Ayn's Fanboys Rule!

Calhoun's Can(n)ons for April 29, 2001


True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.  Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt had no idea. The Cult of Ayn Rand is now in full flower in Washington in a gaggle of powerful players. And they’re writing and trying to pass laws that don’t just affect your Senior Prom, they’re now writing laws that will affect your life.

A wag once noted, “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.”

Alas, Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, was one of those 14-year olds, but he didn’t get the joke. Instead, he’s an Ayn Rand Fanboy who requires his staffers to read her massive screed, “Atlas Shrugged,” which is a risky thing to do since it will plunk him into the Bin of the Shameless Hypocrites when they learn that Ryan’s father died when Ryan was 16 and thereafter Ryan received Survivor’s Benefits from that anathema to all Randians: Social Security. Which, ironically, puts Ryan in the class of people Ayn Rand most despised: parasites and moochers. (“Bootstraps, young Ryan. That’s all you need: Bootstraps!”) And may explain why Ryan now wants to “transform” and “privatize” Social Security as we know it right out of existence. (“A bootstrapped safety net for me, zip for you. Ayn wouldn’t approve, you know.”)

Ryan is being touted as the courageous savior du jour with his budget proposal that basically gives more tax cuts for the rich and the shaft to everybody else. Which is quintessential Rand. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed was also a Fanboy of Rand, even wrote her a fan letter, although he couldn’t have read her novels very carefully. On his watch, after the Randian Masters of the Universe on Wall Street blew up the financial world and nearly brought this country down, he expressed surprise and confessed that it never occurred to him that any Master of the Universe would be so irresponsible and reckless as to destroy his own company.

Obviously, Greenspan never bothered to read the ending of “The Fountainhead.” Some fan.

And now the Cult of Rand has churned out Part I of “Atlas Shrugged,” a loving-hands-at-home movie filled with earnest reverence and bad writing, while offering full employment for second-string character actors. It’s now playing at your local Cineplex, though if you want to see it, I’d recommend you hurry since Part II has been canceled and Part I won’t be there long.

A Romantic Rand Renaissance in the era of Facebook (We’re all one big interconnected Tahrir Square, now.) seems strangely anachronistic, like watching Republican Congressmen suddenly morphing into Civil War reenactors on the floor of Congress and yelling about the South Rising Again! But I suppose it’s to be expected.

In hard times, when the world has suddenly turns upside down and flies totally out of control, a good number of people apparently find comfort in turning back into teenagers. And there is nothing more powerfully attractive than RandWorld’s ego-stroking, romantic world view, which is basically the normal 14 year-old’s sociopathically delusional belief that his individual needs alone stand athwart the world -- “ I AM JOHN GALT!”-- while Mom is hollering down the basement stairs that he needs to stop picking at his pimples and get his homework done.

Most of us grow out of that phase. But a few don’t. Safely wrapped up in RandWorld, the Paul Ryans of this world grow up believing that society is made up of Prime Movers (them) and everybody else (moochers). They forget that Dagney Taggart didn’t build her railroad with those soft white manicured hands: Moochers did, one spike at a time; Commie Bums and Socialist Moochers and Union Parasites who knew what the real world is like and demanded whiney Dagney pay a living wage and pony up her fair share of taxes to help build and pay for a safety net because building railroads is hard, dangerous work and those builders needed a safety net for when times got tough.

That’s who built Dagney’s railroad. Without them and their steel-bending hands, Dagney Taggart would just be another rich second-rate dreamer sitting in a bar buying drinks for anybody who would listen to her while she drew her useless plans to build a railroad and make it run, all scribbled out on the back of damp cocktail napkins.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?

The Prez is an American?

OMG! President Obama was born in Hawaii?  Like, he's an American?  OMG! OMG!

Well, not to worry.  The Donald is on the case, taking credit for being the moving force to get the President to release the "long form" birth certificate to "prove" he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.  And, right on target, he immediately brought up the idea that this long form birth certificate might not be legitimate, like it could be forged, faked, after all the CIA can create any kind of document you want, documents that look real as can be. Which gave all the looney birthers more talking points to keep the whole silly game afloat for another news cycle.

And La Donald also made sure to also shift the talking point quickly  to Obama's other documents, like Obama's college papers, thereby tossing in the dog-whistle question of whether Obama deserved to get into Harvard or was he just another quota black guy taking unfair advantage, and a crummy student, to boot, because everyone knows blacks couldn't possibly be smart enough to get to Harvard on their own merit.  And La Donald should know, he's already made it clear that he's on great terms with "the blacks."

La Donald, according to recent polls, is leading the pack as a presidential contender among Republicans, the party that gave you Sarah Palin as Veep.  Seriously.  Sarah Palin as Veep, one heartbeat away from the presidency. Those poll numbers on La Donald speaks volumes about what the Republican Party has become, with only questions left:  Was this Republican racist stupidity caused by an infectious agent that spread like wildfire, killing off sane Republicans like some awful Black Plague?  Or was it some kind of degenerative genetic problem inherited from, say inbreeding too closely with John Birchers?

