Atlas Shrugged is such a whirling merry-go-round of awfulness that it’s difficult to find a starting point to grab onto...

Before I get into John Galt's long-ass speech, I want to quote from this humorous but for the most part accurate description of the strange entity that is John Galt in Atlas Shrugged in the Uncyclopedia...

...His second career was that of a track laborer at Taggart Transcontinental... There he apparently worked for twelve years, never getting laid. Ever. At all. He took his minimal wage track laborer's salary and used it to finance a multi-thousand dollar lab in his slum apartment and to fund his cross country trips to every industrialist, artist and scientist in America. He not only had the extra cash for these train trips, but plenty of vacation time to take those trains to every state in the union. And plenty of cash to stay in hotels while persuading rich men to give up all they own and live in the wilderness of Colorado. 

Evidence of his staggering super-proselytizing power is evident in that he could take a vacation not only for one month each year, but also any other time he pleased. Stationed in New York City, he could get time off to take a train trip to Pennsylvania, Colorado, Utah...

***

...It was at this point that he was able to persuade Michael "Midas" Mulligan to buy a huge patch of wilderness in Colorado, and hide it with super futuristic ray screens to camouflage it. Then all the formerly rich folk moved there. And with no prior training or ability, were able to live off the land, becoming farmers, sheep herders, cattle ranchers, fishermen, miners, smelters, blacksmiths and a few dozen other highly specialized trades that take years of training and far more than just common sense and an HGTV video series. 

We are to imagine here that they all funded their little homes and factories and businesses in the middle of nowhere themselves, though perhaps Midas loaned out a lot of gold -- gold to people who had no place to spend it but amongst their currently assetless selves. 

Plumbing and electricity found its way there, all the machines and materials pretty much just appearing. Or Midas bought it all and had it super secretly shipped in. And again gave it away to assetless people. Hoping that they'd duplicate two centuries of industrial progress quickly enough to pay him back with interest. And without the thousands of manual laborers necessary for the construction of even a small foundry, the 'men of the mind' constructed power plants, factories, aircraft mechanic shops and -- seriously -- a mint. How? Somehow. Don't start that again!

***

Sometime in all of this, he peeped at Dagny Taggart, Vice President of where he worked. And by "peeped", this is literal. He first spied her legs as she was walking down some stairs in a dress. As most guys know exactly what they are likely to see when staring up stairs while women in dresses walk down, this seems to have been a special hobby of the J-Dawg's. Though as he's not been laid in the entirety of his life, this may perhaps be forgiven, though feared. 

In any case, having seen Dagny's legs, and then the rest of Dagny, he knew -- as does any Randian hero -- everything he needed to know about her philosophy, morality and outlook on life. A Randian hero always knows these things just by looking at faces, and in the J-Dawg's case, he had seen her legs, too, so he also knew how she voted and what her favorite color was. I guess. 

Interestingly, he was aware that his old college buddy Cisco had laid Dagny. And that Cisco was still carrying a torch for her. A torch that Cisco was willing to carry forever, and had carried for at least 12 years, never laying a single other woman... 

***

...J-Dawg, like most sixth graders, shows he likes a girl by torturing her. Fully aware that Dagny is trying to keep the industrialists working, so that her life is easier and the world works well, he deliberately uses his super-proselytizing powers to remove each industrialist that she relies on. 

Of course, if he was just about some noble mission, he'd persuade each industrialist to quit in a more logical order, and at least, do so in order of ease of reaching them - he being confined to a train and his track laborer's salary. That and his foreman is getting tired of the endless and weekly vacation requests. 

Or, if pure and decent love was his motive, he'd persuade Dagny first, then get the rest of the industrialists. But seeing how well the plan "torture first, win her love later" had worked for his buddy Cisco, he decided to do the same.

***

J-Dawg... told Dagny that there were "no rules" but then immediately told her yet another rule. 

• "Our first rule here, Miss Taggart, is that one must always see for oneself." (A "first" implies a "second", last I checked.) 
• "Miss Taggart, we have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind. But we have certain customs which we all observe..." (The word "but" is used to negate what just preceded, especially with the word "all" instead of "most of us" used, and if there are "no rules", what happened to the "first rule" he already told her of?) 
• "I'll warn you now that there is one word that is forbidden in this valley: the word, 'give'." ("warn"? "forbidden"? Wow, sounds pretty free, Kim Jong Galt!) 
• "We have no rules of any kind, except one. When a man took our oath, it meant a single commitment: not to work in his own profession, not to give to the world the benefit of his mind." ("except" negates the concept of "no rules", and note that the "one" rule is different than other "one" rules!)

The "customs" that "all" observe seem rather vague and all encompassing. And to mean whatever J-Dawg wants them to mean at any given time. 

Apparently then Galt's Gulch is a monarchy with the concept of "benign neglect". In other words, if J-Dawg's not paying attention, it's benign, otherwise, words are forbidden, jobs regulated, communications prohibited, learning from bitter experience required, and the love of your life hit upon.

***

Since I'm on this non-original work binge, I might as well quote from this blogger's brilliant critique of Atlas Shrugged:

John Galt’s most impressive feat isn’t that he stopped the motor of the world, it’s that he stopped  the motor of the world in his spare time, during his month-long annual leave from his job as a railroad laborer in Taggart Terminal.  Say, since when did railroad laborers get month-long  vacations?  As Daffy Duck once declared (really), “strong union!”  Not only did America’s unions “bring you the five-day work week,” they gave John Galt the freedom to build his Gulch in the bargain. John Galt is an inspiration and mocking rebuke to every wannabe author convinced that his day job is the only thing between him and that Great Novel inside him.   

You have to love the irony. Almost as much as the irony that Ayn Rand was able to overcome sexism, anti-Semitism and poverty and go to college thanks to the Bolsheviks.

And then this blogger, the Wit Memo, to my delight, calls out that whiny bitch Richard Halley:

It’s through Richard Halley, and her rendering of other artists, that Ayn Rand reveals the most about herself. In reading the following two passages, keep in mind that according to a November 2009 NYer article, Ayn Rand was personally devastated by poor reviews and never quite made it as a screenwriter, her initial dream.  First, right before the Comet train explodes in Taggart Tunnel, Ayn presents a roster of the doomed Looters occupying the train’s sleeper compartments, making clear through hokey, bilious descriptions that they well deserve their imminent, fiery deaths.  She saves her most curious choler for a playwright... 

The man in Roomette 3, Car No. 11, was a sniveling, little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities to the effect that all businessmen were scoundrels.

Jump from there right to Richard Halley’s rant against a certain type of artist, at page 728:

This, Miss Taggart, this sort of spirit, courage and love for truth --- as against a sloppy bum who goes around proudly assuring you that he has almost reached the perfection of a lunatic, because he's an artist who hasn’t the faintest idea what his art work is or means, he's not restrained by such crude concepts as ‘being’ or ‘meaning,’ he’s the vehicle of higher mysteries, he doesn’t know how he created his work or why, it just came out of him spontaneously, like vomit out of a drunkard, he did not think, he wouldn’t stoop to thinking, he just felt it, all he has to do is feel---he feels, the flabby, loose-mouthed, shifty-eyed, drooling, shivering, uncongealed bastard! 

