THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED.
When we last paid attention to Robert Tracinski in 2013, he was telling the GOP how to be winners again. The whole piece is ridic, but Tracinski got a little interesting (that is to say, heated) when he talked about a certain author:
Yet the biggest failure of the right is that it has lost the economy’s technological elite. Admirers of Ayn Rand’s novels can immediately grasp why this is so important...
Today’s John Galts and Hank Reardens are not in a valley in Colorado. They’re in a valley in California. The Hank Rearden of Silicon Valley, an innovator who started out in a garage and built a company which became the most valuable in the world, was Steve Jobs. But Jobs was—let’s be honest here—kind of a hippie. He had many of the virtues of an Ayn Rand hero, but a very different personal philosophy...
He never did finish this thought, probably because the vision of turtlenecked Producers transported him. Anyway, Traciniski's back at The Federalist, and he's really letting his Rand flag fly in something entitled "All An Ayn Rand Hero Really Wants Is Love." I have read the whole thing and I'm pretty sure it's not a joke.
His big point is: you littlebrains think Rand was for the rich and against the poor, but nuh-uh, because several Atlas Shrugged characters renounce their wealth and go Galt -- and get rich again, but on their terms because they're naturally superior to the horrible statists like you. [retucks shirt]
Edifying as this lecture and its presumed effect on the crowds on his bedroom wall may have been for Tracinski, he seems unsatisfied, so he goes One Step Beyond and tries to us tell us not only that these characters are better at life and inventing and managerizing than the sheeple, but also that they are better at emotions:
...one of the very first things we learn about these tough, pitiless Ayn Rand heroes is their emotional vulnerability. One of the big themes that drives the plot throughout Part 1 is the loneliness of the producers.
The Loneliness of the Producers should definitely be the name of a slashfic site.
The novel projects a culture in which what they do is not recognized, valued, or rewarded. Or rather, since both Dagny and Rearden have been very successful in economic terms, they have been rewarded only with money, and they treat that as if it is the least important reward.
You even see them sighing and weeping sometimes, but eventually they find and form "family" with a bunch of other rich fucks and they all live productively ever after. They are so not cheesy antique wish-fulfillment objects for the little children inside who never got over their playmates' laughter.
The punch line? Tracinski's working on a reader's guide to Atlas Shrugged, and directs us to another site where, now that he has our attention...
My target is to raise $25,000 to buy back more of my time from other projects and focus on completing my Reader’s Guide to Atlas Shrugged in the next few months. Please, if you think this project is valuable, go to www.TracinskiLetter.com/subscribe to contribute.
This is the kind of project that might normally be funded by a think tank or foundation, but my readers know that I have always been an independent voice.
By my life and my love of it, that's rich! When next I'm out on the street, I'll front my begging bowl with a sign that says INDEPENDENT VOICE SEEKS CROWDFUNDING, see how that works, and recalibrate my opinion of mankind accordingly.
UPDATE. In comments, cleter has a brainstorm:
"No amount of car elevators could fill the emptiness in Mitt Romney's heart. He didn't need more wealth, all he needed was love. And there, standing next to his Mercedes, he wept. All he wanted was slightly over 50% of America's love...."
From "Atlas Shrugged II: The Secret of Romney's Gold," by Brian Herbert and Ayn Rand Jr.