I know I’m supposed to write about Paul Ryan, because he’s the new media brand, but I’m having trouble getting the guys in the Give-A-Shit Department on board.
Here’s what you need to know about our new vice-presidential hottie:
1. He wants to lower Mitt Romney’s tax rate to 0.82 percent
2. He opposes contraception
3. He plays a serious politician on television
***
About the only thing I find genuine and revelatory when it comes to Ryan is his devotion to Ayn Rand. He tries to play this down, because Rand was an atheist, which ranks just below Communist on the GOP’s political blacklist. But Ryan worshipped Rand. He once gave a speech at a convention of Rand followers bragging that he went into public service because of her. He also required his congressional staffers to read her novels so as to learn about the free market.
Rand’s sway over the male adolescent mind is not especially subtle. Her fairytales always feature some badass rich guy battling a bunch of nebbishes who spend their hours devising new impediments to progress and pleasuring welfare queens with golden vibrators. Nobody gets how brilliant the rich guy is, and how much better he wants to make the world and it’s so unfair! Also, he gets laid.
***
In the world of high-concept teen lit, Ayn Rand stands as a dark counterweight to Kurt Vonnegut. Both were (and are) literary propagandists. Vonnegut looked upon America as a nation of lonely, entitled citizens, adrift in a fog of consumerism, unable to reckon with, or quell, their lust for money and warfare. He preached generosity, pacifism, a return to the utopia of folk societies.
Rand, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, viewed her adopted homeland as a shining laboratory of human advancement. Her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged, is a novel about a dystopian America in which all the productive citizens—a group that includes not just scientists and industrialists but artists (eek!)—go on strike and stop the motor of the world. These exalted citizens then retreat to the mountains and start their own economy. It’s a half step from eugenics. Basically, Mitt Romney’s masturbation fantasy.
***
[Author’s note: I am not suggesting that Mitt Romney masturbates. If Mitt Romney, or any his supporters, are offended by the term, “masturbation fantasy” I apologize. I was trying to suggest, using colloquial and figurative language, how much Mr. Romney would enjoy Atlas Shrugged. It was not my intention to induce people to think about Mr. Romney masturbating, or about his sexual inner life in any manner.]***
But what were the temperamental differences between those of us sullen teens who read Vonnegut versus Rand?
It went something like this: Vonnegut geeks dealt with despair by means of laughter. We looked to his books as places where empathy and moral doubt could be experienced without embarrassment. We were also, as a rule, shitty readers.
Rand geeks were made of stiffer stuff. They marched around pronouncing grave syllogisms and dreamed of omnipotence. They clung to a grand vision of personal destiny: science fiction as governed by Ronald Reagan. They honestly believed in the free market as the path to utopia.
As I recall, we were all obnoxious in our allegiance and partisanship.
***
You may recall that a couple of weeks ago President Obama gave a speech that catalogued the ways in which business owners depend on the collective to succeed. They need roads and bridges and water treatment plants and an electrical grid and educated employees, and so on.
These claims are demonstrably true, which did not stop Romney’s minions from editing the Obama speech so as to suggest that the President was dissing entrepreneurs. It was a fairly transparent little case of ratfucking and the for-profit demagogues—try as they might—could only fluff it into a minor story.
The episode, though, speaks to the fundamental case that Romney and Ryan must now try to make. They need to sell voters on the Ayn Rand Program: that the only way to rescue America is by freeing the Übermenschen from regulatory bondage. Collectivism is a ruse. Only individuals, spurred by fanatical self-interest, can rouse our nation from its imperial decline.
***
Rand’s most famous passage is a radio address delivered by the strike leader John Galt at the end of Atlas. It is a soliloquy that might well stand as the Rosetta Stone of modern conservatism:
This country wasn’t built by men who sought handouts…
Sweep aside those parasites of subsidized classrooms, who live on the profits of the mind of others…
Do you ask what moral obligation I owe to my fellow men? None-except the obligation I owe to myself…
On and on it goes like this, at once self-victimizing and righteous, propelled by the grievance and paranoia that animates the radio shouters of this age. Rand’s vision is a cartoon of capitalism, in which there is no poverty or environmental ruin or lack of equal opportunity. In her world, generosity is a false and malignant impulse. Nobody is just born rich. They must pursue wealth, and this pursuit is by definition a heroic one. Brave inventors and industrialists hold the key to paradise, if only they can throw off the shackles of religious superstition, liberal guilt, and bureaucratic tyranny.
In other words, Romney and Ryan have to convince voters that capitalism is not just an economic philosophy, but a moral system, and that any attempt to curb its appetites is therefore immoral.