Wit Memo likes to think of that “flabby, loose-mouthed, shifty-eyed, drooling, shivering, uncongealed bastard!” part as the icing on a deliciously diagnostic cake.  

Although my favorite part is the first claus of this paragraph:

“Atlas Shrugged” is such a whirling merry-go-round of awfulness that it’s difficult to find a starting point to grab onto, so we might as well begin with the Bad Guys, the villains.  Selling Big Ideas in a work of fiction requires credible antagonists to be vanquished by heroes exemplifying the Big Ideas, and the antagonists in “Atlas Shrugged” don’t sell because they’re simply not credible.  

"Whirling merry-go-round of awfulness." Perfect.

And how timely - in the latest New Yorker: John Hodgman: Ask Ayn.  Best bit:

I do not approve of the so-called hippies, but I do not approve of any government control over drugs. The government does not have the right to tell any individual what to do with his or her health and life. You probably know that I received a prescription for the stimulant Benzedrine, or “speed.” I can say rationally that it increases my happiness and my productivity. For example, some time ago I went to Studio 54, because I love to dance on speed. I took fifteen speed pills, and I got into a contest with Liza Minnelli over who could roar most like a jaguar. She simply sounded like a stupid lion. 

Then the inside of my head began to sound like a jet engine and so I went to the bathroom. I took maybe ten more speed pills and sat in a stall and wrote a new chapter of “Atlas Shrugged.” Perhaps twenty-five thousand words, all on toilet paper. I cannot include these words in a new edition, alas, because I did not write them so much as encode them on the toilet paper by biting it. 

As I write this, I am drinking speed, and you cannot stop me. You cannot stop me, America, with your altruism and your Alan Alda and your Fresca cans biting at my skin. I shall speed across this country like a great high-speed train and the U.S. shall be forever changed in my wake.

Francisco sat down on the couch beside him, and slowly moved his hand over Rearden's forehead

I admit I skimmed much of chapters 3 - 6 of Atlas Shrugged. As Bennet Cerf said to Rand, when he pleaded with her to edit, she's already hit the same points three or four times. So I didn't miss much by skimming.

The Galt's Gulch chapters are so much more enjoyable than these, because, although the Gulchers are just as implausible as the parasites in the outside world, they are implausible in virtuous ways, like angels. It isn't a constant misery to read about their appearances and their activities.

Whenever the chapters are about moochers/looters/parasites Rand has to inform the reader again that they are stupid, have goofy names, are ugly, fat (she uses the word "fattish" to describe two different parasites on two consecutive pages), flabby, loose-mouthed, cowardly, hypocritical, cruel, stupid, emotional, Buddhists, soy bean growers, sneaky, sloppy, impotent and stupid.

And nobody is spared. James Taggart's wife shows up after 300 pages so that she can be driven to suicide by Taggart - and just when she and Dagny became friends. So Dagny still has no female friends. But then again, she lives in a world where this is how social workers are:

The social worker was a woman whose gray face and gray coat blended with the walls of the district. She saw (James Taggart's wife)... approached her and asked severely, "Are you in trouble?" -and saw one wary eye, the other hidden by a lock of hair, and the face of a wild creature who had forgotten the sound of human voices but listens as to a distant echo, with suspicion, yet almost with hope.
The social worker seized her arm: "It's a disgrace to come to such a state... if you society girls had something to do besides indulging your desires and chasing pleasures, you wouldn't be wandering, drunk as a tramp, at this hour of the night... if you stopped living for your own enjoyment, stopped thinking of yourself and found something higher - "

This is what sends Cherryl Taggart to her death.

And biographer Jennifer Burns was not kidding when she said that Rand blames intellectuals for everything in Atlas Shrugged:

(Rearden) felt an anger too intense to identify except as a pressure within him: it was a desire to kill. 

The desire was not directed at the unknown thug who had sent a bullet through the boy's body, or at the looting bureaucrats who had hired the thug to do it, but at the boy's teachers, who had delivered him, unarmed, to the thug's gun - at the soft assassins of college classrooms who, incompetent to answer the queries of a quest for reason, took pleasure in crippling the young minds entrusted to their care.

Not only incompetent but cruel too. So let's see, social workers are evil, college professors are evil - what's left? Oh yes:

...there was this boy's mother, who had trembled with protective concern over his groping steps, while teaching him to walk... then had sent him to be turned into a tortured neurotic by the men who taught him he had no mind and must never attempt to think.

And would you believe a large segment of intellectuals failed to find much to like in Atlas Shrugged. What's wrong with some people?

So anyway, the world outside of Galt's Gulch is falling apart thanks to all those parasites who didn't express gratitude to Richard Halley for his music, among other thought-crimes. But there are a few bright spots. Like when Hank Rearden, in the Randian Superman tradition, puts himself in Dagny's friend zone before anybody asks him to:

...I know it and accept it: somewhere in the past month you have met the man you love, and if love means one's final, irreplaceable choice, then he is the only man you've ever loved.

After Dagny admits this is true, Rearden responds in a way that is completely alien to everything we've been told about his character. Remember, this is the guy who punched d'Anconia for merely stating that he loved Dagny:

I think I've always known that you would find him. I knew what you felt for me, I knew how much it was, but I knew that I was not your final choice. What you'll give him is not taken away from me, it's what I've never had. I can't rebel against it. What I've had means too much to me - and if I've had it, can never be changed. 

Well how convenient for Dagny. But then again, maybe we already know why it was so easy for Hank and Francisco to give Dagny up without a fight:

It seemed to Rearden that his consciousness shot forward ahead of his body, it was his body that refused to move, stunned by shock, while his mind was laughing, telling him that this was the most natural, the most-to-have-been-expected event in the world...

...you've been torturing yourself for months," said Francisco, approaching him, "wondering what words you'd use to ask my forgiveness and whether you had a right to ask it, if, you ever saw me again - but now you see that it isn't necessary, that there's nothing to ask or to forgive." 

"Yes" said Rearden, the word coming out in an astonished whisper, but by the time he finished his sentence he knew that this was the greatest tribute he could offer. "Yes, I know it." 

Francisco sat down on the couch beside him, and slowly moved his hand over Rearden's forehead. It was like a healing touch that closed the past. 

"There's only one thing I want to tell you." said Rearden "I want you to hear it from me: you kept your oath. You were my friend." 

"I knew that you knew it. You knew it from the first. You knew it, no matter what you thought of my actions. You slapped me because you could not force yourself to doubt it." 

"That..." whispered Rearden, staring at him, "that was the thing I had no right to tell you... no right to claim as my excuse..." 

"Didn't you suppose I'd understand it?" 

"I wanted to find you... I had no right to look for you... And all the time you were - " He pointed at Francisco's clothes, then his hand dropped helplessly and he closed his eyes. 

"I was your furnace foreman," said Francisco, grinning. "I didn't think you'd mind that. You offered me the job yourself." 

"You've been here, as my bodyguard, for two months?" 

"Yes." 

"You've been here, ever since - " He stopped. 

"That's right. On the morning of the day you were reading my farewell message over the roofs of New York, I was reporting here for my first shift as your furnace foreman." 

