Reflections on Wisconsin and Japan, Free Markets and Class Wars

The events of the past few days have led to the conclusion that Ayn Rand was an idealistic nut. The thesis of all her novels and philosophical tracts can be summed up thusly--let the rich, smart, and ambitious get all the power they want and don't let the government do anything to restrict or restrain them in any way. No taxes, no regulations, nothing. An entirely free laissez-faire system will take care of all those pesky collusions or unfair trusts. She actually believed a free market would regulate itself and all injustices would even out because the public would stop buying the product of an unfair manufacturer.

What's been happening in Wisconsin demonstrates what happens when the super-rich want to get super-richer and no one has the guts to tell them, hold it a minute, you can't just take everything. Corporate interests like the Koch Brothers are out to diminish the power of public-worker unions so that forces friendly to them will stay in office. If the state doesn't take out the union dues there'll be less money to contribute to Obama and the Dems.

As I understand it, the unions gave in the governor's demands and yet he still insisted on stripping them of their right to collective bargaining. The Fox News crowd played along by painting the unions as corrupt fat cats getting enormous salaries for lazy slobs. Ann Coulter on Sean Hannity cited bus drivers making six-figure salaries. The strategy is clear, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are kowtowing to their corporate overlords by selling the Fox audience the idea that the unions are against the unorganized workers at Walmart, etc. See, they say, look at the red bastards stealing your money and giving it to those gold-bricking school teachers who get a whole summer off. Fox and their ilk are the ones waging a class war, pitting the working classes against each other--unions against unskilled, unorganized labor. If the Repubs and their rich cronies really wanted to balance the budget, they'd get the millionaires to pay taxes in proportion to their income.

Rand's philosophy and that of Glenn Beck and his cohorts is if you are smart and hard-working you should make and keep as much money as you possibly can and pay as little tax as you can get away with, forget the rest of society or the common good. If some poor slob who isn't a ballsy entrepeneur and can't get insurance, then goes broke because of one hospital visit, that's his tough luck.

Speaking of the common good, as I was watching the horrible scenes from the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, I was reminded of similar footage from New Orleans and Katrina. The difference was the people in New Orleans were stranded by their government, both in preparedness (faulty levees) and help after the disaster, and the people in Japan seemed to be getting aide right away and there was no looting or panic. The looting in New Orleans can be attributed to taking avantage of a bad situation, BUT they were also people who had no food or medicine and there were no sign state or federal authorities were going to help them. In fact, many conservative commentators said it was the citizens own fault for living near so much water and relying on the government for help.

Objections to Objectivism

I recently found a video on You Tube of Rand Paul explaining he was not named for Ayn Rand, contrary to internet rumor. His full name is Randall and it's just a coincidence that he's a big fan of her anti-government novels and philosophy. Lately, I have become interested in her work. I recently read her fantasy novella Anthem about a dystopian future where collectivism has destroyed civilization and the word "I" has been obliterated from the language. I also saw and reviewed the NY premiere of her 1934 play Ideal in which a movie star is accused of murder and seeks refuge with six of her devoted fans. Like Christ she asks her worshippers to forsake safety and side with her, all but one turn her down.

I have not read Rand's longer novels or her philosophical tracts on her view of life called Objectivism, but I did see the movie version of The Fountainhead with Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey on TCM. I remember getting an almost Nietzchean vibe from it. The superhero has the right to conduct him or herself however they chose because of their superior sensibility. The hero Howard Roarke is unwilling to compromise his artistic vision in the slightest. When a building he was to have designed is erected by a lesser competitor, he blows it up and Rand believes he is justified in doing so. She later proclaimed she was not in favor of violence, but she did believe the rights of the individual supercede those of the society at large.

I think a lot of Tea Partiers have read her work and are now taking it literally. Any move by the government to have an effect on people's lives, for good or ill, is seen as the first steps towards a tyrannical dictatorship. Ronald Reagan actually made a record in the early 1960s saying Medicare would lead to slavery.

Things I like about Rand's philosophy:

1. Man should rely on reason and not faith. Therefore it is rational to not believe in a God.

2. Excellence should be rewarded. (OK, but that's like saying motherhood is great.)

3. Government should not interfere in people's lives. This can be interpreted several ways and some have taken it to mean no Medicare or Social Security or unemployment benefits. But Rand at least was consistent, believing the government should not lift a finger to help anyone, but it should also not stop anyone from getting an abortion or pass laws against homosexuality, even though she personally found gays repulsive mutant sickos.

Things I don't like:

1. No one should pay taxes. What are you nuts, Ayn? She advocates entirely private infrastructure and services. We'd all be paying tolls and fees through the nose. If every service which should be public--that is something everyone uses--were privately owned, competition would NOT drive prices down. The capitalists would all get together and drive the prices up. That is unless you have government regulations to stop them, and that is exactly what Rand was against.

2.Government should not help anyone at any time.

3.Capitalism should be totally unfettered with no government regulations as to safety, fairness to the consumer, or how the owners conduct business. (She believed the open market would eliminated crooks. Ha!) The Bush White House and Republican Congress removed constrains on Wall Street and the morgage brokers and we all know where that led: Obama getting all the blame.

Rand was raised in Soviet Russia and her father's pharmacy was taken over by the state. I believe she was a brilliant person who was so enraged at this injustice, she went to extremes in the other direction. I do want to read Atlas Shrugged, but the damned thing is over 1,000 pages.

Note: these are just impressions based on Rand's statements and what I have read of her philosophy and her interviews with Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue, and Tom Synder, all available on YouTube.

