a colony of the Portuguese Empire,[2] to Portuguese parents, tropical-disease specialist Dr. José Simões-Ferreira, Jr. (1910–1989),[3] and Irene Thierstein (1912–1997). Irene, a Portuguese and British[4] national in Lourenço Marques,[5] was the daughter of Alberto Thierstein,[6] a British national from Valletta, Malta (at the time a British-ruled territory), and Maria Burló,[7] born in Alexandria, Egypt, who both migrated to Portuguese East Africa.

In 1960, Teresa Simões-Ferreira earned a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1963, she graduated from the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva and moved to the United States to be an interpreter at the United Nations.

When I heard her speaking for the first time, years ago, I could sense her being "not American". She moved to United States as an adult and married up into American money. So, she might be too rich, but her flair is born out of colonial times of her parents and grandparents (mix of Portuguese and British), her philantropy and love for the Rainforest have their origin in her climbing trees in Mosambique as a child, I would think. I think her biography explains a little bit her "different flavor as a member of the establishment" among the US elite.

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as you could want and prominent members include Wolfowitz, Rubin, Rubinstein, Albright, Powell, Peterson, etc - people whose whole careers has been the advancement of global capital to exploit the world and its people. The CFR is preparing the USA for war against China, it seems, and their 2015 report is finding fertile soil in the Obama administration.

This is where the military/industrial/financial complex speaks and where many of its members glide between parasitical finance and government.

The rain forest? Make some easy money and leave a global resource in ruins. The actions of grow or die capitalists has led us to grow and die capitalism. And, three of the four candidates this year are 100% in favor of this global regime. Only the Greens are left to try and speak for the majority of citizens who suffer, rather than proper, under this demented ideology.

Very nice diary - hope I wasn't too much off topic.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I'm just putting this out there because people were discussing how the establishment actually thinks.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

CFR's recommendations to confront China and the steps the Obama administration has taken, either as a result or as a coincidence, and I think it's the absolutely wrong thing to do.
The CFR urges the elected officials to maintain and upgrade the USA's power projection in the far east with the dual aim of "controlling" China and keeping the region open for investment by making this country the #1 military power in that part of the world. Also recommended is the military buildup of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

TheOtherMaven's picture

and they weren't watching from Galt's Gulch (no TV for some unfathomable reason), "they" were a task force, mission (rescue of John Galt) accomplished, flying back to Galt's Gulch.

Not that the details matter, it's the obnoxious self-righteousness of being among the Saved. Blum 3

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

it's all those pesky New York liberals.

Not one tear from them over their brothers-in-arms on Wall St?

Interesting how I rewrote it in my brain; god knows they spend more time bitching about the government than anything else.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Phoebe Loosinhouse's picture

I started to write a comment but it got too long because you just made me think in so many directions at once. Kudos.

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" “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” FDR "

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

any responses you have (maybe a diary?) Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Shockwave's picture

But eventually I saw the light and realized that Galt's gulch was a utopia or more precisely a dystopia. Libertarianism may work somewhere hidden in the Rocky Mountains for a few people but it does not work in a large society where if people do not work together to achieve some common goals they will self-destruct. In addition, not all people are good and you need regulations to prevent bad people from taking advantage of others regardless of the damage they cause.

I now consider myself a pragmatist, some things are better in private hands (with regulations) some are better done by a democratically elected government. Progressive capitalism?

BTW, yesterday I watched Jill Stein at the Fox News show with libertarian Stossel and she did very well, and his audience liked her a lot even though Stossel didn't.

[video:http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/embed.js?id=5138991792001&w=466&h=263]

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The political revolution continues

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Because she seems to be advocating for individual freedom and creativity. But what she ends up advocating for is much uglier than that.

I believe Neal Peart went through a similar change of mind. He started off as a libertarian and Ayn Rand fan

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6WDTSVwVjI]

Initially, Rand sounds like she's advocating nonconformity and rising up against the man; being true to your own, well, drummer

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0XjgtfFww]

40 years later, Peart had a different view. He also, helpfully, explained what had drawn him to Rand in the first place:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/rush-drummer-neil-peart-denounces-ayn-ran...

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Besides being one of the best percussionists (is that the best word?) ever...
(Calling him simply a drummer doesn't seem complete enough to me).

He is also a writer of some note.

His Ghost Rider book was pretty amazing. Resilience found on a motorcycle tour, after experiences that would make most of us leave the light of day for good.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I know the story behind it, but haven't read it yet.

And you're right that calling him a drummer doesn't seem sufficient.
I'm both grateful that I saw him once live, and sad that it'll never happen again. I thought I had a few more years to get to see them once more. Then they retired.

Wish them all the best, but it does make me sad.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

the start of a U.S. tour in the other Portland.
They stopped the show several times to get the lights or video screen right and apologized each time. Then they would redo the ENTIRE SONG they had been playing! 3 hours of a really good time!
To the post: really, just a lot to digest. Love your writing.

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

And they are/were amazing.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

[deleted]

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Lutherans argue that this whole business of "the elect" is Calvin's confusion of Law and Gospel resulting from a misguided attempt to answer the question, "Why are some saved and others damned?"

Lutherans say that there are really two questions and two answers here:

Why are some saved? Because they were "elected" by God from the beginning of time. Since their salvation is God's doing, they can take no credit for it, unlike Arminian theology where the saved choose salvation for themselves.

Why are some damned? Because they reject the Gospel, not because they were "elected" to damnation like the Calvinists say. This puts all the onus on the "damned" and none on God.

It's all about soli Deo gloria.