***
The Ryan Budget Plan, of which you have probably heard so much and learned so little, is the blueprint for just such a reformation. It is radical document, both in its practical applications and its ethical precepts.
The aged and sick will be left with rationed health care, the rich will be handed trillions of dollars in additional tax cuts, the budget for virtually every sector of government not involving national defense—education, transportation, energy, veteran services—will be gutted.
The plan purports to address our national debt, yet makes no serious effort to balance the budget. In theory, it fosters the pursuit of wealth. In practice, it would merely pad the vast fortunes that already exist. The rest of us (“the unproductive”) would be plunged into a deserved penury. The central moral aim is to obliterate the remaining restraints on personal greed.
It is a document so exuberant in its fraudulence, so nonchalant in its cruelty, and so assured of its own virtue that it could only have been the product of a man born into wealth, schooled by Ayn Rand, and given finishing lessons in Congress.
***
If he were still alive, Kurt Vonnegut would look upon young Ryan in sorrow—as a man unable to imagine the lives of those less fortunate than himself. Vonnegut understood that capitalism was a moral system in the exact way that cannibalism is a dietary system. But I’m going to stop talking about Vonnegut now because thinking about him makes me weep.
***
Instead let me cite Mencken, who sounds smarter every year. A century ago, he had this to say about the national character:
Since the very dawn of his separate history, the American has been ruled by what may be called a moral conception of life.… There has been no great political movement in the United States since Jefferson’s day without some purely moral balderdash at its center.
***
We can all agree that Mitt Romney is not a profoundly moral politician. He is wealthy and ambitious, but his ideology feels situational at best. In choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Romney has found the moral balderdash to excites his base. He has selected a fellow who embodies the virtues of the archetypal Rand hero: virility (those abs!), productivity (he sleeps in his office!), naïve optimism (that Path to Prosperity!)—a wonk messiah with bedroom eyes.
Ryan is not a lawmaker (in his twelve years, he has passed two bills, one of which was to rename a post office) and he is not by any sane measure qualified to assume the Presidency of the United States. But he is a telegenic ideologue whom the press will treat as a visionary, much like his idol. He knows how to put a fresh face on the old con, how to keep the corporate sponsors happy, how to incite the low-information voter against his own interests, and how to appear earnest when he is proposing ruin.
If he and Romney get elected, the John Galts of the world need not retreat to the mountains to launch their own economy. They will enjoy dominion over the entirety of ours.
18 responses
I weep when I think of Vonnegut as well. How lucky we were to have him for as long as we did! As for Ayn Rand and what’s-his-fuck, I think you’re spot on.
Of course, the biggest difference betutween Rand and Vonnegut (the former of whom could only in the broadest sense be considered a “novelist”) is that Vonnegut was a brilliant writer. To call Rand a hack is to insult honest, hard-working hacks everywhere.
I once spent a summer accidentally interning for libertarians. (As background: On my first day, I told someone I went to school in Canada. They looked at me sadly and said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I laughed right in their face and quickly earned the nickname “The Socialist.”)
I had always assumed Rand was kind of a joke. Something that you grew out of in high school once you realized that everyone wasn’t about you and your interests. It was so fascinating to see a bunch of college-age (mostly) dudes talk about her like she was the messiah. It must be nice to have something that makes you feel OK about being an asshole.
Excellent article. I can only hope that a great many folks quoting Ayn Rand these days (even before Ryan), haven’t waded far enough through her monsterish tomes to understand just how dangerous she is. As a sullen teen who read both Vonnegut and Rand, I was so appalled at her selfishness that I couldn’t stop reading, much like being unable to stop viewing a car wreck. Her inability to understand the concept of the working poor or even that we human beings are flawed is chilling.
“Atlas Shrugged” is fiction. Enough said. Peace.
@doug cannon Yes, but some misguided souls see it as a template for government.
I suppose you prefer the purely moral balderdash of Obama/Biden instead? Or are you suggesting that those two are above it? Mencken would have hated both parties in this, and most other presidential elections. He also despised FDR and the New Deal, the moral imperative behind many of Obama’s policies. In your next essay please understand when your criticisms apply to both sides of the aisle.
@Henry – Do you have any comment on what the author actually said or are you only concerned about being fair and balanced?