"Tell me," said Rearden slowly, "that night at James Taggart's wedding, when you said you were after your greatest conquest... you meant me, didn't you?" 

"Of course." 

Francisco drew himself up a little, as if for a solemn task, his face earnest, the smile remaining only in his eyes. "I have a great deal to tell you," he said. "But first, will you repeat a word you once offered me and I... I had to reject, because I knew I was not free to accept?" 

Rearden smiled. "What word, Francisco?" 

Francisco inclined his head in acceptance, and answered, "Thank you, Hank." Then he raised his head. "Now I'll tell you the things I've come to say, but did not finish, that night when I came here for the first time. I think you're ready to hear it." 

"I am." 

The glare of steel from a furnace shot to the sky beyond the window. A red glow went sweeping slowly over the walls of the office, over the empty desk, over Rearden's face as if in salute and farewell.

The chapter ends there with the shooting steel and Hank and Francisco, murmuring each other's names. What better segueway could there be into Chapter Seven, John Galt's Long-ass Speech?

Richard Halley is a whiny little bitch

So when Dagny shows up in Galt's Gulch she finally meets the composer Richard Halley whose whereabouts have been unknown since the first chapter of the book.

There is a moment in the book when a group of representative Randian Supermen sit around explaining why they went Galt, and really they have the same general reasons - but Halley's is the most blatantly petulant. For years the parasites (i.e. most of humankind) failed to get Halley's work but then suddenly they do:

But what I saw in their faces, and in the way they spoke when they crowded to praise me, was the thing I had heard being preached to artists... They seemed to say they owed me nothing, that their deafness had provided me with a moral goal, that it had been my duty to struggle, to suffer, to bear - for their sake - whatever sneers, contempt, injustice, torture they chose to inflict on me, to bear it in order to teach them to enjoy my work, that this was their rightful due and my proper purpose. And then I understood the nature of the looter-in-spirit... I saw the impertinent malice of mediocrity boastfully holding up its own emptiness as an abyss to be filled by the bodies of its betters...

So in other words, on the night that Richard Halley finally received recognition after waiting for it for years, he has an epic tantrum because the entire audience, in his judgment, were the wrong people and they liked his music for the wrong reasons.  They didn't appreciate his greatness sufficiently in spite of their clear adulation. Halley is afraid that they think he wrote his music for them, and he finds this intolerable. And so he takes his piano and goes Galt.

One of the messages that Rand hits again and again is that the true ubermensch is not concerned about what others think, but rather strives for achievement for the pleasure it gives. So you have to wonder why Halley cared whether the parasites didn't like his music in just the right way.

Rand herself, for all her big endless talk, cared very much what the critics thought of Atlas Shrugged. Reportedly she cried over the bad reviews. According to the Burns biography:

...What she dwelled upon was the painful absence of intellectual recognition. Rand longed to be hailed as a major thinker on the American scene.

But as Burns rightly notes:

With her focus on the mind, Rand blamed contemporary intellectuals for every evil in the world, particularly the expanding welfare state. It was true that many prominent intellectuals had supported Communism and socialism, but Rand went far beyond standard conservative rhetoric about traitorous eggheads... Even the scientists in the form of Robert Stadler (character from Atlas Shrugged) came in for criticism. It was not clear if there were any living intellectuals whose endorsement Rand would have accepted.

 Exactly so - if she had gotten good reviews from the intellectuals, would that have been enough? Or would she have decided that they did not like the book in just the right way? In any case, Atlas Shrugged was the last novel she wrote and we can all be thankful for that.

And speaking of Robert Stadler - in the second chapter of Part 3, Dr. Atkinson explains that Stadler is the biggest traitor to Objectivism:

Of any one person, of any single guilt for the evil which is now destroying the world, his was the heaviest guilt.

We know what kind of fate Rand has for all characters in Atlas Shrugged who sin against Objectivism, don't we?

What happened to Ragnar Danneskjold?

As I was reading the first two chapters of Part 3 of Atlas Shrugged, it hit me how often Rand had good opportunities to spice up the book and how she failed because her priority was the message of bad moochers/good Supermen.

For example - Ragnar Danneskjöld is a pirate, stealing US foreign aid supplies constantly - but Rand doesn't describe a single act of piracy. We get tales of his piracies second hand. And it turns out that Rand actually wrote about it - and then took it out of the novel, according to one of her former sycophants Barbara Branden:

Q: I heard that she wrote a whole section of Ragnar Danneskjold's adventures that were cut out, is that true? 

Branden: It wouldn't be a whole section. There were certain things that were cut out. At one point she had a priest as one of the people who goes on strike, but it just didn't work. She wasn't happy with it. He was too much like another character; so she took that out. But there weren't really long sections. I think that was probably the biggest thing she cut out.

Perhaps even Rand realized, after she'd written it, how absurd it was, with Ragnar and his men robbing a US government supply ship without any trouble at all. Also, Rand wasn't as interested in ships as she was in trains, and so couldn't be bothered to learn about them well enough to write about them. Kind of like how she had no clue how the US government worked and so made the moocher government a foggy inscrutability.

The screenwriters for the 3-part movie version of Atlas Shrugged appear to have realized how absurd the pirate scenario was because they left the Nordic hottie out of both parts one and two, and given that part 2 ends with Dagny crashing into Galt's Gulch, it seems unlikely he will suddenly be introduced in part 3.

And then there is the dramatic tension that Rand completely wastes with d'Anconia's search and rescue mission for Dagny. Instead of beginning Part 3 after Dagny crash lands in Galt's Gulch by immediately showing us that Dagny is OK, Rand could have shown us a scene from d'Anconia's point of view as he desperately searched for the woman of his dreams - it could have been exciting and poignant and dramatic. And Rand completely wasted it.

I've already noted the simplistic, fairy tale nature of Atlas Shrugged. That nature is nowhere better illustrated than in an unusually brief speech that Galt gives to Dagny:

"Did it ever occur to you, Miss Taggart ...there is no conflict of interests among men, neither in business nor in trade nor in their most personal desires - if they omit the irrational from their view of the possible and destruction from their view of the practical. There is no conflict, and no call for sacrifice, and no man is a threat to the aims of another - if men understand that reality is an absolute not to be faked, that lies do not work, that the unearned cannot be had, that the undeserved cannot be given... the businessman who wishes to gain a market by throttling a superior competitor, the worker who wants a share of his employer's wealth... they're all wishing facts out of existence..."

Wishing facts out of existence. Talk about lack of self-awareness. Several times denizens of Galt's Gulch refer to the world outside as "hell" which makes the Gulch heaven - and it is - it's a place where everybody behaves themselves and nobody is ever envious and there is never any romantic rivalries.

Rand compared her book to the Bible and in a way she was right - her tale is every bit as plausible as the story of the Flood and Jesus walking on water.

Rand liked to believe that she herself lived in the most rational way possible, and when she and Nathaniel Branden decided to have an affair:

They defended the rightness and the rationality of a full-throttle sexual affair in a series of conversations that went on for weeks. Each was the embodiment of the other's highest values, they pointed out in the language of Atlas Shrugged, and because neither suffered from an irrational mind-body split, they naturally felt sexual longing for each other.

Both spouses gave permission, and then Rand's husband turned to drink and Branden's wife started to have panic attacks. During one attack...

Barbara called Rand's apartment from a pay phone, choking with anxiety and pleading to come over for a little while... In a rage Rand took the phone and railed: "Do you think only of yourself? Am I completely invisible to you?" The older woman refused to let her join them, pointing out that no one had helped her in times of trouble.* "Why should I be victimized for Barbara's problems?" she said to Branden afterward. 

As always, Rand defines "rational" as not giving a shit about anybody else's feelings but her own. It is truly appalling that so many otherwise sane, non-evil people take this woman's novels as the Word of God - much like she herself did.

*Completely untrue - Rand was helped by many people, which is detailed throughout the two biographies, including Cecil B. DeMille who gave Rand a job in Hollywood when she showed up with no work experience; Rand's Chicago relatives who let her live with them rent-free for six months when she first came to America; and even the Bolsheviks. Thanks to their policy of allowing women and Jews into university - and making universities tuition free - Rand was able to go to college. But claiming nobody helped her is exactly the kind of thing Ayn Rand would do, especially while denying comfort to someone in emotional distress because you're screwing her husband.

Obama at his very best

Low-keyed, empathetic, honest and, since we still live in a country full of deranged racists, incredibly brave.

I am loving my president today. No matter what disagreements I may have with him, I have complete respect for this man.

The Lord of the Rings, by Ayn Rand

So part 3 of Atlas Shrugged. I'm already done with the first two chapters! Eight more to go!

At first I was reminded of The Wizard of Oz when Dagny wakes up in Galt's Gulch after her airplane chase above Colorado.

But soon it struck me that Galt's Gulch is much more like a place from another novel, a novel with a cult-like following to which Atlas Shrugged has already been compared:

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.

As much as I love that quote - and I first read it via the Mighty Krug-man, I have to disagree because both novels involve orcs: Rand has so dehumanized the characters who stand in the way of her personal Triumph of the Will that they are very similar to orcs - in their physical unsightliness and stupidity and especially their instinctual hatred of anything good.

And the people living in Galt's Gulch are every bit as realistic as the Elves in Rivendell, and John Galt is every bit as noble and in control of his emotions as Elrond. The Gulchers only live to work - either sustenance labor or their real work which is being the greatest musician, or greatest surgeon, or greatest actress or greatest metal smelter or whatever, of all time. And they never quarrel and they are never jealous of each other. Very like the Elves, although Tolkien's Elves are more likely to sing than smelt metal. Almost all the metal-smelting in the LOTR gets done by dwarves.

And as in the Mines of Moria in Middle Earth, Galt's Gulch too has a voice-activated door. Although instead of the simple Elvish "say friend and enter" Galt makes you recite his anti-Communist Manifesto: "I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man nor ask another man to live for mine."

Rand's characters never tire of being humorless and dreary.

Like Frodo, waking up in Rivendell after his injuries, Dagny wakes up in The Gulch and meets up with old friends while healing.

Francisco d'Anconia shows up - he was missing for a little bit because he was out trying to rescue Dagny who, for all anybody outside of the Gulch knew, died in an airplane crash. Because although John Galt is able to create a deflector shield to hide the entirety of Galt's Gulch, and a voice operated door and a zero-point energy motor, etc. etc., he can't figure out some way to communicate with Gulchers outside the Gulch.

D'Anconia's thrilled to see Dagny alive and in Galt's Gulch and immediately tells her that although he has been celibate for twelve years because she's the woman of his dreams, he's perfectly OK with her choosing Rearden over himself.

Well within the context of this book it makes perfect sense: in a world where the bourgeoisie collectivize their own factory then surely it's no big deal if a handsome man at the peak of his super-competent virility puts himself, without anybody suggesting he does so, in the friendzone.

And the bitter irony of it all is that although d'Anconia thinks he's stepping aside for Rearden, Dagny has summarily dumped Hank in favor of John Galt.

Come to think of it, The Lord of the Rings was actually more realistic when it came to romantic triangles - Aragorn clearly feels much worse about having to reject Éowyn because he's already betrothed to Arwen than Dagny ever feels about rejecting d'Anconia. And Éowyn is clearly much more upset about being rejected than d'Anconia is.

The men of Galt's Gulch, although they are impressed that Dagny has shown up - she's famous, especially in the Gulch -  don't seem to express any sexual interest in her and that's odd because the only women mentioned in Galt's Gulch besides the Dagster are Kay Ludlow, the most beautiful actress in the world - who is married to Ragnar Danneskjöld (I'm glad his manly beauty isn't going to waste as the focus of Rearden's imagination only) and "the fishwife" because she fishes, and an unnamed mother of two boys - so we can assume she's in a monogamous marriage in the land of Galt's Gulch. So there are two single women in the Gulch and one of them is called The Fishwife.

So what's a single attractive railroad executive got to do around here to get a little Übermenschen action?

But would you expect wolf-whistles in Rivendell, where the male:female ratio is about the same?

So I'm musing over the similarities between Rivendell and Galt's Gulch and I'm thinking how funny it would be if somebody did a mash-up between LOTR and AS - and abracadabra, say friend and enter, somebody already did - and it is hysterical!

Ayn Rand's The Lord of the Rings begins like this:

Page 1: 

When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was a great stir in Hobbiton. Friends and relations gathered to pay tribute to this brave individualist. Bilbo was rich and therefore a good person, having gained wealth from a mysterious journey many years before. But the party-goers’ thoughts were occupied with a different mystery, one that had nothing to do with the source of Bilbo’s wealth. There was another question on the lips of the Tooks, the Sackville-Bagginses, the Brandybucks. And that question was this—
             “WHO IS SAURON BARAD-DÛR?”

The second-most funniest part is:

“We must hurry,” said Gandalf. “Already the statists and the welfare bums are moving across the land — a vast, vile tide of compromise and mendacity. There is not a second to spare!” 

“But wait,” said Frodo. He held the ring up to the light. “This is a most interesting metallic alloy.” 

“It is a mixture of aluminum, mercury, lead, and bromide,” Gandalf replied.

“Of all the exciting things in the world! A metallic alloy!” 

“With an 0.0003% ad-mixture of strontium,” Gandalf added. 

“You must tell me more!” 

Gandalf nodded. He exhaled a cloud of smoke from his pipe. 

“Certainly. …Shall we discuss the metallic alloy for, say, three hundred pages or so? The actual plot of the book can wait.” 

“I insist that we do so!”
_____ 

Page 383: 

“…And after the strontium smelting process is complete; well, that is that, as they say.” 

Frodo glanced out the window. Winter had turned to Spring. “How absolutely engrossing that was,” he murmured. 

“Well!” said Gandalf. He put his hands on his knees and rose with a creaking sound. “Shall we be on our way?” 

Frodo wrinkled his brow in thought. “Actually, I did have one or two more questions about the metallic alloy…”
_____ 

Page 803: 

“…And the distribution center for the ball-bearing castings used in the rail-line in order to transport the strontium to the subsidiary in Jakarta… that distribution center — as I say — is located in… Chicago.” 