'Independence Day' on Independence Day

This Fourth of July week, I rented the blockbuster movie Independence Day from Netflix. I had been curious about it since it come out in the late 1990s, but not enough to go see it when it opened. It's basically a large-scale disaster movie, but it tell us a lot about America's mind set at the time and now. Pop culture and massively successful films tell you a lot about a nation's pysche. That's why I like to watch silly old films of the 1930s, '40s, and 50s. A few weekends ago I DVRed Neptune's Daughter starring Esther Williams, Ricardo Montalban, Red Skelton, and Betty Garrett, a silly water-splashing musical. Yet it made me imagine going to a movie theatre in 1950 and seeing this technicolor fantasy and the average drab housewife or closeted gay imagining she or he could go out to nightclubs and see Xavier Cugat or Carmen Miranda singing and dancing in enormous shapes and vivid hues.

Independence Day is a retread of HG Wells's War of the Worlds with a seemingly invincible alien force nearly conquering earth. In Wells' version, the monsters are defeated by a flu virus while in this update a computer virus does the trick. Thus we see that man and not nature can defeat the enemy from space. The characters are a who's who are cultural stereotypes played by actors popular at the time (some still are)--the cocky, charismatic pilot played by Will Smith; the quirky lovable scientist played by Jeff Goldblume; the wise and wisecracking Jewish elder played by our favorite sitcom star Judd Hirsch; the nasty, small-minded bureaucrat played by James Rebhorn (not a well-known actor, but a familiar face from similar roles in films like Scent of a Woman); the gutsy president with the fight-pilot past (Bill Pullman); even the nervous nelly hiding under the desk (Harvey Fierstein who is conveniently killed in the early part of the film just like all gays in movies up to that point.)

We get the comforting fantasy that humankind will come together, with America in the lead of course, and we will make our American holiday into a world holiday when the bug-eyed aliens are destoryed on July 4th. Of course the rest of the world goes along with American dominance and our the brave president forsakes personal safety and protocal to lead the charge. I wonder if George W. Bush got the idea for him to don a fighter pilot uniform and declare mission accomplished in Iraq from this movie? It wouldn't surprise me. There is also a satisfaction in seeing our symbols of government like the White House destroyed in a movie and then having everyone retreat to an imaginary secret installation like Area 51. It did feel strange to watch these images after 9/11.

And where does a single mother stripper like Will Smith's girlfriend, get the money to afford a nice house in a good neighborhood and still have enough to support her son and have a dog? Who takes care of them while she's out pole-dancing?

In reality, my family was visiting our upstate house over the weekend and we went to nearby Kinderhook, birthplace of Martin Van Buren, our 8th president. A retired army vet spoke about our forefathers and Van Buren fighting for limited government. I think tyranny would have been more accurate. He also mentioned our belief in God and the importance of family and community is what set us apart from Europe and why the American revolution succeeded and the French one didn't. But he didn't turn his speech into a libratarian rant and spoke movingly about soldiers under his command losing their lives.

Then we went to Van Buren's house which is a national park site and took a tour. I also finished reading Ayn Rand's novella Anthem. It was very short and didactic. I want to read more of her work because I am curious as to how it relates to what is happening now and how Tea Partiers are using it to justify their crazy no-government screeds. More on that once I have shrugged like Atlas.

Surprise! Obama is NOT Superman

During the past few weeks, being the comic book geek that I am, I imagined now would be the perfect time for Superman. He's plug up that erupting volcano so air traffic in Europe would not be disrupted and for an afternoon follow-up, he'd stop the oil from flowing into the Gulf. But guess what? Superman is not real. And guess what else, America--Barack Obama is not going to find a convenient supply closet in the White House and switch into his super-suit and fly down to the New Orleans to stop the leak all by himself. I believe a lot of people think he has the power to do it, but is just being lazy going off the fundraisers for Barbara Boxer. Maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but there were unrealistic expectations for Obama. So many were so relieved he wasn't Bush, they thought he could do anything. "Hey, he's un-Bush-Man! That's just as good as Superman!"

The ironic thing is the oil spill is not Obama's fault, but he's going to get the blame for it because it happened on his watch. What every rock-dumb American voter angry with the President does not realize is that this situation and the financial crisis and quite a few other crises were caused by his predecessor--if not W directly that the philosophy of the Republican Party, which is the less government interference in big business, the better. So Bush and his dad and Ronnie had been dismantling regulations to keep companies like BP from indulging in risky behaviour. As a result, we get lax safety standards, and big oil spills. Drill, baby, drill, indeed. I hope Sarah and Rudy can sleep at night after having chanted that dumb slogan. Maybe they will wake up to find an oil-coated pelican in their beds.

What's really ironic is Obama will get the blame and we'll have a Repub Congress and President who will push for even less regulation. These Tea Partiers want no government in their lives--and this is the direct result. People like Rand Paul are popular in Kentucky and states like that because they preach that junk--I heard he was named for Ayn Rand which makes sense since she believed if you had the right philosophy and were talented and smart enough and looked like Gary Cooper, it was perfectly all right to blow up a building if it offended your aesthetic sensibility. (Fountainhead reference)

Now it looks like the oil will continue flowing into August until they can finish drilling a second hole to relieve the pressure. I have a bad feeling Obama will become associated with this just like Carter became synonomous with the Iran hostage crisis. Then the repubs will cast some white knight--literally--to ride in to the rescue and then we'll find out he's not Superman either. Or if it's Sarah Palin, that she's not Wonder Woman.