Luther called Lutheran theology a "theology of the cross." He suggested that if one wanted evidence of faith, it would be found in the suffering that practicing Christians could expect in the world. He contrasted that with the "theology of glory" of Reformed and also Catholic theology that expected Christians to have a life of blessing and comfort and therefore found the most prominent Christians among the rich and powerful.

Calvinism has been a source of a lot of evil in the U. S. since it arrived on the shores of Plymouth Rock. (Not that Lutheranism, especially Luther's anti-Semitic diatribes, hasn't done its share.)

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

having come from first a Catholic (via my excommunicated grandfather--he married a non-Catholic in the early twentieth century, but still went to church), and then an Episcopalian background, some of the quarrels amongst the, er, truer Protestant traditions (Anglicanism always having been a compromise solution), totally passed me by. This is a very helpful gloss.

I'm not 100% sure that Luther can switch the terms of the argument like that, though--I mean, some are saved because God just said so, and some are damned because they done fucked up?

I really admire a lot of what Luther did, and sure prefer him (as far as I know him) to Calvin, who I think must have been traumatized by an alien abduction to write what he did, but not sure I can quite agree w/his logic here.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Simul iustus et peccator.

Bible made up of two completely contradictory messages: Law and Gospel.

Bread/body; Wine/blood. No transubstantiation to smooth the contradiction of the senses.

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I ran into a client at the feed store, we gossiped about his relatives, a minister/wife combo for 35 years. They transitioned from Bible over Constitution, to being anti-government, and now have left the church and are into illegal gaming, and all the tax avoidance such game rooms entail. (ex)Minister/wife are facing felony charges.
They are hoarding money for the End Times. And government and taxation is the devil.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

but given the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months, and the fact that *I think* they passed a law allowing banks to seize depositor's money in a "bail-in" a couple years ago, I've been thinking about stuffing money in my mattress too.

I hate to say it.

The times are so crazy that the crazy starts to become rational. Yikes!

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

This delusion allows them to deny climate change; ignore, or support, endless wars; and accept poverty as a moral failure.
That's some bad cess right there.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

gulfgal98's picture

Over the last several months, I have been writing essays on neo-liberalism. So far sixteen in the series. But the one essay I believe is the most important of the bunch is the one on the myth of meritocracy. The concept of meritocracy is the single unifying concept behind these people believing themselves superior to the rest of us. This is why they can justify all the harm they have done to the earth and the suffering they inflict upon people.

In that essay, I quoted a review of Thomas Frank's book in which he talks about the mindset of a neo-liberal which is based upon the belief in meritocracy.

“One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated,” Summers commented early in the Obama administration.

“Remember, as you let that last sentence slide slowly down your throat, that this was a Democrat saying this,” Frank writes. From this mind-set stems everything that the Democrats have done to betray the masses, from Bill Clinton’s crime bill and welfare reform policies to Obama’s failure to rein in Wall Street, according to Frank.

Edited to add link.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

as a Democrat, or a Republican; the stench of being a servitor of the predator class just comes off him in waves.

That was a great essay you wrote on meritocracy, gg.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

world outlook and the neoliberal stance best is that "Africa is underpolluted."

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Somebody needs to drive the moneychangers out of the temple.

Not to say I'm Jesus, but I kind of look at Summers in the federal government, and think:

"You have taken my father's house and made it into a den of thieves."

Not quite the truth, since there were thieves there before, but he's a whopper.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

gulfgal98's picture

personifies neo-liberalism. And neo-liberalism knows no political party.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

gulfgal98's picture

The arrogance and hubris we see in our political leaders is because nearly all of them believe in meritocracy. Meritocracy is the new aristocracy and they enable the corporatocracy.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Thank you.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

thanatokephaloides's picture

I truly love how you manage to show us all that the Calvinist Prosperity "Gospel" (which has nothing to do with anything of Jesus's) and Ayn Rand's heartless ideology are alike at their common core -- and for that exact reason equally full of shit!

This point of view (the one you discuss in the essay) needs to be rooted out and extirpated everywhere it is found. The passage from the real Gospel:

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

-- Christian Scriptures, Matthew 7:16 (KJV)

reinforces my proposition, as the "fruits" of the so-called "meritocracy" is the same bad old-fashioned garden variety tyranny that all the other flavors of oligarchy are.

Smile

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

in talking Christian theology, because certain bits of certain theological narratives have a hell of a lot of sway over our culture--for which reason, the discussions are helpful even for people who would never darken the door of a church.

For those of us who might do so, the discussion has even more interest.

You're right that Matt 7:16 certainly applies here--good catch.

I just stuck with Matt. 25

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

sojourns's picture

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Finally got here! As I kinda expected, loved your essay!

The funny thing to me was that if I had “Who is John Galt?” on my wall, I'd have it there to point out that he was a fictional character from a science-fiction novel - like Cthulhu - written from a psychopath's bizarre perspective that without pathologically egocentric selfish people to run things, the world could not survive, whereas in all-too-grim reality, such people are destroying civilization and the world. (Haven't actually read the book, think I may have tried a while back to find that it was one of the few I couldn't get through, though.) But this says a lot about the nutters trying to justify their psychopathic personality traits by using this as an icon.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Navigating is it's own adventure.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

she'd have written bodice-rippers. Bad ones.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

in my head, which is very unusual for me. My memory is bad on some things, but great on the written word. Books, lines in movies, song lyrics...

I think maybe my dislike was getting in the way of remembering accurately.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Actually, my partner knew the person in question, and both that person & their partner were lifelong federal employees--and Libertarians.

I am still gobsmacked by that. Stunned.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver