Stunned

It seems plausible that the Ryan pick stunned a lot of Romney's liberal critics, just as it sent right wingers into transports of joy.

What I can't get past is Ryan's infatuation with Atlas Shrugged and Ayn Rand.

The mostly backstage hero of the book is John Galt, a man with superhuman powers of invention (he generates electricity from the air, and effortlessly extracts oil and gold from some random rocks in a Colorado canyon, as well as inventing an invisibility shield, etc.)

Galt's ambition is "to stop the engine of the world." That ambition stems from his dislike of the American system of government, and he carries it out with the ruthless fanaticism of a true sociopath - the billions he will kill in the process are nothing to him. He is also given to endless uni-bomber style blather about his own crackpot philosophy, mostly a really dumb guy's rehash of Nietzsche.

His only human trait is stalker's obsession with the heroine, who is clearly intended to be a way cooler version of Rand herself.

And Galt's devoted acolyte (he makes his staffers read the thousand turgid pages of the book) will be the next Vice-President, or, as Romney introduced him, "The Next President" of the US. Well, if so, they might just stop the engine of the world.

Comments

  1. vince3:44 PM

    CIP, you have more comments thank you think ...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wiglaf9:20 AM

    Whatever is going on with this Lubos-Woit-CIP triangle looks very lulzy. Too bad I missed most of it. It started with a libellous redirect and then ... ?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more