Does anyone else find it ironic that Ayn Rand appears on a postage stamp? Or that she appears to implicitly endorse government controlling the price of mailing a letter? But I digress.
Paul Ryan. Ron Paul. Alan Greenspan. The Republicans are the party of Ayn Rand, right?
Wrong. The Democrats are the real party of Ayn Rand.
Now I don’t mean the whole “any government other than police equals instant tyranny” Ayn Rand. Or the “I’m a genius, leave me alone, if you left me alone I would have already invented hyper-drive or a fusion reactor or whatever the heck it is in a gulch in Utah” Ayn Rand. Nope, those Ayn Rands the Republicans still got locked up. I mean…
The “Existence Exists” Ayn Rand
We hear a lot about this in Atlas Shrugged and it apparently applies both to people who have read the novel and people who … well … really have a whole lot better things to do with their time than read Atlas Shrugged.
But I digress. It seems that Romney and big Republican donors and Republican pollsters and Republican pundits really did think Romney was going to win.
And all that crap they dumped on Nate Silver and every poll except Gallup and Rasmussen and David Axelrod was sincere crap, not just the standard-issue “I talk up my side and talk down your side when I’m on tv” stuff the everybody does all the time no matter who they support.
Which led to the spectacle Tuesday night of the Republicans denying existence was existing even as it was existence-ing itself into existence. And after everyone else had noticed. But this isn’t the only reason the Democrats are the real party of Ayn Rand.
The “Those Who Are Thinking Are Thinking” Ayn Rand
It’s hard to believe the party which spent its impressionable teenage years reading Siddhartha out-thought the party which spent them reading The Fountainhead, but they did. The 2012 Ayn Rand data-crunching cage match goes to Siddhartha.
But losing the title of “the party of Ayn Rand” doesn’t stop there. All the Republicans saying the reason they lost the presidency is because their candidate wasn’t conservative enough, despite a great deal of electoral and demographic and polling data to the contrary, and instead believe the key to winning is to repeat their core beliefs more and more frequently and more and more fervently rather than …
Wait a minute. That does sound a lot like Ayn Rand. But I digress.
The other group coming up short in the “those who are thinking are thinking” category are the Republicans suggesting that all they need to do is change their “tone”.
This implies Republicans believe they can promote policies such as God wanting women to have babies resulting from rape, or driving anyone who doesn’t look Anglo-Saxon across the southern border of the United States with electric cattle prods, or risking recession to defend tax cuts for 2% of the population – and if they get nice looking people in nice clothes to explain these policies really nicely (hello Paul Ryan!) – the people getting screwed by them won’t notice because the people getting screwed are easy-to-manipulate idiots.
In “the those who are thinking are thinking” versus “the those who are thinking are thinking” show-down, I’m putting $20.00 on the idiots.
Now before the Democrats get too happy that they are the new party of Ayn Rand, I’d like them to embrace one more Ayn Rand.
The “I Can Do Simple Arithmetic” Ayn Rand
You don’t have to be a free, self-sufficient, independent genius to do simple arithmetic and the simple arithmetic is this. Obama got 50.8% of the popular vote. Romney got 47.9% of the popular vote. About 61.7 million people voted for Obama. About 58.5 million voted for Romney.
That, Democrats, is not a landslide. That is basically fifty-fifty.
And when you think about how badly the Republicans blew it with women and Latinos and young people, there are a lot of votes against Republicans – rather than for Democrats – in that group.
So Mr. Obama, please remember. Data is data. Existence exists. You have power and momentum, but not a mandate and not a free hand. Listen to the whole country. Think about what you hear. And get to work. Ayn is counting on you.
** My apologies for drifting out of my usual topic of consideration. But I mentioned several books, so that makes it okay, yes? **
I’m not an American but you’re making me wish I’d followed the candidates more closely – and now I know who Ayn Rand is … blush!
Really? Ayn is nearly as big as Jesus in the States. My portrait is not exactly complete. She’s a libertarian icon and quite popular with American conservatives too, although the conservatives tend to overlook her atheism and flexible attitude toward marital fidelity.
I love the way you end this post. I’m not American, but I found myself quite anxious for Mr. Obama to win.
Thanks. On the ending, it is as easy for the left to be foolish as it is for the right, and I’m hoping both sides will keep that in mind.