“Fascinating,” murmured Frodo. A light autumn wind blew through the tree branches, setting them tapping against the windowpane, reminding him that time was of the essence. “Well! Shall we be on our way, then?”

But the funniest part is this (this is Sauron talking):

"Is it ever proper to help another man? No; and also give me my Ring back. I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man because I want my Ring back…  I have many, many more thoughts on this subject. In fact I have 33,300 more words worth of thoughts on the subject. Using this magical palantír, you, Peregrin Took, son of Paladin Took, may see these words now.”

And then to my wonderment and merriment, the author provides a link to a parody of the endless speech that John Galt delivers in Atlas Shrugged. I haven't gotten to that part yet, and so I don't know how much Sauron's speech differs from John Galt's, it could just be a replace-all with "the Ring" throughout. But somebody doing this much work for the sake of an Atlas Shrugged parody is impressive.

Who is Bennet Snerf?

I had a vague idea who Bennett Cerf was before I read Atlas Shrugged, but I certainly couldn't have picked him out of a line-up. In the Heller biography Cerf comes off as cynical and a bit of a trickster. He was working at Random House at the time Rand was shopping around for a publisher for AS - she was dissatisfied with Bobbs-Merrill, the publishers of The Fountainhead:

She explained that Atlas represented a moral defense of capitalism and contained a complete, unique and radically anti-Left philosophy... Cerf surprised her by announcing, "I find your political philosophy abhorrent." But he added, "If we publish you Miss Rand, nobody is going to try to censor you. You write anything you darn please and we'll publish it."

The co-director of Random House, Donald Klopfer, thought Rand was "wacky as a fruitcake."

A couple of weeks ago I was commenting on the fact that after Hank Rearden's Big Speech somebody tells him they heard him on the radio, but then when Hank meets up with Francisco d'Anconia he somehow forgets this because when d'Anconia says he heard his speech, Rearden asks him how this is possible, he wasn't in the room in which he made the speech. And I wondered at the time if Rand had any editors.

And the answer is no, not really.

Not only would Random House not censor Atlas Shrugged, it barely edited Atlas Shrugged:

(Editor Hiram) Haydn was ambivalent, at best, about its ethics and politics... he had doubts about the the novel's "drab" prose style and core ideas... he suggested a number of cuts, including cuts in John Galt's speech. When Rand refused he appealed to Bennett Cerf... (Cerf went to Rand and said) "Nobody's going to read that speech. You've said it all three or four times before... you've got to cut it." Answering with a comment that became publishing legend, she said, "Would you cut the Bible?" With that, Cerf threw up his hands, but cagily asked her to forfeit seven cents in royalties per copy to pay for the additional paper it would take to print the uncut speech and other long passages... She agreed... Haydn resigned himself to being an "apprentice copy editor" who helped her search for and remove words within a paragraph that rhymed "an obsession with her."

So for the promise of fat profits Bennett Cerf enabled Rand's megalomania and allowed this hideous un-edited half-wit novel to proceed.

And now it's time for What's My Part with Bennet Snerf, Arlene Frantic and Cookie Monster.

The first of 4 monologues

One down three more to go. Luckily I gave myself the entire summer to get these videos done. I think Amanda here did a great job including a specifically Northern Irish accent.

Hopefully it's not too obvious that this park that we shot the video in, which is across the street from where I work, is a teeny tiny park, and I just shot from every possible angle. Seriously the entire park is maybe three times the size of my living room.

In which the bourgeoisie collectivize their own factory

Of all the crazy illogical things that happen in Atlas Shrugged maybe the craziest thing is this tale told by a bum Dagny has just saved from certain death:

Well there was something that happened at that plant where I worked for twenty years. It was when the old man died and his heirs took over. There was three of them, two sons and a daughter, and they brought a new plan to run their factory. They let us vote on it too and everybody - almost everybody - voted for it.

The moocher US government in Atlas Shrugged is so incompetent that it can't even force Communism on factory owners - the factory owners have to collectivize themselves!

Naturally the collective becomes a moronic hellscape. The point of the story is to explain who is John Galt, but The Bum has to ramble on for page after page to get around to that. It was unpleasant getting through his story, and made even worse by Rand's own special brand of cruelty:

There was an old guy... who had one hobby: phonograph records. Well they didn't give him any allowance for records - 'personal luxury' - they called it. But at that same meeting, Millie Bush, somebody's daughter, a mean ugly little eight-year-old was voted a pair of gold braces for her buck teeth... the old guy turned to drink instead... one night he came staggering down the street, saw Millie Bush, swung his fist and knocked all her teeth out. Every one of them.

And thus we learn the dangers of socialized medicine.

Now since the old guy wasn't given an "allowance" for the innocent pleasure of listening to records (and you just know his favorite composer was Dagny's favorite composer Richard Halley) you may ask, well how did he get the money for alcohol, since this closed-system collective was operating in the middle of a capitalist currency-based society? Rand has an answer for you, my friend:

Don't ask how we got the money for it. When all the decent pleasures are forbidden, there's always ways to get the rotten ones.

So there you go, you parasitic moocher. Don't ask for a reason-based explanation for how, although the old guy isn't actually forbidden from buying records but instead is just denied the money, is nevertheless able to find money to buy alcohol. Who do you think you are, questioning your highest value?*

And then there is the matter of an old guy coming down the street encountering an unaccompanied eight-year-old at night. But I guess in a world run by self-looters that's how things are. So this old drunk guy punches a little girl in the face so hard that it knocks out all her teeth. Every one of them.

There have been boxers who have lost teeth in fights. Boxers who were punched very hard by very strong, non-drunk boxers. And they lose only a few teeth at a time, at most. If you were punched in the face hard enough to knock out every one of your teeth, your brain would be liquified, gold braces or no.

And Rand thinks that this eight year old girl deserved to be viciously assaulted because the collective decided to pay for her orthodontistry and because she was mean - and as we know an eight-year-old is fully responsible for their ethical beliefs and behavior and that's why we always try them as adults.

But most importantly the little girl was ugly. And in the world of Atlas Shrugged that makes her pure evil.

And lest you think that Dagny Taggart is guilty of compassion for a scummy old bum trying to mooch a free ride off her train, be assured, Dagny had her reasons to spare his life. The bum is about to be ejected from the train "to his certain death" when suddenly:

It was (the bum's) laundered collar and this gesture for the last of his possessions (a small dirty bundle) - the gesture of a sense of property - that made her feel an emotion like a sudden burning twist within her. "Wait" she said... let him be my guest."

That emotion was probably "empathy" but since Rand has so little experience with it, it strikes her as a "burning."

And if the bum had lost his bundle and had tucked in his collar Dagny would have gladly allowed him to be turned into coyote food.

Holy shit I hate Ayn Rand. And so apparently does either the screenwriter or the director of Dirty Dancing. Suddenly I want to watch this movie.

And thank my lack of God I am finally on Part 3 of this sociopathic wet dream of a novel with only ten more chapters to go.

*Ayn Rand is your highest value

Who is Eddie Lampert?

Via the Mighty Krug-Man comes this report about the Ayn Rand-worshipping Sears executive:

An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance. 

