Ayn Rand and Bette Davis

OMG,  I just watched this.  I’ve talked about Ayn Rand in the past, mostly to say she’s not the great evil most on the left point her out to be, it’s just her followers who are nuts.  I read the Fountainhead (or was it Atlas Shrugged?) when I was about 14 and thought it was an uplifting tale about an architect.  That shows how naive I was, but it looks like this year the crazy old Russian emigrant and Hollywood scriptwriter from the mid 1900s is going to be front and center in the Presidential race.  Paul Ryan absolutely adores this woman.  A mere 4 years ago he said  “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”  He also gave all of his interns copies of Atlas Shrugged, and insisted they read it.

Paul Ryan’s Muse

So, I looked up this and OMGWTFGOPHYGTN?!  Here are some observations:

I was surprised that Mike Wallace used the phrase “trickle down theory”- in 1959 – totally in its current context.  I thought that was a Reaganism but I guess I thought wrong.

Do the teabaggers realize just how anti-religious this woman was?  (which is actually one point in her favor)

Perhaps.  They are more intelligent than most of us give them credit for.  They are so intelligent, they can hold two completely contradictory points of view at the exact same time, a feat most liberal thinkers cannot even imagine.

Never mind the total weirdness of what she is saying.  Look at her eyes.  She is a cross between Orly Taitz and Cruella DeVille.  She looks like Bette Davis in a don’t fuck with me mood.  She not only says that some people are not deserving of love, she obviously believes it, feels it, deeply, viscerally.  This looks like a woman who would poison you in a cheap motel room and smoke while you die.  I’m not saying she ever did that, mind you, I ‘m just saying she looks like she’d like to.

And she’s Paul Ryan’s philosophical role model.