Why All this Ayn Randiness?
John Oliver on his “Last Week Tonight,” in a side chat about Paul Ryan inching away from the philosophy of Ayn Rand, put this contemporary soap opera in perspective. “How is Ayn Rand still a thing?,” he asks, pleading with his viewers to revisit one more time the Big Ideas of Rand, at least before the next election. By the way, Oliver made clear that by using the word “thing” he was not objectifying women, and he wasn’t sneakily using a synecdoche or a part to describe the whole, as in “you poor thing.”
Because I get most of my news these days from John Oliver and Jon Stewart, I agreed to reminisce about my first meeting with Ms. Rand and her famous novel Atlas Shrugged, which has become a bible for some libertarians and an occasional political platform for Rand Paul, who might or might not be related to the author. I have suggested separately to Oliver that he dedicate a program to the etymological roots of rand, randy and randiness, so that we are all on the same semantic page. I did note that “rand” referred to a monetary unit in South Africa, and perhaps that association informed Ron and son Rand Paul’s views on economics. I also wondered out loud whether “Randy,” which was Little Paul’s first name before his wife told him to change it to Rand, tells us as much about his sex life as about his monetary policies. I salute his wife for her prescience and wonder why she is not running for office.
In backing away from Ayn Rand, Paul Ryan has said he loved her novels but didn’t agree with her philosophy. The man will get absolutely no disagreement from me because I met Atlas Shrugged as a boot sailor on an ammunition ship heading for the Tonkin Gulf. We slept in a berthing compartment that had three canvas bunks strung in a tier. Being a boot and, as the saying goes, lower than whale shit, I was awarded the lower bunk. At the time, I thought I had lucked out because I could keep an eye on everyone above.
One morning, while reaching around the deck for my shoes, I found a copy of Atlas Shrugged, a very heavy tome, that has been used as a step to the upper racks, a way to keep out sea water, or to kill those nine months at sea when numbing political discourse was preferred over orations from the High Command, numbingly patriotic as they were.
Even in my innocent state, I knew Atlas Shrugged has not been as popular with the salts as last month’s Playboy or Penthouse. Since I was on the bottom rung, so to speak, I got what my ship mates from the Deep South called the “hind tit.” I knew they were talking about bacon, and since I loved the occasional rasher, left it at that.
When in port sailors, in the pre-digital and satellite age, tended to watch local television on the mess deck. Some guys continued to watch the television signal, fading into starbursts as we sailed under the San Francisco Bridge on the way to the Tonkin Gulf. Some men still watched the screen as it went dark, preferring this blackness to opening a book, especially something as formidable as Atlas Shrugged. It was left to me to examine these virgin pages, untouched by sea-going hands.
I knew from some high school class that Atlas carried the world on his shoulders and also knew that “shrugging” was something my father did when he was trying to shake the family off his very meager frame. I vaguely recall a comic book where Atlas took on and eradicated some extra-terrestrial creatures all within sixteen pages. After I read the script I probably shrugged, assuming that was the way a super hero should behave.
I remember the novel being about a thousand pages, or so it seemed below decks during a raging typhoon in the South China Sea. Come to think of it, my novel about that experience, Bunker Kills: A Sea Story, is more exciting than Atlas, though here I’m not being fair to John Oliver, who is a little obsessive about staying on message.
A friend in high school had taught me speed reading. All I remembered from the tutorial was to move my fingers west to east and north to south in rapid fashion, focusing on keywords and vital phrases. Now I can reflect on that experience and realize that this was my introduction to semantics and meta-data. I followed my friend’s nautical advice and stopped on words that described the murder and rebirth of the human spirit. Underway again, I was brought to a dead stop with a reference to Aristotle’s Law of Identity, something that I don’t remember from the Cliff Notes. I felt I was getting closer to home when the author or a character who sounded like her said some good people should be willing to suffer at the hands of evil for society as a whole. It’s the sacrificial thing, and being a Catholic and all that, I was long acquainted with sacrifice, victims, and the occasional crucifixion.
One character, who now seems like he was reading from Romney’s 47% speech, cautioned disciples to be aware of looters and moochers who presumably included my mother who was getting food stamps, my father who was buried in a pauper’s grave, and his son who had the gall to take $200 a month from the American public for serving four years on a sexy ammunition ship. I was very disappointed, this being my first cruise and all that, when I read in Atlas Shrugged that only those who believed in all these principles outlined by Rand could have satisfactory sex lives. The rest of mankind would by definition and station have no interest in this joyous adventure and sadly would rot on the vine.
As my fingers finished navigating the pages of the tome, I realized that this ammunition run was going to be a damn long, lonely cruise. That’s politics for you.
Thanks Ayn.