Instead, the divisions turned against each other—and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources. (Many declined to go on the record for a variety of reasons, including fear of angering Lampert.)

David Atkins at Digby's Hullabaloo remarks:

Need I mention that Lampert is a big fan of Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged? Read the whole article. It's amazing. 

I think a lot of progressives don't understand that we're not just dealing with a bunch of big money boys who want to destroy government and social safety nets to benefit business interests. We're dealing with a full-fledged cult that is just as willing to destroy business as it is to destroy government. 

It would actually be more comforting to believe that economic self-interest is driving all this foolishness. Self-interest can be negotiated with, intimidated or shamed. Destructive religious cults are much, much scarier. There is no pleading, bargaining or reasoning with them.

The people who like Atlas Shrugged

Likes to imagine he's Ragnar Danneskjold,
the Norwegian terror of the high seas.

This Onion story 62-Year-Old With Gun Only One Standing Between Nation And Full-Scale Government Takeover is meant to parody gun nuts, but I think it could be applied equally to most libertarians (and there's plenty of libertarian/gun nut cross-overs) - especially the kind that like Atlas Shrugged.

Those are the kind of people who fantasize about their own immense power in the face of an incompetent gubmint. Much like the Norwegian terror of the high seas Ragnar Danneskjöld, who doesn't attack US military vessels in Atlas Shrugged  - not because he'd end up dead or in custody along with his band of reverse-Robin Hood merry men, but rather on principle - because in his considered opinion only aid supplies to poor people are worth looting justly appropriating because taxes.

And these people really do exist. There are those who think Atlas Shrugged was a brilliant work of art and a brilliant work of philosophy. You can read all about them at The Atlas Society.

And they recently had a Summit in Washington DC, and just as in Galt's Gulch, the ratio of male to female speakers is hugely lopsided in favor of men.

William R. Thomas writes:

Writing a good novel is very difficult in itself. A novelist needs to create well-realized characters, put them in a convincing setting, and make of their interactions a plot that is believable, interesting, and moving. That people remember Atlas Shrugged for its story and its characters is a testament to the job Ayn Rand did as a novelist.

But Atlas Shrugged fails in every particular here, especially the "convincing setting" and the "believable", "interesting" and "moving."

You really have to wonder what planet Objectivists come from.

As always Melissa Harris-Perry has excellent insight and analysis

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mozart was a Red

Wow - fantastic! I got the second Rand biography, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right by Jennifer Burns and through it discovered that Murray Rothbard wrote a one-act play parodying Ayn Rand's cult. And Murray was not just a second-hander - he lived it. Nathaniel Branden was his "therapist" and did to Rothbard what he apparently did to others of his patients - spilled some confidential information from his therapy sessions when denouncing him for his sins against Objectivism. Rothbard was also accused of plagarism by Rand in a conference paper he wrote.

(Rothbard) was shaken to the core. He scrawled a lengthy memo to himself, outlining the nine "flaws of Randianism" and a separate list of Randian heresies... Looking again at Whittaker Chamber's review of Atlas Shrugged, Rothbard discovered he had been warned. He sent Chambers a second, appreciative letter apologizing for his first attack and marveling at Chambers' ability to identify Rand's dictatorial nature.

Although it must be said that Rothbard was also a right-wing extremist who diverged from Rand on one of the things she got right - she was opposed to racism. But Rothbard supported David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan who was running for governor of Louisiana:

...According to Reason, Rothbard advocated right-wing populism in part because he was frustrated that mainstream thinkers were not adopting the libertarian view and suggested that Duke and former Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy were models for an "Outreach to the Rednecks" effort that could be used by a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition. In discussing what he called the "hysteria" against Duke, whom he noted was newly converted to Christianity, Rothbard described "right wing populism" as opposition to a "statist world dominated by a ruling elite, consisting of a coalition of Big Government, Big Business, and various influential special interest groups". 

But back to Mozart was a Red. It was performed at a 60th birthday celebration for Rothbard in 1986. A recording of the performance is actually available on Youtube - although the cast was clearly under-rehearsed and the sound quality is wretched, with lots of screeching feedback.

In his commentary on the play, Justin Raimondo wrote:

In her nonfiction tirades, Rand quotes mainly from her own works; this was due not only to her inflated self-estimate, but also to a colossal ignorance. She read almost nothing but detective novels, and her followers, usually considerably younger, were even worse. Although her philosophy of rational self-interest was an eccentric modern variation on a much older philosophical tradition, the only precedent she acknowledged was Aristotle... 

...although Murray was an agnostic, his wife, JoAnn, was (and is) a Presbyterian. Apprised of this, Rand grilled Joey on the reasons for her religious faith and suggested that she read a pamphlet put out by the Randians that “disproved” the existence of God.
When Joey refused to recant her heresy, Murray was told that he had better find himself a more “rational” mate. That was enough for Murray. The break was finalized by his formal “trial” held by the Randian Senior Collective, which Murray declined to attend.

The text of this very short play is posted in various places online so there doesn't seem to be any legal restrictions against my posting it here.

A Morality Play in One Act
By Murray Rothbard

SCENE:

The living room of a modern luxury apartment on New York's upper East Side. The walls are a lush, tropical green. The sofa and several armchairs and sectional chairs are all oversized, so designed that no one can sit comfortably in them. Sitting back, no one under eight feet tall could place his feet on the floor. Therefore, for anyone in the room, there are only two alternatives:

to sit perched precariously on the edge of the sofa or chair, clinging to one of the arms for support, or
to curl up in it, feet pressed against thigh and upholstery.

To CARSON SAND, owner of the apartment, this choice presents no problem. She is now curled up in one of the sectionals, cigarette holder raised aloft. This is to symbolize mocking contempt of, and hostility toward, men, and therefore rationality and high romantic standards.

CARSON is a little woman with straight hair seeping down one side of her face. Her figure can only be described as protoplasmic, amorphous; her age, too, is indeterminate, but is presumably in the fifties. She wears a shapeless suit with military shoulders, in the height of fashion (Moscow, 1925). Her eyes are beady and intent, and when she talks, she is invariably curled up, ready to strike.

CARSON skyrocketed to fame as an author on the basis of a novel, eagerly bought for its graphic rape scene. She believes its popularity demonstrates the mass devotion to her philosophical message.

Sitting at right, also curled, are her two disciples, JONATHAN and GRETA. They are in their 20s but already stamped with the arrogance of their patron. JONATHAN's nose is permanently tilted at a 45-degree angle from horizontal and his straight brown hair is heightened in front by a blond bleach.

GRETA is a pretty blonde, with dark skin and a general feline air. Although bearing no physical resemblance to CARSON, she also affects the same type of cigarette holder, and the same brand of tiny matches as the latter. She does not yet wield the holder with quite the same flourish .

On sofa at extreme right, GEORGE KELLY lies sleeping. GEORGE is tall and thin, his once-handsome face permanently marked in an expression of great gentleness, languor, and boredom. GEORGE is CARSON's husband. At center back, is a deluxe radio-phonograph, 27-inch TV set. Curled up in front of the set is a luxurious black and grey cat, ALFONSO III.

