Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 17

atlas4Eddie Villers: I exist to tell some random guy working that is totally not John Galt (he’s John Galt) where everything is. Despite being a lickspittle who is totally incompetent, I’m one of the heroes. Here, total stranger who isn’t John Galt (he’s John Galt), let me tell you where Dagny Taggart is!

Not John Galt: Thanks.

Hank Rearden: Since my moral weakness with Rearden Metal where I signed it over to the government, I walk through dangerous woods alone!

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 17

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 16

altas3Commie Government Officials: We will consciously restrict the economy because we’re idiots!

James Taggart: I feel guilty thinking about George Washington, because he was such a great capitalist who never owned slaves!

Commie Crook: Intellectuals suck and are the allies of tyrants, which is why every tyranny in the world has rounded up to imprison or kill intellectuals!

Commie Government Officials: Yeah! And now we’ll give a lot of speeches about why we’re the good guys!  Seriously, it’ll last about twelve pages!

Wesley Mooch: We will force businessmen to sign over the intellectual property rights of all their stuff! And by “force” we don’t mean force. Because commie tyrants would never use guns!

Dagny Taggart: No way! I quit! Hank, when they come after you, I want to share your burdens.

Hank Rearden: I’ll never sign of Rearden Metal!

Commie Dr. Ferris: We’ll reveal your affair with Dagny, which will embarrass her.

Hank: Drat! Despite Dagny having contempt for public opinion, and the reason she hasn’t revealed the affair already  is so I’m not embarrassed, and despite her just telling me that she wants to share my burdens, I’ll ignore all of that and sign over Rearden Metal!

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 15

atlas2Dagny Taggart: I told everyone that those commie limits on production would cause disaster. It’s causing disaster! Ha! I will, of course, ignore ongoing industrial sabotage by the person I literally call “the destroyer”, not to mention widespread piracy that has stopped metal production in the US – it is ONLY the result of the COMMIES.

Commie Business Leaders: It is a disaster!  We will also fail to blame industrial saboteurs or pirates! We will blame James Taggart!

James Taggart: Huh? I’m a sychophant!

Commie Business Leaders: Dime a dozen, dude.

James: Drat!

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 15

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 14

atlas5Lillian Rearden: Happy Thanksgiving!

Hank Rearden: I hate you.  And Thanksgiving is the celebration of productive people.

Kit Bradley: Oh, good lord, really? Hey, I guess a writer who says that there was no slavery in the US has already demonstrated her ignorance about American history, but STILL.

Hank: And I refuse to feel guilty about hating my wife, because if I did, I’d be a good person, and therefore wouldn’t need to feel guilty.

Kit: Holy tautology, Batman! This chapter is gonna be rough.

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 14

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 13

atlas4Lillian Rearden: Ha! I caught you!  You’re a cheater! I don’t know who, and I won’t look, because I don’t want a divorce, or even a separation, and despite your constant emotional distance, your lack of interest in my life, the creepy sexual domination thing that you want from women, and your infidelity – remember, readers, I’m the bad guy!

Hank Rearden: Whatevs. I’m still going to boink my mistress. Remember, readers, my emotional distance, lack of interest in my wife’s life, the creepy sexual domination I demand but don’t even inform her about, and my infidelity make me the good guy!

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 13

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 12

altas3Dagny Taggart: Capitalist Engineer, name your price to fix the Miracle Motor that I took from someone else’s property to use for my own profit!

Capitalist Engineer: I’ll take a low salary, now, but when I’ve discovered how it works, I’ll squeeze you!

Dagny: Okay!

Kit Bradley: Waitasec, isn’t he just saying he’s going to break his contract with you? Why are you hiring him?!

Capitalist Engineer: But I want to keep working at the Utah Institute of Technology, because they have a lab there that I’m using. I’m actually a night watchman, but I just ignore the job they’re paying me to do, to steal their power and supplies, to do what I want to do.  Work is very important to CAPITALISTS.

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary, Chapter 12

Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary: Chapter 11

atlas2Dr. Statler: Commies wrote a commie book and twisted my words! It is published by the State Science Institute that I supposedly run, though I do nothing administrative – indeed, I actively avoid administration! I’ll summon the commie stooge who wrote the book.

Commie Stooge Scientist: Sorry, my car broke down.

Dr. Statler: I hate you for not apologizing! Commie stooge, you misrepresented me!

Commie Stooge Scientist: Well, yeah. People are stupid. I’m publishing the book to manipulate them.

Dr. Statler: Though I agree people are stupid, I don’t like how you are manipulating them.  You should manipulate them through CAPITALISM.

Continue reading Atlas Shrugged EXECUTIVE Summary: Chapter 11

A rejoinder to Tyron Woodley saying the UFC “isn’t a sport”

With all respect to Tyron Woodley, who recently said that the UFC isn’t a sport, the UFC has never been a purely athletic contest in the sense that there are fixed rankings and fighters get fights only based on their performance.

The very early days of the UFC – the first dozen or so UFC events – were primarily to show that Brazilian jiu jitsu was superior to other martial arts and the entrants were carefully selected to make BJJ look good. After Zuffa bought the promotion, the small number of initial fighters meant that they had to, basically, keep fighting each other – which is why we had THREE Tito Ortiz-Ken Shamrock fighters. Ken won NONE of them, and lost quite badly, each time by TKO, and the first was for the belt . . . even though Ken had lost his previous two fights. Lose two fights and get a title shot? Yep. Shamrock was never in Tito’s league, but it sold tickets, and there were other realities at stake.

Continue reading A rejoinder to Tyron Woodley saying the UFC “isn’t a sport”

Thoughts on the movie Atlas Shrugged: Part 1

We just saw the movie, Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, starring Taylor Schilling as Dagny Taggart and Grant Bowler as Hank Rearden.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 11% score. It is the highest rated of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy of movies, and the score is justified. It is not a good movie.

Still, I’m not here to damn the movie, exactly, but to discuss it, comparatively, to Part 1 of the novel.

Continue reading Thoughts on the movie Atlas Shrugged: Part 1

Reinterpreting Atlas Shrugged: Galt’s Gang

statue-1515390_1920-1200x900Apropos my previous, serious post about reinterpreting Atlas Shrugged, there’s something kicking around my head: how the actions of Galt’s guys are similar to the work stoppage. After all, if I say that people are doing work stoppages to prevent the US from benefiting the USSR, it is also clear that Galt and his guys are also contrary to the USSR.

No.  They’re not the same thing.

In many times of political crisis and chaos, bandits and warlords arise. The bandits are the enemy of both the invaders and the people – they aren’t motivated by a desire to see their country free of foreign influence, but their own personal profit.

Galt’s goons fit that description. America is going to hell in a hand basket, and what they’re worried about is how individual businessmen can’t make enormous piles of money. They take advantage of the weakened state, and further weaken it, to create the conditions where they can take profit from America’s misery.

That Galt’s goons have an ideology hastily pasted onto their terrorism is normal. Many bandits say that they’re looking out for people, or fighting an unjust system. The Shining Path rebels mouth Marx while shipping drugs, for instance. The Contras in Nicaragua said they wanted to “free” the people from socialist tyranny. The Taliban talks about creating a Caliphate. So what? Ideology doesn’t magically transform bandits into freedom fighters.

Galt and his associates are just bandits, terrorists, and criminals.