And if it's an infectious agent, spread from infected Republican politicos, Fake News talking heads and K-street lobbyists via corporate media and the internet, how badly has it infected normal Americans?  20%?  30% ? Past a certain tipping point, stupid societies simply can't stand.  They suffer what might be called "colony collapse."

So, there's the question: How far has venal stupidity spread throughout this great land of ours?  From the numbers I'm looking at, it doesn't look good.  Well, thank God we have La Donald on the case.  He'll save the Republic!

How Do You Spell Chutzpah?  

Tribune headline story yesterday:  "Parents file wrongful death suit."  Twenty-one year-old Cal Poly student wandered out on Highway 101 at 1 a.m. near the Santa Rosa St. intersection and gets hit by a car and killed.  It's later found that the kid's system was loaded with marijuana, alcohol and cocaine.  So his parents sue the city and the highway and (more sensibly) the Doctor who "prescribed" the marijuana.

Kid gets stoned, gets killed, parents sue the road.

Here's who should sue somebody or other, including the parents of the kid who wandered out in the highway: The poor man who hit the stoned kid appearing suddenly in the middle of the night in the middle of the highway where no kid should be at any time, night or day.  If anybody was permanently injured, it's that guy.  For the rest of his life.  If somebody's looking for a victim, that's the guy.  

Speaking of Chutzpah

"Hey, Pre-Paid Los Osos Sewer Assessment Folks?  How's THIS taste?" asks Ron Crawford over at http://www.sewerwatch.blogspot.com/.  Insult to grave injury to poor Lososians.  A disaster that didn't have to happen, for which they will pay repeatedly and excessively, while the architects of this disaster either walked away scott free, or are once again in charge and are, uh, charging everything twice, while the watchdogs snooze at their post.  Amazing, all those little dots, while those who should be making this right, blandly turn away. Talk to the hand.  It's Chinatown.

The First Mantilija Poppy

A few years ago, I planted a mantilija poppy out in the front of the house.  If you're familiar with this spectacular plant, you'll know that if the mantilija likes where you've planted it, pretty soon you'll have LOTS of little mantilijas arriving via root runners.  Then you're in for a show when the dessert plate-sized papery white blossoms all burst out in bloom.  Beautiful.  And the bees love 'em.  Here's the first flower to show up, so far.  As you can see, there's other buds waiting in the wings.

Your Easter Poem

This subtle, profoundly haunting poem by Carl Dennis is an apt one for a season of resurrrection and rebirth.

New Year's Eve

However busy you are, you should still reserve
One evening a year for thinking about your double,
The man who took the curve on Conway Road
Too fast, given the icy patches that night,
But no faster than you did; the man whose car
When it slid through the shoulder
Happened to strike a girl walking alone
From a neighbor's party to her parents' farm,
While your car struck nothing more notable
Than a snowbank.

One evening for recalling how soon you transformed
Your accident into a comic tale
Told first at a body shop, for comparing
That hour of pleasure with his hour of pain
At the house of the stricken parents, and his many
Long afternoons at the Lutheran graveyard.

If nobody blames you for assuming your luck
Has something to do with your character,
Don't blame him for assuming that his misfortune
Is somehow deserved, that justice would be undone
If his extra grief was balanced later
By a portion of extra joy.

Lucky you, whose personal faith has widened
To include an angel assigned to protect you
From the usual outcome of heedless moments.
But this evening consider the angel he lives with,
The stern enforcer who drives the sinners
Out of the Garden with a flaming sword
And locks the gate.

RWQCB Hearing on Los Osos Sewer Project

The following is information on the upcoming Regional Water Quality Control Board hearing on the Sewer Project. The meeting will be at their Aerovista offices in SLOTOWN.

Central Coast Water Board staff has recently posted its May 5, 2011 Water Board Agenda. The agenda can be found here...

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2011/may/May_agenda.shtml


The Proposed Los Osos Water Recycling Facility Waste Discharge Requirements Order No. R3-2011-0001 can be found at Agenda No. 13. The link is active and will direct you to the following documents or select the following link.

http://www.swrcb.ca.gov/centralcoast/board_info/agendas/2011/may/Item_13/index.shtml


1) Staff Report (includes public comments and staff responses)
2) The proposed Water Discharge Requirements as well as the Monitoring and Reporting Program,
3) Central Coast Standard Provisions
4) Modifications and Updates from Waste Discharge Order Nos. Order R3-2003-0007 to Order No. R3-2011-0001
5) San Luis Obispo County Counsel letter responding to The Citizens for a Sustainable Community's request for additional environmental review.
6) Public Comments

Thank you,