Interesting argument, and one point of clarification. In Atlas Shrugged, the siblings Taggart (Dagny and Jim) are born into a transcontinental railroad empire. Francisco d’Anconia is born into a multi-generational copper empire and is, by most accounts, the richest man in the book at the beginning. It’s more about what those people do with that. Jim takes his wealth and uses it to gain political power and influence, which eventually is his downfall. His sister moves in the opposite direction of Rand’s ideal businessman/capitalist. Many others do gain their wealth from nothing (Rearden being the most prominent example), but it’s certainly not all from that point that the characters begin.
@Ryan: What the author actually said implies that while Romney/Ryan have some purely moral balderdash at the center of their political movement (agreed, by the way), Obama/Biden do not. The author then uses a Mencken quote to show how wrong the former is while ignoring how utterly applicable it is to the latter.
Obama’s ideas are simply “demonstrably true,” whereas Ryan deserves a few thousand words of criticism. That’s one-sidedness at it’s worst, in my mind.
I don’t disagree with what he says about Romney and Ryan, just the implication that Obama and Biden are above it all.
Yup, another $10 Trillion in Oblabber debt is what we need, right Steve?
Not.
Young and high school-y, I felt a rush reading of Dagny’s fight and of the smokestacks sans consequence, thinking that the book was exactly what those Italian Futurists had in mind, and weren’t they si aesthetic? I mean, essentially, I liked the book because it painted quiet a picture. I never took the philosophy seriously since, well, it’s success depends upon a generation of Svedka robots rather than humans, who with their being-human, would render all objectivism laughable. Yet I discovered in college that those who liked Rand liked her because they liked objectivism, and thus typically someone I disliked talking too. Here I was, thinking that no one could take such a nihilistic philosophy seriously, and now we’ve a potential VP who has, very much so, supported this bizarre money = morality mentality.
I think I’ll go read Cat’s Cradle.
Henry, I didn’t read this a somehow pro-Obama in any way. The Dems of our age are surely the lesser-of-two evils and consequently still ‘evil’ — that goes without saying. An equal volume of verbiage could be directed towards Obama’s core agenda and true constituents, but that wasn’t the point of *this* piece. Maybe next week’s piece will be.
Delightful article! You hit on two essential truths:
1. Ayn Rand while not entirely talentless, is very very close and much worse, a hate filled reactionary propagandist.
2. Paul Ryan is almost exactly the same, just less talented, intelligent and significantly better looking.
Some other hilarious Rand facts:
– Her ideal man was based on a serial killer who mutilated children.
– She is the perfect example of why crystal meth should be eradicated from the world. Her massive speed habit encouraged her to write some of the most terrible imitations of philosophy, literature, and cogent ideas ever seen on this planet. While some may protest here “Think of Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, punk rock, Jean Paul Sartre, and Phillip K. Dick” this too me is not enough. Those shining examples of the limitless energy and eventual psychosis granted by the humble amphetamine salt, count as only a skimpy eight ball against the noxious pounds Rand has poisoned our culture with.
– Rand loves to talk about how the truly brilliant and talented are ignored at first and down trodden. Rand was received with immediate acclaim and enthusiasm. By her own standards she is a talentless hack. There is here an ironic and unique convergence here between her ideas and reality.
Some hilarious tidbits about Rand’s philosophies in action:
– The massive success and increased liberties that were granted to Rand’s native Russia after the implementation of Neo-Liberal economics. Oh wait, no I guess…wait, hmmm let’s check in with Milton Friedman. . .
-Alan Greenspan’s sniveling apology after the 2008 housing crash.
-As Mr. Almond rightly pointed out, Paul Ryan’s inability to accomplish the most basic demands of his job. Again the best and the brightest aiming for the stars. . .
Now I’m thinking about Mitt Romney masturbating. BRB…
“Vonnegut understood that capitalism was a moral system in the exact way that cannibalism is a dietary system.” Steve, thank you for that line.
@Rebecca Buck: “It must be nice to have something that makes you feel OK about being an asshole.”
Rebecca Buck has identified the genius of Ayn Rand. She wasn’t going to get rich by selling poor people on the idea that it is morally courageous to be poor.
When did selfishness become a synonym for greed? It’s been a while since I read Atlas, but what I remember most is a sense that above all one must be true to the self. And that society so often works to subvert that, to destroy the self.
That isn’t exactly a new idea. Wasn’t the original meaning of the word sin to go against oneself? It’s what every psychotherapist has tried to teach me. To live from the inside out. Rand just made it more of a fist: What you believe in — what you truly fucking believe in — matters.
It’s not such an unenlightened philosophy. What’s frightening is how easily it’s dismissed. And just because idiot politicians, which bore the fuck out of me (do they not bore the fuck out of you?), use her words to rationalize their lazy, un-self-actualized lives, doesn’t mean they’re righteous.
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