**October 2012 Focus - Focus Magazine

The monster’s ball
urbanities
GENE MILLER
Influenced by the adolescent fantasies of Ayn Rand, the extreme right wing rejects any form of collectivism as evil socialism.
My friend Denton (remember his
Blue Bridge “rocket launcher”
on the back cover of Focus,
Rand elevated her political philosophy,
dubbed Objectivism, to its fictional apotheosis
in a couple of novels, The Fountainhead
months ago?) handled the Blessed Event
and Atlas Shrugged—essentially, a pair of
so right-mindedly that I thought it would
masturbation fantasies for late-blooming
be worth memorializing.
conservatives; which is to say, a cohort
Receiving his first post-65 government
heavily involved in adequacy issues. I read
pension cheque, he took it upon himself
both potboilers as a teenager (The
to find some local social-serving non-
Fountainhead to this day is on my shelf,
profit organization with whom he could
wedged between a now-spineless Alice in
volunteer. He was explicit about this: a
Wonderland and some well-thumbed Kurt
national culture able to do such a good
Vonnegut titles) and I recall them as adven-
job of looking after its citizens by providing
ture stories. I carry the memory of jutting
a reasonable pension deserved his contin-
breasts, thrilling sex and destiny-eyed male
uing services as a show of appreciation
leaders who declaimed heroic, stone-chis-
and as a way of keeping the account in
elled speeches (often for page after endless
balance. What a nice view of the human
Ayn Rand in 1947
page) and who, presumably, never said
community! What an unerring expres-
anything real-world like “Pass the potasion
of the relationship between the individual and the collective! toes, please,” or waited in a lineup, or experienced any of the other
Remember: it takes a village to raise an individual.
afflictions we “lice” and “looters” are prone to.
His actions rang a deep note because, with the US presidential Sam Anderson wrote in New York Magazine: “Rand built a glorious
election looming, I can’t turn away from the train wreck that currently imaginary empire...then devoted every ounce of her will and intelli-
defines US politics and social ideology. It feels now as if the entire gence to proving it was all pure reason.”
national identity is in play. I’m transfixed—okay, horrified—by the Not that building glorious imaginary empires is anything out of the
messaging and symbol-play of the Republican leadership and by the ordinary for the hard-breathing right-wing sociopaths at the Washington,
factional voices who, after Obama’s election in 2008, made a sharp DC-based Cato Institute, or the vast network of faith-based literalists
right turn at “weird” and just kept going. I’m concerned that Canadian who think Christ and the triceratops shared a young Earth and that
conservatives—notably, the crowd from the province next door that God is America’s cheerleader, or the Canadian whack-job moon-bayers
has turned nature’s accidental oil bounty into a belief system—may see at the Fraser Institute or the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.
the coalescing US idiotocracy as validation of their vision and a green If anything, the toxic franchise of these right-wing institutions and
light for their positions.
organizations is being energized by the Tea Party and Christian
I’m specifically twitchy learning that Republican vice-presidential values updraft in the US, and by a worrying tolerance of that natural-
candidate Paul (“Lying Bastard”) Ryan’s political contours have been born punisher, Stephen Harper, here in Canada. To either side of the
shaped in part by the ideas and values of Ayn Rand, novelist and polit- border you can’t miss the “it’s our time,” triumphalist notes from people
ical philosopher, who placed iconoclastic individualism on a pedestal who clearly believe they are winning a holy war.
and considered everyone else to be vermin.
Commenting on Ryan and Republicans (and, collaterally, Ayn Rand),
This is a woman who smoked two packs a day, disbelieved the medical comic Bill Maher accurately noted: “Republicans...believe in some-
alarmists (their warnings might lead to government regulation) and thing that both science and history have shown to be pure fantasy. The
died of lung cancer. She showed them.
symbol for their party shouldn’t be an elephant—it should be a unicorn.
Rand would be just a sad footnote in the human comedy, except this [Ryan] can just write, ‘I want a pony’ in a binder and call it the ‘Plan
nut job has exerted a significant influence over Ryan, and personifies For Restoring Vision For The Future Of America’s Greatness’ or some
the mentality of too many right-drifting conservatives: Un-fetter the shit, and then everyone has to refer to him as the serious one in Congress.”
Atlases of commerce so their visions of progress and bounty may come The irony would be laughable if it weren’t so painful: Rand has
true! Shrink government! Obliterate obstructive regulation and let the recrudesced in our own times as some fresh grotesque from the bottom
free market perform its miracles! Sanctify the individual; reject the of the well of nightmares. Recent history has provided the “perfect
collective! Free the “doers,” punish the “moochers.”
storm” of conditions and values, and now it’s a monster’s ball out there
Ayn Rand was born Alissa Rosenbaum, a Jew, in 1905 in St Petersburg, of blamers, fat-assed, tattooed Walmart Republicans, wacko values-
Russia. Everything you want to understand about her virulent anti-collecvoters, angry, flag-waving true believers, Freedom or Bust libertarians,
tivism is to be understood from her experience of the horrific early years nostalgia types who think they lost something and want it back. Quick
of the Russian Revolution in 1917. She brought her hatreds with her to to brand any and every government program socialism, creeping or
the States and headed for Hollywood—the dream-factory home of true otherwise, the right wing is conveniently tone deaf to the fact that
love, perfect endings, Munchkins and Gort, the robot.
the only “redistribution of wealth” recently has been in favour of the
42 October 2012 • FOCUS