Right Wing Movies & the 2012 Election

This is the part of the book I think was a bit silly. I mean, in the real world people are more than happy to jump in a be a slave if they can get a little for themselves in the process.

It's hard to imagine, but, when slavery ended, there were many Slaves who were more than happy to go back and work for their old master's or step into openings that became vacant when other slaves left. It's the reason why unions HATE 'scab' laborers. Or why business owners will suffer the Mafia 'tax' and when they leave (withdraw their productive labor from society) another steps in as fast as they can to start a business and pay the Mafia.

I suppose that part of the book seemed a bit silly IMO. It reminds me scenes on Trantor where the housewives are busily preparing lunch for their husbands as they go off to their office jobs. Just a little silly and too unrealistic it sort of breaks the fantasy illusion and ruins the story a little. OR there could have been some subtleties I just didn't get at the time? Sometimes the artist connects and other times it's a swing and miss

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They spend a lot of time saying that they're going to do that, but in point of fact they run an active campaign of piracy and sabotage. You seem to be forgetting all of the parts throughout the book that describe Danneskjold's campaign of piracy, D'Anconia's sabotage of the copper industry, that one oil barron torching the oil wells, etc. The heros of the book are literally running a conspiracy to attain dictatorial political power through a campaign of terror.

But not so "direct" or "immediate" that he evinced any awareness of such torture or innocence - and note that Dagny declines to inform him of any such motives. Instead, she lies and says that she's there on official business with orders from his superior. When he attempts to confirm her story, she simply sticks a gun in his face and orders him to comply under threat of death. And then she murders him, in cold blood, as he cowers and begs for his life. The victim is clearly ignorant and confused by the whole situation, and not some determined participant in any threat to her or Galt.

 

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So you're telling us that you know what Rand thought of Greenspan better than Rand herself did? That's a bit ridiculous.

They are evidence that she specifically supported and trusted the guy as an economic policy maker. And they are certainly not evidence that she disapproved of any decision he made.

I do not see where Greenspan has admitted the sorts of deviations from Objectivist prescriptions that you assert.

Nor have I asserted such in the first place. But since you bring it up, Ayn Rand didn't live her own life completely according to her own philosophy, because her philosophy is untenable and idiotic to begin with. It's nothing more than a playbook of excuses and rationalizations for privileged sociopaths to use in justifying doing whatever the hell they want, regardless of who they harm.

I could, but am not interested in doing your homework for you.

The fact that Objectivism - and producerist ideology in general - deals in stilted fantasy that does not map well onto the real world is exactly my point. You guys got no less a Rand acolyte than Alan fucking Greenspan as the nation's most influential economic policy-maker for an entire generation, and rather than admit that his failures discredit his ideology, you just double down and cook up a rationale to dismiss him as insufficiently orthodox. It's classic ideological zealotry, helped by the fact that the ideology in question is a sham theory of socioeconomics, and exists only to provide justifications for exactly such extremism and short-sightedness.

Are you aware that you are right now pounding your fist for greater government regulation of the markets, in the name of Ayn Rand? That's how far up your own ass you've climbed here, in trying to avoid admitting that Rand's zeal for laissez-faire policies was discredited.

 

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Just out of curiosity, when did you guys all last read Atlas Shrugged? For me, it's going on 25 years now--only read it once, and have no intention of reading it again. I have re-read bits and pieces of Rand's non-fiction, esp. as they were at times peripherally relevant to things I've worked on, but the fiction--especially the rather bulky tomes--well...

I ask because while "bad" memories oft seem to take deeper root, the same doesn't apply for "bad" reading material--for me, at least. When I think about the fiction I was into as a teen--basically, a whole lotta Germans, a whole lotta Russians, and a few French (and the occasional Conrad or Borges)--I can readily call to mind the most of the plot points, names, etc. for the stuff I liked.

Not so much the stuff I thought as crap. Sure, I recall many of the characters and major plot points, but the specifics have (not so sadly) faded...

And @ Michael:

I'll respond shortly. I started a response but got bogged down in some serious side-tracking.

 

We are not faced with a cadre of true believers in "People Of the Corn" running US agricultural policy on the basis of what they think it says.

They were fans of hers.

 

The number of Libertarians is puny, how many of those would be Rand "Objectivists"? Maybe 0.001% of the US public would know anything about philosophy and of those a small number understand the nuance of one particular philosophy called Objectivism.