On top of the mantelpiece, next to the set is a framed double photograph of JONATHAN and GRETA, autographed to CARSON.

GRETA has inscribed: "Thank you, CARSON, for giving me a round universe." JONATHAN wrote, archly: "To the woman with the beautiful cat."

Enter: KEITH HACKLEY, a pleasant, earnest, well-dressed young man of 25. Hackley, a graduate student in history, walks in hesitantly from left. GEORGE, awakening, leaps to his feet, and approaches.

GEORGE: Here, let me, please.

GEORGE leads KEITH into the room.

GEORGE: Keith Hackley — Jonathan, Greta, and … Carson Sand.

JONATHAN and GRETA nod their heads imperceptibly. CARSON extends her arm in a gesture of welcome and points to the sofa where KEITH sits down. GEORGE resumes his sleep at right.

CARSON (Speaking in a strong Russian accent, e.g., her t's sound like s's): Well, Mr. Hackley, I'm glad you could come.

KEITH: Thank you, ah (hesitantly for, is she Miss or Mrs.?) … Miss Sand. (After a pause) I'd like to tell you how pleased I am that you wanted to see me.

CARSON: Oh, Keith, how could I not ask you to come after sending me such a splendid letter about my novel?

KEITH: Oh, it was really nothing.

CARSON (annoyed): Oh?

KEITH (a little puzzled): I'd like to say, though, Miss Sand, that your book was an inspiration. The Brow of Zeus was one of the finest novels I've read in years.

(Exclamations of dismay and disbelief from JONATHAN and GRETA. JONATHAN and GRETA, by the way, speak in a portentous singsong with a trace of Russian-Canadian accent.)

GRETA (sharply): Mr. Hackley, did you say one of the finest novels?

KEITH (puzzled): Why … yes.

JONATHAN (with tightly controlled rancor): Do you care to offer us the name of any novel you've read in years that even remotely compares to The Brow of Zeus?

KEITH (sweating): Well — I — really don't—

JONATHAN: If there is one thing we cannot tolerate, Mr. Hackley, it is imprecision of language. You said one of the finest novels — what were the others?

KEITH: Well, I — Hemingway was rather impress—

JONATHAN and GRETA (in unison): Hemingway! Good God! (then quickly):

JONATHAN: (in a low, rapid ritualistic mutter) Of course, you know that when we say "God," we do not imply agreement with the concept. We are merely using the term as a strong, idiomatic metaphor.

CARSON (keeping her inner fury in close rein): Oh, Keith, can't you see Hemingway's death-premises in every line that man writes?

KEITH: Well, man's struggle against the bull, the moment of—

JONATHAN: Hemingway is antilife, antimind, antireality.

CARSON (looking fondly at JONATHAN): Jonathan, Greta. Come, I think we should give Mr. Hackley more of a chance. After all, he is a lover of The Brow of Zeus and that's a big plus.

GRETA: Yes, you're right, Carson.

JONATHAN: Of course, Carson.

CARSON (turning to KEITH): Keith, would you like a cigarette? Here, this is a particularly rational brand.

KEITH (a bit bemused): "Rational?" (A slight pause) Oh, I'm sorry, thank you. I don't smoke.

(Exclamations of disapproval from JONATHAN and GRETA.)

GRETA (lashing out): You don't smoke! Why not?

KEITH (taken back): Well, uh … because I don't like to.

CARSON (in scarcely controlled fury): You don't like to! You permit your mere subjective whims, your feelings (this word said with utmost contempt) to stand in the way of reason and reality?

KEITH (sweating again): But surely, Miss Sand, what other possible grounds can you have for smoking than simply liking it?

(Expressions of fury, dismay from GRETA, JONATHAN, and CARSON, "Oh!" "Ah!" etc.)

JONATHAN (bounding up): Mr. Hackley, Carson Sand never, never does anything out of her subjective feelings; only out of reason, which means the objective nature of reality. You have grossly insulted this great woman, Carson Sand, you have abused her courtesy and her hospitality. (sits down)

KEITH: But … but … what possible reason can there be … ?

CARSON: Mr. Hackley, why are you evading the self-evident fact? Smoking is a symbol of the fire in the mind, the fire of ideas. He who refuses to smoke is therefore an enemy of ideas and of the mind.

KEITH: Symbol? But then a match is even more of a symbol—

(Further expressions of fury, anger, exasperation.)

JONATHAN (bounding up, crossing over to KEITH): Enough! How dare you mock Carson Sand in that hooligan manner? You wouldn't mock God!

CARSON (once again in tight control): Wait, Jonathan, let us wait before passing final judgment. Perhaps his problem is on a deeper level.

JONATHAN: Of course, Carson. (JONATHAN crosses back, sits down)

CARSON (turning to the thoroughly nettled KEITH): Now, Keith, and this is very important, are you a rationalist?

KEITH (again puzzled): Well, I — I, that's a very difficult—

CARSON: Come, come, do you hold reason as your absolute?

KEITH: Well, yes, but I — that depends on how you define rationalism. I would think—

JONATHAN (bounding up, tossing his long hair aloft, and pacing up and down): A rationalist is a man who lives exclusively by his reason, which means by the power of his mind to grasp reality, which means by the power of his mind to think, which means by his own power to think, which means—

CARSON: Wait, Jonathan. (Jonathan stops pacing, sits down again.)Well, Keith are you a rationalist?

KEITH: Well, I approve of reason, and — and thinking, of course, but I'm not quite sure what—

CARSON (temper rising): Mr. Hackley, we are being very patient with you because we extend every courtesy and every leeway to a lover of The Brow of Zeus. Let me put it this way: are you a mystic? (This question snapped out with flashing eyes, and hatred in her voice.)

KEITH: A mystic? Why no, I don't believe in this Zen Buddhist business, or—

CARSON (squirming with indignation): Oh! Really, Keith, I am trying to hold a serious conversation with you.

KEITH: Well, yes, but—

CARSON: Please give the courtesy of not interrupting me in the middle of a thought.

KEITH: I'm sorry, I—

CARSON: Surely, you must realize I'm not talking about the twisted, leprous, Asiatic bum sitting somewhere on a diaper — that's only the most obvious, the most blatant kind of mystic.

KEITH: I know; Los Angeles is full of queer—

JONATHAN: Mr. Hackley, why do you persist, again and again, in conscious and deliberate evasion of Miss Sand's frank and open questions? We both know you're running like hell.

KEITH: Look here, I don't know what you're talk—

CARSON: Keith, to put it simply, a mystic is someone who allows something else to come between his reason and his reality, who places something higher than his reason. Do you see?

(There is an uncomfortable pause.)

GEORGE (softly, lifting his head a bit from the sofa at right): Are you religious, Keith?

KEITH (casting a grateful glance in George's direction): Oh, am I religious? I see — well, not terribly. I go to church twice a year, Christmas and Easter, you know — but religion plays a very small part in my life.

(The silence now is deeper, more ominous. A hissing sound comes from GRETA's direction.)

GRETA: Only twice a year, he says.

(GRETA turns to JONATHAN)

GRETA: You know where that comes from …

JONATHAN: Of course. There's a passage on Page 236, Paragraph 2 of Zeus that explains this syndrome perfectly.

