REFLECTIONS

“I keep thinking that insanity is a state where a person can’t tell what’s real.  Well what’s real now is insane and if I accepted it as real, I’d have to lose my mind wouldn’t I?”  Eddie Willers in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Yes I admit it I succumbed to peer pressure; I read Atlas Shrugged.  I knew all the books flaws going into it.  I knew the heroes ranted not talked; the characters were cardboard cutouts; and the climax of the book is a 3 hour speech.  I understand why Whittaker Chambers said on every page was clearly written “get thee to a gas chamber.”   The books conservative critics are correct, and yet, and yet..

 Had I read this book at any other time in my life its flaws would have completely over whelmed its virtues.  Had I read it any time other than during the Obama administration  the message would have been overpowered by the ridiculous presentation.  But reading this book while Obama fiddled I was overcome by Rand’s prescience.  If I can say I told you so how much more can Rand who saw all this clear as a day 60 years ago. 

 It seemed whenever I looked up from the book to read the day’s headlines I hadn’t left the book at all.  Is this the book’s anti-dog eat dog act or Obamacare’s individual mandate.  Is that the moochers destroying Colorado or the EPA seizing  control of businesses in Texas?   Is that Directive 10-289 or the NRLB shutting down the new Boeing plant in a right to work state?   Quite honestly it made me dizzy watching Ayn Rand’s Dystopian vision acted out ever day in the headlines. 

 We are in James Taggert’s America not the America of our Founding Fathers.  Yet almost half the country approves this twisted President who might as well have leapt out of Atlas‘ pages.   And all I’ve got is a shrug.