Who is John Galt?

I've recently found myself hit in the head with the flying WTF hammer. The pure absurdity of life in these times has staggered me again. It's probably my own fault for only half paying attention to what's going on out there that I get snuck up on by these things. But really, I never expected the writings of Ayn Rand to suddenly become all the buzz in mainstream media and politics. Much less did I expect the lengthy "Atlas Shrugged" to suddenly be hoisted as some sort of weird new banner of privileged republicans in this country.

I've read it, twice in fact, though it's been a long time. I read it when I was young and idealistic, and yeah, I loved it. By the time I read it I'd already read a handful of Rand's other books, Anthem, We The Living, The Fountainhead. Atlas Shrugged is certainly the pinnacle of Rand's works, and certainly espouses lofty ideals and philosophies, but is it really applicable or appropriate to these times and the current economic state of things?

More than that, is it really applicable and appropriate for the folks hollering about it's tenets to be doing so? I started hearing about it and was both dumbfounded and outraged. Here was what I considered a great piece of literature I remember fondly from my idealistic youth, being hoisted in support of views and ideals I can not rationally support. Here are people saying this books means things I never thought it meant. Well, maybe I just didn't get it.

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. I've had experience in the past with finding groups online where Rand readers gathered, or Objectivists, or whatever and I had already been surprised and annoyed to find that all-in-all it was mostly full of Republicans and Conservatives. I shrugged and left. I didn't bother jumping into the midst of people so set in their ways and saying "I don't think that means what you think it means." I didn't forsee a lively but pleasant debate coming out of that.

So who is John Galt, why are rich republicans adopting him as their mascot, and why is that totally ridiculous?

John Galt, as a character in Rand's Atlas Shrugged, was the son of a garage mechanic in Ohio. He left home at twelve and went to college at sixteen. At college he met some of the other important figures in the novel, all of whom double majored in physics and philosophy.

Do you see any big parallels between most rich republicans and John Galt yet? No, me either. Though now that I look at it, I realize I was born the son of a garage mechanic, but I didn't start college until 2 weeks after I turned 17, and while I've read a lot of physics and philosophy, my degree was in Audio Production. Still, I oddly may have more in common with John Galt's background than most of those folks threatening to "Go Galt" out there.

Anyway, John Galt invented an engine that was powered by ambient static electricity or somesuch. I don't remember all the details, but it certainly sounds like clean, renewable, green, "alternative" energy to me!

Yet most of the republicans scoff at Obama's energy policies and push towards renewable energy. To hell with innovation, "Drill baby, Drill." In fact, in a little instance of total irony, I found that the person who has currently laid claim to www.whoisjohngalt.com and who actually posts under the name "John Galt" talks quite a bit of smack about the idea of creating jobs by creating a new alternative energy economy. I laughed, a lot. This guy posts as John Galt, but thinks we should continue relying on fossil fuels. Apparently he forgot that whole essential part of "Going Galt" where all the visionaries removed themselves to go live in a hidden valley that was able to exist off the grid due to Galt's alternative energy source. Hmmmm....

Anyway, the gist of Galt & Co.'s protests against the world was that the existing socio-political system was basically set up to where it rewarded mediocrity and such at the expense of the true visionaries, creative geniuses, and industry masterminds. So all the folks who had done really wonderful things and not gotten their due for it quit and left society behind. "We don't need you." They removed their skills and refused to benefit a society of "moochers and looters".

Now, today, we have all these folks taking up the Galt flag in protestation of Obama's tax increase on folks with incomes over $250,000. They say that they are being ripped off, that they are being punished for their hard work and success, that everyone else is mooching and looting off them. So basically they are saying THEY are the visionaries, innovators, etc in the story. That's really the key point to their argument, that they are using this novel as an analogy for the proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy while not increasing them on the people who think that a quarter million dollars a year would probably allow most people to live in relative ease.

The big PROBLEM with the analogy is... well, I should probably say the problems ARE, as I hardly know where to start. The problem with the analogy is that it disregards so many things, and draws parallels from the most insignificant aspects of the story. The analogy depends on everyone using logic that really isn't sound. Basically, we're asked to take it as a solid FACT, indisputable, that people who have lots of money have it because they WORKED harder than the people who don't have lots of money. That's their key argument really. "We are rich, so obviously we are successful, so obviously we worked harder than everyone else and asking us to pay a larger fraction of our wealth in taxes is punishing us for working harder than everyone else."

Anyone see any problems with this logic? Well, I do. The key one being an essential component of the whole Atlas Shrugged theme. That we don't live in a society where there is any direct relationship between how hard you work and how much money you get in return. That's big issue number one right there. Both because these people are asking us to believe that they have all the money because they worked for it, and are trying to use John Galt as their poster boy, when John Galt was pushing for a society where people DID get paid in relation to their work and contribution. So neither the logic of their argument, nor the tenets of their poster boy really back up their stand in any way.

My guess is that most of these people never actually read Atlas Shrugged, at best, they may have flipped through to the steamy parts.

Anyway, when I look at all the people hollering and waving this book around and try to make actual parallels between them and characters or contingents in the book, it quickly becomes clear to me, despite them hollering that because they make over $250,000 a year that they are the innovators and heroes, that they really pretty closely parallel the moochers and looters shown in the story. I don't see innovators. I don't see what great contribution these people make to our society. I see a lot of privileged idiots who can't make a rational argument that's based on fact to save their life.

I think beneath it all, these people aren't so much scared of their taxes raising as they are of a shift in the socio-economic system that would no longer allow them to mooch off the system and loot the people who are really contributing, actually doing the work.

Seriously, do you think the new University of Oregon baseball coach who is being paid $400,000 a year works harder than a coal miner? Or a public high school teacher? Or a trash collector? Really? Is he making such a great contribution that the foundations of our society would quake if he removed his skills and talents?

And all talking heads on TV? Do we really need them? I know THEY think they are pretty important, but really...

The best thing about this whole thing, the most absurdly amazing thing about this is that for the most part, the people screaming and hollering about "Going Galt" and how they are being punished for their hard work, and how they should be rewarded instead, are the folks who are in complete support of the government bailouts put forward by Bush & Pals. The bailout that was oh so necessary. The bailout that was a matter of absolute NEED. And why did we need that bailout? Because a bunch of big corporations with very highly paid folks running them, completely FAILED. That's right, they didn't do their jobs well, despite being paid huge sums of money. They sucked, and their companies should have gone under. But instead they got paid off for their mediocrity, for their inability to run a profitable business. Weird isn't it, how while that goes against absolutely everything that John Galt stood for, and was a prime example of everything he stood against... the same folks who supported it, are now trying to use Galt as their posterboy.

With hypocrisy that staggering, I can only assume either they are stupid, or they think most of us are.