Atlas Tugged
I saw this Atlas Shrugged shit coming a mile away.
The internet has been crackling of late with the ramblings of rightwingers so outraged at the prospect of paying a slightly higher top marginal tax rate starting in 2011 that they're threatening to "go Galt," like the protagonist of Ayn Rand's unreadable dooorstop Atlas Shrugged. In the book, the nation's "productive class," also known as rich douches, lead by John Galt, a brilliant inventor, stages an exodus from a society that taxes them in order to support the existence of poor moochers. Now a legion of web dorks are trying to start a movement to have the richest Americans reduce their productivity in order to avoid the top marginal rate. There are yeomen among the left=leaning blogosphere who have done a fantastic job of annihilating this idiocy, so I won't bother. I just want to point out that I saw this shit coming down the pike.
When I was working at Barnes and Noble in Wauwatosa earlier this year, Atlas Shrugged started flying off the shelves shortly after Obama won the election. I had hoped that it was because of a school assignment or something, but sure enough, in February a dude asked for the book and I pointed out that it was selling well, hoping he would explain why he wanted it. Sure enough, the dipstick says "It's happening right now." I resisted the urge to smack him across the grill with a copy of Das Kapital.
This was in February, before the budget proposal and its sunsetting of Bush era tax cuts was even released and this fuckstick was already horrified at the prospect of his fantasy quarter million dollar earning power being taxed at the rates they were during the 90s. What makes me want to peel my skin off is the fact that this legion of Randites were gnashing their teeth as soon as Obama was elected, not remembering for a second how in the hell a gay Communist Muslim abortionist who was actually born simultaneously in Kenya and Indonesia was able to get elected president in the first place.
THE ECONOMY HAD JUST COLLAPSED THANKS TO THE VERY LOW-TAX, DEREGULATED REGIME THAT RANDIANS SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The most powerful and influential Randian in America is Alan Greenspan. When I say "Randian," I don't mean the motherfucker read The Fountainhead on summer vacation once, I mean the dude was one of her proteges. He worked with her, he studied at her "institute," she was the signal influence on his intellectual life. He took her insights on the nature of economics (he wrote a letter to the New York Times rebutting their criticism of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, writing,"Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should") and applied them as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. From that post, he endorsed a policy of lax regulation on derivatives trading and even went before Congress in 2004 to tell every homeowner in the country that adjustable rate mortgages were the greatest thing since the invention of the glory hole. This all lead directly to an unprecedented meltdown, and the shit of it is is that Greenspan himself has essentially admitted that his theories were horseshit! He went in front of Congress again a few months ago and said that there was a "flaw in the model" he used to determine "how the world works."
It seems to me that now would be a time for anyone who ever said a kind word about Ayn Rand (or Alan Greenspan for that matter) to keep a low profile to avoid being pelted with rotten vegetables. Instead, you see this defiant embrace of Atlas Shrugged as holy writ. Not just among the conservative blogs, but on the floor of Congress, as well. This points to a fundamental fact about the modern conservative movement, one that helps explain how they're able to continue holding influence over millions of people regardless of the fact that they've been wrong about every major social and economic issue since forever. They cannot be shamed.
posted by matthew christman at 6:14 PM
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