George Rebane
Yesterday afternoon we, along with the Steeles, went to see the movie ‘Atlas Shrugged – Part 1’ that I described in ‘Shrugging Atlas is Back’. The movie, based on Ayn Rand’s novel of the same name, lived up to its expectations. The casting, acting, production values, and fidelity to the original were well executed. I look forward to Parts 2 and 3 of this trilogy.
Reflecting on what I had seen in the movie, especially how it depicts what we are living through today, I was struck by the thought that the trilogy will communicate little to the meager number of progressives who will see it. Heralding its early demise, they simply do not understand the point of the movie. Its dystopic message for the rest of us will be seen as a necessary waypoint to their new world order.
In that order there is little need for individual risk, initiative, and enterprise. All problems will be solved by state committees for the common good. 'Excess funds' will be siphoned out of the population through higher tax rates and redistributed. All progressives know that higher tax rates will not harm the economy, in fact, they cite the post-war years as evidence that higher taxes will even stimulate the economy.
Unfortunately, the conditions of the fifties are misinterpreted by the left. Then the US was the technology, agricultural, and manufacturing leader of a world mostly under-developed and devastated by war. As long as international trade was allowed, and appropriate set-asides and subsidies were in place, the imposed tax rate did not matter much. Money still came pouring in from all sides because we could make and sell stuff that the world could get from nowhere else – competition was non-existent, and demand was found under every overturned rock. Not any more – Atlas mugged.
[Addendum] The above does not make explicit what I want to relate as the major takeaway from the movie and the book. In 1957 Ayn Rand published Atlas Shrugged as a warning to us that if we kept looking to government for solutions and allowing it to grow into a megalith surrogate for our personal responsibilities, then we would wind up with the world she depicted. That same megalith would hang around the neck of every productive citizen in the land.
The truth of the matter is that Rand's described world is now upon us and much more. We are past the point she depicted. In her warning, she still allowed for a way back to sanity. Today, the added burden of massive debt and deficits has put us beyond the pale - we are beyond the precipice like Wiley Coyote. And like Wiley, we will not be able to walk on air back to safety. Even Atlas cannot lift from our backs the trillions upon trillions we have senselessly allowed to accumulate there.
‘Thanksgiving 2022’
George Rebane
[This came in email, and reading it I immediately began looking for some hyperbole. But given this administration’s stated goals, established direction, and ongoing ‘progress’ thereto, I couldn’t find any. Perhaps you can dear reader.]
"Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington.
Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad example it sets for the rest of the world," Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting.
Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.
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Posted at 02:29 AM in Culture Comments, Our Country, The Liberal Mind | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBack (0)