Robert Reich: "TRUMP'S BRAND IS AYN RAND"

[kpete]

Last edited Tue Mar 6, 2018, 11:13 AM - Edit history (1)

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TRUMP’S BRAND IS AYN RAND
Donald Trump once said he identified with Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead,” an architect so upset that a housing project he designed didn’t meet specifications he had it dynamited.

Others in Trump’s circle were influenced by Rand. “Atlas Shrugged” was said to be the favorite book of Rex Tillerson, Trump’s secretary of state. Rand also had a major influence on Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA chief. Trump’s first nominee for Secretary of Labor, Andrew Puzder, said he spent much of his free time reading Rand.

The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, required his staff to read Rand.

Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. Before he was sacked, he applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values, and even used the cover art for Rand’s book “The Fountainhead” as his Twitter avatar.

Who is Ayn Rand and why does she matter? Ayn Rand – best known for two highly-popular novels still widely read today – “The Fountainhead,” published in 1943, and “Atlas Shrugged,” in 1957 – didn’t believe there was a common good. She wrote that selfishness is a virtue, and altruism is an evil that destroys nations.

When Rand offered these ideas they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half century witnessed our interdependence, through depression and war.

After the war we used our seemingly boundless prosperity to finance all sorts of public goods – schools and universities, a national highway system, and healthcare for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African-Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. Of course there was a common good. We were living it.

But then, starting in the late 1970s, Rand’s views gained ground. She became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism.

This utter selfishness, this contempt for the public, this win-at-any-cost mentality is eroding American life.

Without adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, we’re living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most unscrupulous get ahead, and where everyone must be wary in order to survive. This is not a society. It’s not even a civilization, because there’s no civility at its core. It’s a disaster.

In other words, we have to understand who Ayn Rand is so we can reject her philosophy and dedicate ourselves to rebuilding the common good.

The idea of the common good was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare” – not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.”

Yet today you find growing evidence of its loss – CEOs who gouge their customers, loot their corporations and defraud investors. Lawyers and accountants who look the other way when corporate clients play fast and loose, who even collude with them to skirt the law.

Wall Street bankers who defraud customers and investors. Film producers and publicists who choose not to see that a powerful movie mogul they depend on is sexually harassing and abusing young women.

Politicians who take donations (really, bribes) from wealthy donors and corporations to enact laws their patrons want, or shutter the government when they don’t get the partisan results they seek.

And a president of the United States who lies repeatedly about important issues, refuses to put his financial holdings into a blind trust and then personally profits off his office, and foments racial and ethnic conflict.

The common good consists of our shared values about what we owe one another as citizens who are bound together in the same society. A concern for the common good – keeping the common good in mind – is a moral attitude. It recognizes that we’re all in it together.

If there is no common good, there is no society.

Conservatives think selfishness is a virtue, and altruism/social justice are destructive.

The same people talk about Jesus and WWJD in the same breath. How fake can you get?

http://robertreich.org/post/171545493770

[njhoneybadger]

1. Ayn Rand hated Christains and William f Buckley hated her.

Koch brothers were instrumental in merging Ayn Rand and Christainity with their think tank The Cato Institute.

[Ligyron]

5. I believe Rand was an Atheist,

[J_William_Ryan]

2. Yet

these Randian miscreants continue win elections, continue to hold positions of power and influence.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. The same Ayn Rand who admired a serial killer for his heartlessness ?

Ayn Rand, Hugely Popular Author and Inspiration to Right-Wing Leaders, Was a Big Admirer of Serial Killer

Her works are treated as gospel by right-wing powerhouses like Alan Greenspan and Clarence Thomas, but Ayn Rand found early inspiration in 1920's murderer William Hickman.
By Mark Ames / AlterNet
February 25, 2010, 9:00 PM GMT

***
One reason most countries don't find the time to embrace Ayn Rand's thinking is that she is a textbook sociopath. In her notebooks Ayn Rand worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" she promoted in her more famous books. These ideas were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe -- former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox -- along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

The loudest of all the Republicans, right-wing attack-dog pundits and the Teabagger mobs fighting to kill health care reform and eviscerate "entitlement programs" increasingly hold up Ayn Rand as their guru. Sales of her books have soared in the past couple of years; one poll ranked Atlas Shrugged as the second most influential book of the 20th century, after the Bible.