GRETA: Yes. And notice how he tries to curry favor with us and with the mystics.

JONATHAN: Of course.

KEITH: Look here, I didn't know that you people felt so bitterly about religion.

CARSON: Keith, our feelings do not count here at all. Our reason tells us that religion is evil.

JONATHAN (bounding up and pacing): Religion is evil, which means antimind, which means antilife, which means antireason, which means antireality. (He resumes his seat.)

CARSON (looking fondly at JONATHAN): Well done, comrade.

KEITH: Well, look, I told you that I don't take religion very seriously.

(The pause that now settles over the room is deathly.)

CARSON (explodes, agitated. She leaps up): My God, we are talking about life and death matters and he doesn't … Oh!! (CARSON sinks back on the chair, covering her head in fury.)

GRETA (in voice of low menace): Mr. Hackley, do you take anything seriously?

(Another long pause.)

(KEITH starts to get up to leave. CARSON summons up the last reserves of her patience and stops him.)

CARSON: Wait, Mr. Hackley, perhaps we can approach your problem through aesthetics. What composers do you like, for example?

KEITH (sinks back, a bit relieved, feeling erroneously on safer ground): Well, the usual, you know. I'm not much of a musician—

CARSON (quickly): That's all right. That doesn't matter. Your taste reveals your musical premises.

KEITH (puzzled): Oh? Well, I like Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, the standard—

GRETA: Oh!

CARSON: Keith, how could you? I, who know the depth of depravity to which most men sink, even I have to ask myself, how can they? Beethoven, Mozart, who reek of naturalism, whose whole work tramples on values, whose every note displays the malevolent-universe premise.

KEITH (stunned): Malev—?

CARSON: Oh, Keith, can't you see the hatred of life in every bar of their music?

JONATHAN: Mr. Hackley, you told Carson in your letter that you liked The Brow of Zeus, because it opposes collectivism and totalitarianism.

KEITH (lights up): Yes, yes, exactly. I—

JONATHAN: Well, how in the name of reason can't you see that a composer like Mozart, on the malevolent-universe premise, is on the same premise as the collectivists that you claim to despise? They are all part of the antimind, antilife Enemy.

KEITH (stunned again): Are— are you saying that Mo— Mozart was a collectivist?

CARSON: Oh, not in that very primitive kind of way. But the system of premises interconnect, on a deeper, and therefore on a more important level. Do you see?

(KEITH, more and more convinced that he must get out of this place quickly, starts to get up again.)

(GEORGE KELLY sits up, intercepts him in a kindly tone.)

GEORGE: Keith, we always ask every new person we meet who is his favorite character in The Brow of Zeus. Who was yours?

KEITH: Oh, I liked Joey Fontana.

CARSON, GRETA, JONATHAN (in unison): Joey Fontana!!!

KEITH: Yes, why?

CARSON (under tight control): Why did you prefer him, Keith?

KEITH: Well, he was on the good side, for freedom, and he was a nice, bright, good-natured, amiable fellow.

CARSON: Ohhhh!! (Unable to stand the proceedings any longer, CARSON rushes up, runs offstage at right.)

GRETA (in tone of deadly menace): Joey Fontana! The very image of the nice, third-rate, common man. And you picked him over a hero like Kyle Crane or Sebastian del Rey!

KEITH: Well, they were all right; they just seemed a bit wooden and one dimensional to me. They—

JONATHAN (bounds to his feet, comes to center and declaims at KEITH): Enough! Keith Hackley, you have had the rare privilege of spending an evening with the greatest minds you can ever hope to meet: Carson Sand, Greta Landsdowne, and myself. And above all you have met Carson Sand, the greatest, the most original mind of our time and of all times, the greatest human being who has ever lived or shall live. And how have you treated this privilege? Above all, how have you treated Carson Sand? I have sat here while you have committed a series of irrational, unforgivable sins against Carson Sand. You interrupted her continually, hardly giving her a chance to speak; you openly evaded every question which Carson or I put to you. You have tried to kowtow to us and to the mystics, to us and to Mozart, to us and to all the depravities of our society.

You criticized, instead of asking questions. You mocked like a hooligan, instead of showing proper reverence. And to whom? To this woman who has brought to the world the knowledge that A is A, and that 2 and 2 equal 4. And finally, after your rudeness had driven this woman with the patience of Job from this room, you capped your crimes by saying that your favorite character is Joey Fontana, the mediocre, the nice guy (with absolute contempt), the secondhander. Thereby, Keith Hackley, you damned yourself forevermore. You have made your choice, Keith Hackley, and therefore you leave me with but one alternative: to demand that you leave this house never to return.

(KEITH staggers up, pale, shaken. Goes to the door. There, GEORGE KELLY comes over to hand Keith his hat and coat.)

KEITH: Mr. Kelly, forgive me, but you seem like a nice fellow. How can you stand all this?

GEORGE (softly): Oh, this sort of thing goes on almost every night. You get used to it.

KEITH: But how can you—?

GEORGE: Oh, after a few years you get to overlook it. You take it easy, you sleep on the couch, say "Yes" once in a while. Hell, it's a living.

Curtain falls.

THE END

Mikki Kendall doesn't remember smearing me

So Mikki Kendall and her gang of haters decided to twitter about what I wrote about Kendall. Kendall claims she barely remembers me - probably because she says nasty things about so many people so often she lost track of them all.





She has a special hatred for white feminists though. Here she implies that Amanda Marcotte stole the work of WOC bloggers. This was after Marcotte defended Kendall's Salon article.

It's easy for Kendall to forget about me, but it's hard for me to forget Kendall because her Tumblr mob lies about me show up whenever you Google my name. The reason she lied about me was because I disagreed with her about John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I said that they were trying to make a feminist point when they wrote this song back in the early 1970s, and in fact they were both anti-racists. And that is all it took for Kendall and her mob to smear me as a "racist" - I've opposed racism my entire life.

I did a little research to see what is wrong with Mikki Kendall and her Tumblr mob and I discovered that Mikki Kendall is not only a reckless liar but also a very bad journalist.

But she doesn't seem to be a full-time journalist -  Kendall's full-time job seems to be to say nasty things about people on Tumblr and Twitter.

What I'm wondering is who pays her to attack people all day long?

It turns out I have mutual friends with some of Kendall's friends on Facebook - you can see one of them on in the screen shot below. I had a peek at the profiles of some of Kendall's friends and it turns out at least one of them likes the Beatles. Considering that John Lennon was a member of the Beatles, and according to Mikki Kendall, John Lennon is a racist, by Mikki Kendall's logic one of her friends is a racist. 

Mikki Kendall's belief that she can launch ethics-free and stupid attacks against anybody for any reason, using lies and smears and innuendo will come back to haunt any organization that allows her to operate as its spokesperson or writer.

Thanks to social media the world is a tiny place. Maybe Mikki Kendall should think twice before smearing some "broad."

How things work in Florida

So this is how it works in Florida:

• You see person A walking.
• Police dispatcher says don't follow. 
• You follow person A, carrying your gun.
• You get into a fight with person A.
• You shoot person A.
• You plead "self-defense."
• You go free.