Take that douche running as Mitten's side-kick. He's an "Objectivist" ... Oh, but at the same he's a Christian. Yeah, square that circle. IOWs, he's another full of shit politician sociopath who read a book and had a brain fart and wants to rape the public for as much as he can as quickly as possible. Just like Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Obama, etc.... all while high on a dopamine induced ego kick.

Oh, and the US Economic policy is run by (and has been run by) Keynesian Economists. An Obamney Chimera isn't going to change that one bit. We just has to sit back, let our betters at the Federal Reserve decide what's best for them and then see exactly how they decide to f*ck us over this time. I hope you like the taste of cat food. You may want to buy some while it's still relatively cheap.

 

except the Us and any country has never followed the Keynesian plan. which you know you just don't care because it doesn't promote your libertarian religion.

 

Who cares? The number of self-professed Randites holding positions of great power and influence in the US Federal government was not puny or insignificant, under recent Republican administrations, and we are suffering accordingly. We are not suffering from the power and influence of a cadre of true believers acting according to Stephen King's fantasy world.

That is false. The economic policies of W's administration were based on what is called Reaganomics - Chicago school and related supply side economics - as were the eponymous Reagan's and Bush's. Their duly enacted policies - specifically, for example, the huge tax cuts for wealthy people and consequent multiplying of the public debt enacted in times of overall economic growth - were in direct contradiction of Keynesian principles.

Hollywood movies, Madison avenue imagery, and related visual propaganda techniques, were instrumental in selling that garbage to the American public. Lying is easier with pictures, because images don't have to make sense or follow coherent lines of reasoning or fit into a known body of facts. The viewer creates the story to fit what is presented to them as observed reality - the victim is manipulated to create the lie for themselves.

 

Investor's Business Daily has a review of 2016: Obama's America:

Why President Obama Hates America​

 

Oh yea, a piece from the same people who wrote that Stephen Hawkins would be dead if he had to rely on a system of socialized medicine. LOL. Apparently, no one told him that Hawkins was alive and well, and very much dependent on and an advocate of the very socialized medicine people like you love to lie about.

As for the movie 2016 it is yet another partisan hit piece, created and financed by yet another right wing operative who is yet again playing fast and loose with truth and honesty. The movie and its financers might have had a chance of convincing Americans that President Obama is a communist/socialist, white hating, illegal alien who hates America and everything American if Obama had not been our president for that last 3 years. Unfortunately for you and those like you, President Obama has been president for the last 3+ years and most Americans outside the Republican media bubble know President Obama is none of those things.

So the movie will play well with those inside the Republican misinformation bubble. It will not play well outside that misinformation bubble. This is yet again another example of fleecing the “ditto heads” for all they are worth.

 

So that's where all those counterfactual thread titles come from - I've seen that thing on the paper racks, but never knew who on God's green earth was buying it or anything it says.

The director of that movie was on TV recently, and delivered a few of the standard falsehoods we can use to separate the reality based community from the bat belfry crowd - he stated that W's greatest deficit was 500 million, for example, easily checked and debunked nonsense like that, with perfect sincerity. I think he believes that crap.

 

Well, it's now the number two political documentary of all time. It's passed Al Gore's "masterpiece", An Inconvenient Truth, and all of Michael Moore's movies except Fahrenheit 911.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/09/ant...ntary-now-bigger-than-3-michael-moore-movies/

 

Hey, if lies work for you, go for it. That swiftboating thing worked out for you pretty well (less so for the nation).

 

In the first place, you're comparing box office receipts there - which is a stupid thing to do with political documentaries (and documentaries in general) as those things live their lives largely on DVD (and TV and Netflix) and pointedly not in movie theaters. Notice that documentaries are almost never released in theaters in the first place, so it isn't as if these box office receipts indicate that D'Souza has taken on Ken Burns and won. It is not as if outselling a Michael Moore movie indicates that you're going to win an election or anything.

In the second place, the fact that political organizations and mega-churches can run up the box office receipts by filling busses with true believers and driving them to the theater - all on the same weekend, to amplify the effect - is just that. This is just The Passion of the Christ all over again.

 

The same groups do the same thing with books (e.g. Atlas Shrugged as previously discussed in the sub forum) in a desperate and deceptive attempt to lend some credibility in a work that has no credibility.