Atlas Shirked: The Teenage Revolt Against “the Nanny State" by Rich Broderick at Truthout.

[applegrove]

Atlas Shirked: The Teenage Revolt Against “the Nanny State"

Monday, 14 May 2012 09:40
By Rich Broderick, Twin Cities Daily Planet | Op-Ed

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9108-atlas-shirked-the-teenage-revolt-against-the-nanny-state

"SNIP.........................................................

To understand why people that Ayn Rand would probably spit on now worship at her altar we have to dip into terminology from contemporary psychology – a field my old friend Nietzsche helped inspire via his influence on Freud and other pioneers of the discipline. That term is “hostile dependency.”

It may seem counterintuitive, but a state of dependency does not always inspire gratitude on the part of the dependent partner in a relationship. On the contrary. More often it inspires feelings of entrapment, helplessness and rage. Hostile dependency is a good way to describe the relationship most adolescents have with their parents or other authority figures. Hostile dependency is also a good way to describe the malice and narcissism that lies at the root of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. Hostile dependency is also a good way to describe the motivating force behind the rage – either hot and in-your-face, or cold and sullen – expressed by the Tea Partiers against the freedom-crushing, independence-throttling “nanny state.”

Now, just think about that term: “nanny state.” Is it possible to imagine a more self-revealing epithet to hurl at the government – i.e., the collective? What does a nanny state do to its citizen/subjects? It treats them like children; or, more accurately, like teenagers, old enough to perform chores, earn some money and contribute to the household, yet not mature enough to decide whether to save some of that money for college or blow it on a muscle car.

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Carried forward into the life, though, the kind of hostile dependency exhibited by the Tea Party right speaks more of stunted development. It is the whiff of intellectual immaturity that lends a risible air to the out-of-our depths posturing of today’s Rand-lovers like Paul Ryan.

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[lumberjack_jeff]

1. Hostile dependency is a "don't tread on me" bumpersticker on a medicare scooter. n/t

[applegrove]

2. "Government get your hands off my medicare" too.