Neanderpundit

has my copy of Atlas Shrugged.

I warned him, and I tried to warn him off reading it, but he insisted.

I told him that this was my fifth copy, the first I threw out the window of a moving car, the second and third I took to the range and shot, and the fourth got run through my desk shredder, one or four pages at a time. it took me five copies before I could stand to get through it.

No, I won’t see the movie. Having that all injected into my brain once is more than enough. I’m assured that the movie is well done and honest to the book, and for acolytes of Ms Rand, that’s very nice, hopefully they’ll finish all three and do a good job of it. When they do, I might rent the DVD’s and scan through to a few parts I considered enjoyable in the book.

The world is not black and white. In the era of Randolph Scott, the good guys were always good, no matter what, and the bad guys were bad all the time, and always lost. That world of serial westerns was as realistic a portrayal of the west as you can’t get. Give me Blondie any day, or Angel eyes; the good guys sometimes act bad. Lie with cheap women. Doublecross a partner, maybe even. In the end, they do the right thing, but they are not the two dimensional cardboard cutouts from the beginning of the Wild Wild West, they have some depth and some dimension.

Atlas Shrugged is the Taurus Judge of conservatism/civil libertarianism. It’s good to have a weapon, but there are better suited weapons for the purpose. it looks nice, and on the surface it’s powerful and big, but at the core it tries to do several things, for each of which it is well unsuited.

Sure, Randolph Scott was a hoot to watch. And it’s fun to see bad guys get their comeuppance. Hell, evengun hating peace loving tree hugging Liberals flock to the theaters to see Bruce WIllis shoot the bad guys. And therin lies the problem with all of this: Not all bad guys are always all bad. Not all good guys are always all good. And there is nor has there ever been any person or group of people that can- as in Atlas Shrugged- drag the world to a halt as a result of the loss of their industry, it cannot happen, and never will. There will always be someone to step in and fill the gap, even if their gap filling is inadequate and inefficient.

Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons” is- though a much lighter piece- a much better indication of our futures; it’s easy to read the book and think “Those very few, very intelligent people- they are the kings of this planet, of this race! ” but when you look around, the obvious truth is not that the intelligent and industrious are the rulers of the race, but slaves to it. Such is it as it is, such it will always be. Oh, we’re compensated for the enslavement, and frankly, bright people have the power to wrench more enjoyment from life than the stupid, but we have chosen our enslavement by our very industry. “Want something done?” Lucille Ball once famously said, “Give it to a busy person”

There will always be busy people. The instant Atlas Shrugs, another Atlas will be right behind him, to take up the burden- maybe better, maybe worse, but the line of pretenders to the throne is as endless as the human race.

I have no love for the book, though I think Ms Rand might have been a lovely and interesting person to know in person. I share her burning desire that people be free and have a right to the fruit of their labor. Had she been a carpenter, or a chef, she might well have left the world a far better place than it was when she entered; instead, I fear, she leaves behind her a trail of acolytes as unwilling to admit her slightest fault as owners of Norinco 1911’s or people who have a Taurus Judge sitting on ther nightstand next to the false teeth in the glass and the Harlequin romance.

Wife and daughter are big fans of Dead Mobster, and while I’m not, I do like the garlic rolls and the Lobster Bisque. Anyway, how can you hose up Lobster Bisque? between that and the garlic biscuit, I dreampt last night that I was out on a job, on a machine so worn out that it should have been replaced ages before, and for whatever reason one of my co-workers-the lady who does all the parts ordering and makes sure our expenses get paid on time- was there helping me.

Now, she’s a tiny thing, but she has the soul of an engineer. When and where she grew up, Girls didn’t become Engineers, so she’s a housewife and personal assistant, but she would have been an excellent wrench, but for a bit more upper body strength.

Anyway, she and i are looking at this machine, and she’s being uncharacteristically frank. “This machine is fucked. We shouldn’t be trying to ressurect it, we should roll the stone back over the cave and start a fire.”

I agreed, but still, there we were.

The base of the machine was full of chips, having been used for many, many years with very little maintenance, and the chips were predominantly cast iron and aluminum; the cast was rusty and caked, and the aluminum (and apparently a bit of magnesium) were pretty evenly mixed.

“can we get this machine outside to clean it?” she said, and while I thought it an unusual request, the customer complied, I pulled the power and air, and they forklifted it far out onto the apron of the loading dock and sat it on blocks. They brought out a Hotsy and sat it there, and we went to lunch.

Not before she lit a cigarette out of a large book of matches from the Gobbler, took one long hit (She doesn’t even smoke!) and stuck the cigarette butt first into the end of the pack. She placed the pack on the congealed mass of rusty iron shavings and alloys in the base of the machine and we went off to have a gyro, whcih she ate daintily with her face, using her hands not once to nibble the pieces of Doner Kebab off the plate. Never even got a drop of tsa-tsi-ki sauce anywhere on her. Me, I used both hands and eleven napkins, and by the time I was done, I looked like I blew a seal.

When we returned, the Goldschmidt reaction was in full bloom. Representatives of the company were standing around, trying to extinguish the flames with what they had at hand, which was the Hotsy. It wasn’t working so well. The melt burned through the base of the machine and a trickle of molten iron and boiling aluminum was dribbling down the driveway where it pooled in a small pothole.

The customer got a new machine off insurance money, we didn’t have to fix the machine, and we got a free lunch out fo the deal. Winning!! {/sheen}

Good thing I only have Lobster bisque once in a great while.