The best way to get to the bottom of Ayn Rand's beliefs is to take a look at how she developed the superhero of her novel, Atlas Shrugged, John Galt. Back in the late 1920s, as Ayn Rand was working out her philosophy, she became enthralled by a real-life American serial killer, William Edward Hickman, whose gruesome, sadistic dismemberment of 12-year-old girl named Marion Parker in 1927 shocked the nation. Rand filled her early notebooks with worshipful praise of Hickman. According to biographer Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market, Rand was so smitten with Hickman that she modeled her first literary creation -- Danny Renahan, the protagonist of her unfinished first novel, The Little Street -- on him.

What did Rand admire so much about Hickman? His sociopathic qualities: "Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should," she wrote, gushing that Hickman had "no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel 'other people.'"

This echoes almost word for word Rand's later description of her character Howard Roark, the hero of her novel The Fountainhead: "He was born without the ability to consider others." (The Fountainhead is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' favorite book -- he even requires his clerks to read it.)
***
more: https://www.alternet.org/story/145819/ayn_rand%2C_hugely_popular_author_and_inspiration_to_right-wing_leaders%2C_was_a_big_admirer_of_serial_killer




ETA: This topic is familiar to many long-term DUers, but it cannot be repeated often enough -- Rand's "Heroes", in real life and in her fiction, were absolute sociopaths -- which is what makes them admirable in her, and apparently many right-wingers', eyes.

[pangaia]

4. "... so upset that a housing project he designed didnt meet specifications he had it dynamited. "

Uh, oh !!!

[Ilsa]

17. And then he stiffed the contractors and subs. nt

[pangaia]

27. He is about to blow up the USA

[Orsino]

6. Wrong.

Trump's brand is flailing around and not even pretending to be interested in things.

He's never read Rand.

[ffr]

7. In video form, off his Twitter account. * It'll save you from all that reading *

Link to tweet

[DAngelo136]

8. Ayn Rand was never popular

She had to self publish her books and basically arm twisted Louis B. Mayer into making "The Fountainhead". Even then, Gary Cooper (a known Republican), couldn't make heads or tails of the big courtroom speech of Howard Roark which makes a filibuster speech by Ted Cruz seem coherent by comparison.

Ayn Rand admired but never understood capitalism. Which explains why she ended up needing to rely on Social Security in her later years after investing her money in her fanatical cult organization. (And the fact she smoked like a chimney and thought she could will her way into not getting cancer.)

She had twisted personal relationships and abused people. Look at her relationship with Nathaniel Braden, as an example...talk about f*cked up. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/nathaniel-branden-ayn-rands-collaborator-and-paramour-dies-at-84.html She had the nerve to talk about "love being earned"? She basically abused her husband's love and still had an affair with a younger man. Then when the younger man had an affair with a younger woman, she flipped out. Hypocrite!

If you want better examples of women libertarians, I'd suggest Rose Wilder Lane who was far more active and prolific as a writer and Isabel Paterson who was active way before Rand decided to come over from Russia.


As for "Atlas Shrugged", I would quote Dorothy Parker: "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force." Whitaker Chambers couldn't stomach it. In a review, he wrote: ”I find it a remarkably silly book. It is certainly a bumptious one. Its story is preposterous." And, what's more, he adds: "Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal." William Buckley said he had to "flog himself" in order to finish the book.

Personally speaking, I think you'd get a lot more out of reading "Pimp" by Iceberg Slim or any Donald Goines novel than you would from Ayn Rand. At least THEY understood capitalism better than she did and they were both better writers.

[BobTheSubgenius]

10. "...thrown with great force."

That happened quite literally when I tried to read For The New Intellectual. I made it to Page 3, then threw it as hard as I could, hoping to break the spine and scatter the pages.

Couldn't manage that, so I recycled it. My consolation is that she probably would have HATED recycling.

[pansypoo53219]

28. page 3? i think i gave up after the 2nd paragraph it was so bad.

think i tried the atlas book. i hope i burned it.

