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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Kind of sounds like America as a whole is a massive Karma Houdini. No wonder a lot of other countries in the world find the USA annoying.
To be entirely fair to America, looking inward as a society, individually and collectively, is very rare for a nation to do. In that regard, America is unexceptional.
It's the consistent pattern of mendacity, denial and false attitudes in America over 2 centuries that's really really weird. I mean from the Lost Cause and Dunning School downwards. It's the fact that lies and propaganda really succeed in America to an extent that's shocking...Creatonism/Lost Cause/Ayn Red Scare/Welfare Queens/Birtherism/Trump's whole campaign. This whole abortion being an issue is another sign of how fundamentally weird America is.
Most of the world looks at America like Carl Barks' Gladstone Gander (a character more popular in Europe than in America which shows that people like American art and culture but hate the politics). Incredibly, annoyingly lucky, somehow always end up on top with all the advantages and are utterly insufferable. And Trump is very Gladstone Gander-esque, even looks like that guy, even he shares the first name of Gander's cousin.
There's the whole Bush-era Francophobia where they abuse the French because they said that invading Iraq is a bad idea. And now that France has decided to start bombing the Middle East again (a region f—ked up because of their mendacious land-grabbing Sykes-Picot treaty with England a hundred years back), everyone is starting to hum "La marseillaise" and talking about Casablanca. Forgetting all the amazing work French artists and critics did defending American culture and art at a time that even Americans didn't take seriously.
For a lot of people around the world, America is Karma Houdini. Remember that the guy who threw that shoe at Dubya is a hero around the world and to some left-wing people in America as well. He got imprisoned for a year for doing that and released. If he tried to do that in America, he would have been shot dead then and there...unless he was white. And that bush shoe incident is more than what he got from America. That guy should have been impeached and imprisoned as Vincent Bugliosi argued
. Instead he gets to retire and paint bad paintings.
I tried to understand Ayn Rand on an intellectual level, but I was repelled by how much of a cunt her and her whole philosophy was. Why is she so influential on certain politicians?
It just seemed that her philosophy was a rejection of common decency and compassion in service of herself. I remember hearing that either Satanism or the Church of Satan were about the worship of the self, but from what little I've gathered (partially thanks in due to this thread!), even the Church of Satan has more values than Rand.
edited 14th Dec '16 11:50:26 AM by BearyScary
Do not obey in advance.
“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."
- John Rogers
Long story short, those politicians were indoctrinated into Rand's cult of personality when they were young and impressionable, and now that they are politicians, they can inflict her ideology onto America and the world.
edited 14th Dec '16 11:51:14 AM by TrashJack
"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's DictionaryGonna have to ask that we cut the gratuitous use of gender slurs.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"First time I read one of Ayn Rand's work, I didn't get any real deeper meaning or anything like that. I just thought "wow, never realized you could use so many words to say so little."
Disgusted, but not surprisedBecause, to put it in the words of plutocrats who lionize her and her work, she says capitalism is not only pragmatically good, but moral. It creates a framework to justify their greed, selfishness and amorality and demonize anyone who has less money than them as a "looter" who deserves to be miserable and suffer. Ludwig Von Mises' letter to Rand about Atlas Shrugged tells you everything you need to know about what they think:
"You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you."
Other people have also made the point that Ayn Rand's work is fundamentally adolescent in that it appeals primarily to people in their teenage years who tend to be self-absorbed and think they are better than everyone else, just like Rand herself did. The whole special snowflake complex is something that appeals to them. Some of them eventually grow up and realize that society beyond themselves matters or at least pragmatically accept that they have to contribute something.
I think this is pretty well known and has been discussed multiple times already, but one of the big things about that for me personally was the US's actions in Latin America during the World War. After Cuba they got super paranoid about communism spreading over there and to that end they funded and backed several military dictators whose regimes were shockingly and brutally inhumane and cruel. We're still suffering from the effects of that, and from the looks of things it looks like we might be going back to something similar with an even worse dictator than Trump.
edited 14th Dec '16 12:04:11 PM by Draghinazzo
Those Satanist groups hold up the importance of valuing yourself, as in "before you can do anything else, you need to care about yourself in a positive way." They don't tend to have a problem with charity or whatever, as long as you aren't neglecting yourself in the process. Ayn Rand held up the importance of valuing yourself, as in "You are literally the only thing that matters, so any time spent on anyone else is a sign of depravity."
When literal Satanists recognize that participating in society, at least to a certain point, is perfectly fine, going beyond that point is just insane.
Language...young man. Ayn Rand may be a hack, a fraud, and a megalomaniac with Delusions of Eloquence and Delusions of Grandeur but she deserves to be treated with the same dignity as male frauds are.
Rand became popular and influential on politicians because many of them were fans and readers when they were young and while some people grow out of it, others become invested in it. Her ideas and books hit the market at the right time...the late 40s and 50s when you had the Red Scare and a right-wing backlash against the New Deal. And Rand because of her background offered some legitimacy, although even that is false.
Rand was no dissident. She actually benefited from the Bolsheviks. They opened free university education for all girls, and Rand graduated from Petrograd university thanks to that. The Soviet Government also gave her a visa to visit America, no questions asked and no strings attached. Granted this was The Soviet Twenties and the era of the New Economic Policy...so she then came to America and she never left. She mooched off her relatives in America, got to Hollywood, hawked her ideas and made some money and then parlayed into being a writer and then when the Red Scare started served as a stoolie for the HUAC. In other words, Rand benefited from social amelioration, kindness, altruism and generosity (from the USSR, from America, from her relatives, from Hollywood) and basically stabbed everyone who helped her in the back and her whole philosophy is more or less that special people don't have any obligation to help each other.
