Reflections of A Once and Former Randian

       This last hitch at work,  I saw a combination of two items that alarmed me quite a bit. On one of the bulletin boards for general communication in a BP camp, there was a piece of pure propaganda from that company's "Team Alaska". The flyer essentially said that BP and other oil companies were seeking to develop new resources in places where oil companies received more tax incentives and lower rates to produce. They flyer then encouraged employees to contact their elected representatives to lower tax rates and provide incentives to BP or else face the specter of more lay-offs. Essentially, BP would be taking it's ball and going somewhere else if the State of Alaska didn't stop taxing them so much.
       All of this wouldn't have struck me so much, had it not been for the second piece of the combination. On a white sheet of letter sized paper were the four words that have become synonimous to me with Elitism, Narcissism, and all around Assholiness: "Who is John Galt?"


      When I was a younger man, I became enamored with the philosophical views that espoused the ideals of merit, and that reward should always be payed to those who were able to achieve the most. I bought into the American illusion of upward mobility based upon hard work, skill, dedication, sacrifice, etc. Like Mom, apple pie, and all the other pieces of Americana; the rags to riches stories of the talented and dedicated insert random lowly position here who possessed some great skill that led him to take his rightful place among America's powerful elite, are second nature to those of us who grew up in this land.
      I found this ideal played out best in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. While most of the main players in the book are established members of the nation's industrial elite, the question "Who is John Galt?" lingers over the first half of the book, until he's finally revealed.
      In John Galt, I found figure that encompassed all of the ideals of the meritorious American man, who takes his place among the natural aristocracy of elites.. Galt is born the son of a mechanic, who through talent and hard work, goes on to "better" himself through an elite education, making friends with very powerful young men of the industrial aristocracy, finally becoming a great inventor.
      This could be any one of the Great American Success stories, except it doesn't end there. Galt leads a revolt of the modern bourgeoisie against the masses who they see as parasites, unfairly feasting off their success through taxes and the like. Instead of choosing to contribute a greater share of their disproportionately high wealth, Galt's followers instead go on strike and disappear. Like any good piece of elitist propaganda, the world falls apart without them.
      I bought this line of reasoning hook, line and sinker for many years. It lead me to believe actions which were against my interests and favored rich elites were right and fair. I praised George W. Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy because they eased the "punishing of productivity".
      "Why champion actions that are against your interests?" one might ask. Simply put, because the illustrations presented to me of people like John Galt, coupled with a healthy dose of narcissism, led me to believe that I too would someday be ultra-rich and would like to have the benefit of keeping my hard-earned wealth.
      When the illusions started to unravel with the economic meltdown of 2008-2009, my perceptions of Galt changed. As I watched the über-rich of this country line up for handouts from the government, I began to see that it was they who were the parasites, not the unwashed masses.  Through all their so-called "free trade", they had devised a system in which all of the wealth could be sucked up into the hands of few. When that wasn't enough, they created games to invent wealth to exploit. Finally, when the game couldn't be prolonged anymore, it was they who came begging to the public for more corporate welfare. All the while, they maintained an air of arrogance about how they were "too big to fail" and if they were allowed to fail, the country would collapse. Just like Galt and his followers, our modern day equivalents thought the world needed them more than they needed the world.