[njhoneybadger]

11. The relationship with Braden was out in the open

He would come over and bang the hell out of her(because she liked it rough) and her husband would have to sit and listen to it through the walls. Her husband eventually died of alcoholism.
In her twisted mind Braden was John Galt or Howard Roark the hero who would bring her
Philosophy of Obectivism to the world.

[FakeNoose]

12. I think Ayn Rand and L Ron Hubbard belong in the same category of crackpots

Neither could be called a novelist, but they both used the novel art form to advance their crazy philosophies. It seems that the people who read and respond to these novels are obsessive types who are already half-way crazy anyway.

[njhoneybadger]

19. Hubbard was a fraud, Rand really believed her bullshit

[iscooterliberally]

16. Those are some great reviews!

My favorite one for Atlas Shrugged was this one:

"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."

The interwebs say this quote came from John Rogers.

I tried to listen to Atlas Shrugged in the car. It was so boring and unbelievable. Someone should tell Trump he should only put tariffs on Reardon Metal.

[JHB]

18. To quote Joh Rogers...

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.

[kairos12]

9. Paul Ryan is a true believer!

[More_Cowbell]

13. I had a teacher in college who was convinced that Ayn Rand was a sociopath

I agree.

[DFW]

14. He has help: Speaker of the House Ayn Ryan n/t

[not fooled]

15. The new media is derelict

in not exposing, highlighting, and explaining to the American public the crackpot vicious underpinnings of modern "conservatism".

Just as they are derelict in not highlighting the agenda of the kook brothers and the other billionaires, the effects of tax and other policies from the GOPeePee, the campaign to swindle Americans out of Social Security and Medicare, etc. etc. etc.

[njhoneybadger]

21. You are correct, the American public is clueless

I think the movie industry and the music industry could play a large role in educating people.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. Against that, Rand's heroes were capable and creative

not just people who employed accountants and lawyers to use bankruptcy laws to their advantage, or stiffed their contractors. Rand wouldn't for a moment support raising tariffs in international trade because you have a 'feeling' that the agreements aren't to your advantage.

All Trump can do is bullshit and pull the wool over the eyes of the more gullible. He may admire the selfishness of Rand heroes, but he himself is a moocher and parasite. More Golgafrinchan B Ark than Roark.

[yonder]

22. To the Ayn Rand Paul Ryans of this world...

...as well as any who may be monitoring this site:

Please go screw yourselves. Roughly.

You deserve it.

Thank you.

[Orange Free State]

23. Everyone read Atlas Shrugged in high school and was mesmerized for a while

Thank got most of us grew up and moved on. Ayn Rand did, imho, only one good thing for the world in her entire life. She never had children.

There are some clips of Ayn Rand discussing various topics on YouTube. If you want to have fun play the one about Abortion for a Repuke.

She was a vile, bitter, nasty woman, full of bile where her heart should have been.

[Moral Compass]

24. Objectivism is just a way of justifying being an asshole

Ayn Rand was an asshole. If you wanted to be sexist you would call her a bitch, but in my mind asshole is the right term.

So, when you talk about Trump and Ryan and the whole lot allowing them to talk about being Objectivists or Randians you are allowing an artful dodge.

Theirs is the asshole philosophy. Everyone but them and their wealthy asshole patrons can simply fuck off and die.

Objectivism is a philosophy for nasty, selfish 13 year old boys and girls. If you haven’t dropped it by the time you are around 16 then you are a budding asshole (sociopath).

[Stuart G]

25. k and r. nt

[vkkv]

26. Rand was a FRAUD - and so is TRUMP: She was elderly and sick and needed surgery (lung surgery, after

knocking down two packs a day for decades). Presumably she had a fair amount of money. But she turned to Social Security and Medicare. And under her husband's name!

Ann & husband Frank O'Connor gulped up public tax money in the form of Medicare and Soc Sec as if it were lifeblood - come to think of it, it was for them.

HYPOCRITE !!!!!!!!!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2011/jan/31/usdomesticpolicy-ayn-rand-hypocrite-fraud