I always think that her works are kind of inversions of Soviet and Bolshevik propaganda. There is the strident propaganda, party discipline, and weird inversions...like a commune and utopia of self-reliant libertarian anarchists who are activist...it's more or less telling classic libertarians to act as narrow-minded, partisan, strident, and intolerant of criticism as the Bolsheviks, but instead of the internationalist anti-colonialist and anti-racist ideas, it's the opposite.
And she also wrote in popular genres...science-fiction dystopias and so on, and it features men who are headstrong and get ladies to grovel at their feet, who can basically rape all they want and never say sorry...so it appeals to adolescent male power fantasies. And I think dorks like Paul Ryan and other Randians in the government, relate strongly to that. King Vidor's Film adaptation of The Fountainhead is actually quite good in that respect. The book is terrible but the movie really does bring out the sexual hysteria and craziness in her book, and I think that sexual hysteria, tied with messianism, is the true source of her appeal, because that has a long history in America, going back to the salem trials.
edited 14th Dec '16 12:06:22 PM by JulianLapostat
Objectivists would probably argue that we're being too hard on Rand, and we're not appreciating the complexity of their philosophy.
Bullshit.
BTW, if Trump did backpedal on killing the TPP, do you think his supporters would actually give a damn?
edited 14th Dec '16 12:05:01 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedI might point out that even other Libertarians feel that Rand has been way too influential in a negative way and gives them a bad name. Most of them, along with philosophy professors, will tell you to read Robert Nozick or Nietzsche instead for non-stupid and more consistent versions of Rand's ideas.
edited 14th Dec '16 12:09:03 PM by Draghinazzo
I'm back. What sordid news from the political scene of the US of A of the last 24 hours have emerged?
edited 14th Dec '16 12:11:10 PM by MarqFJA
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.So...the FBI is disputing the CIA's assessment of the Russians' motive for their hack
"There's no question that [the Russians'] efforts went one way, but it's not clear that they have a specific goal or mix of related goals," a US official present at the hearing said. The CIA report said the Russians had also breached the Republican National Committee but chose not to release any of the information, lending credence to the idea that the Kremlin made a specific and targeted effort to embarrass Democrats.
Of course Republicans taking FBI's side
"Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus," a Republican lawmaker said during the hearing, according to an aide who was present. "We're looking at the same evidence and drawing very different conclusions."
Ayn Rand had no real political power ambitions. She wanted to be taken seriously and accepted as a great thinker by the academe and institutions, and seen as a great writer. I actually do think she really did believe in the crap she was selling. She wasn't cynical in selling ideas that might make money...she was a real true believer and a fanatic one. As it turned out her influence was entirely absent on art and philosophy, but quite strong in politics and economic policy.
Trump doesn't believe in anything, he's just a black hole of a void. He just cares about being liked, respected and having other people pay for his life. He's a miser but he wants to flaunt his wealth so he dodges taxes and makes other people pay for him. He's the ultimate Welfare Queen and looter.
So Republicans are Men, and Democrats are Women...yikes.
And of course the FBI are gonna disagree...Comey is Trump's homeboy.
edited 14th Dec '16 12:16:24 PM by JulianLapostat
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After the shitshow they pulled earlier this year because a few fuckheads in the New York branch took Clinton Cash seriously, I'm not inclined to believe the FBI.
"When all is said and all is done...Jefferson has beliefs. Burr has none."
edited 14th Dec '16 12:16:27 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedWe know he're living in interesting times when CIA Evil, FBI Good is inverted.
Inter arma enim silent legesFor most of history they were both pretty bad but even the idea of the FBI being "good" with CIA being evil was always odd to me...because the FBI policed, harassed and intimidated American citizens, whereas the CIA aside from weird stuff like MKULTRA was more or less the rest-of-the-world's problem.
J. Edgar Hoover was more or less an ideologue and hypocrite and an egomaniac who created an institution to blackmail, spy, intimidate and sabotage America internally, who created a host of files on artists/radicals/and activists, who spied and tried to blackmail MLK, and who more or less let The Mafia grow (undoubtedly because they were America's partners in Batista's Cuba) on his watch instead, man with priorities, what can I say.. Clint Eastwood's film J. Edgar shows that, even with the questionable casting of Leonardo DiCaprio as FBI chief.
Then even after Hoover, you had Robert Haansen
who sold information to the USSR and then the Russian Federation for pure cash and greed, what was called "the greatest intelligence failure in US history". And now you have Comey.
Now the FBI obviously did do some good along the way I am sure and so on, but that record is just bad.
I actually forgot to say this and this is a little late, but:
I don't have any numbers on this, but the people on welfare were raised in the same culture that everyone else was, the one where not having a job or having to rely on the government is a mark of shame. It's not exactly a super fulfilling lifestyle to have to rely on government handouts in America and many other places, the culture just renders it an unfulfilling experience. To the extent that "welfare queens" exist, a lot of people on welfare are probably grateful for the help but would rather be in a situation where they were able to live on their own.
edited 14th Dec '16 12:37:29 PM by Draghinazzo

My personal, and as of yet unsubstantiated belief is that Americans are incapable of self-reflection because for the people who hold the reins of much of our mainstream cultural output, there is simply no consequence to our actions. We could elect a moron, elect a fascist, support torture, dictatorships, mass murder, and the subversion of democracy both at home and abroad, but almost never will the voting public have to wrangle with foreign powers invading, their cities being sacked, their leaders showing themselves as either weaklings or stalwarts. A society looks inward only when society is torn to shreds, turned inside out, and the rules changed. Who bothers with self-reflection if they never have to say, "I'm sorry"?
edited 14th Dec '16 11:21:07 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."