Prometheus Shrugged
What a Difference Last Week Made
It’s more than turning on a light and seeing reality – it’s lying in bed and a doctor comes in and tell you do not actually have cancer…well, you do have something nasty and there will be lingering side effects, but now it’s curable.
That was the January 21:
And the entire last week.
It is not the executive orders themselves, it is not the slinking off of the “resistance” to the resume-inundated foundations, it is not the political whip-change of the silicon social overlords, it is not the confirmation to the cabinet of people once thought to be strictly out-of-bounds, it is not the revelations about the origins of covid and everything pandemic-related that will follow; it is not any of those alone.
It is all of them.
It is in the sense of Atlas Shrugging, though not how Ayn Rand envisioned it.
Now, it is the shrug of the Atlas of humanity, the regular, the normal, the “I don’t care what you do in the privacy of your own home just don’t make me pay for it” people that can now look around and – more importantly – can actually say what they think.
It is, in fact, the shrug of Prometheus.
To cop Rand’s metaphor further, it is if the world has become too heavy for the collectivist oligarchs, so heavy she could not possibly have envisioned and the people have, are, or will (depending upon where you live) simply shrugged and said enough to carrying the load of the pointlessly powerful.
It is unstoppable shrug, a sluff, a shoulder wipe, a shoe clean of the past decade.
It may even be more simple than that – Rand’s “Atlas…” is – philosophically – being replaced by Rome’s Cincinnatus, though he be only in the public eye, that is will hold power, until victory has been achieved.
Rand’s oligarchs - as she saw it - built, created, defined, uplifited.
The oligarchs of the past decade have destroyed, censored, relegated, and degraded.
That is why the globe is now shrugging, getting rid of that support of Atlas - Prometheus is stealing fire from the gods again.
The humans are back in charge.
And the gods become terrified when mankind controls fire.
Terrified to the point they don’t even show up to Davos for the hookers and steaks and kudos and the ability to fart in public and have no one say anything ( the girl did touch her nose, admittedly) about it because you are too important.
That self-involved horror is done.
The last week has only been six days, but it can be compared to Odysseus trying to get home from Troy. Every temptation, every obstacle, every delay was put in his way. And while he wavered with the joys of Circe, he – and his crew – knew they had to continue.
They knew they had to get home.
And that is where the nation is headed.
And that is what happened this past week. Actually, it happened one day last week – the slew of orders on the first day – most of which will hold up in court - causing the fear of the DC blob coming front and center.
It was so obvious, that the blob’s house organ – Politico – actually ran a story about how afraid bureaucrats are of getting fired. And that’s a bad thing. Because federal workers are humble functionaries, merely simple vessels used to carry out out the wishes of the people’s electeds, no matter who they may be:
“I would love to leave, but I don’t know where I’d go, and I am terrified of not being able to pay rent and not having healthcare,” one State staffer said.
This works better:
And they are the same people - either the awful child or the terrible mother (admittedly,m the mother will be in HR.)
There are literally too many nasty and truthful jokes to write in response to State empoloye noted above (I have no idea of the gender of the unnamed State Department employee, but everyone is already thinking girl, or at least identifying as one, so…) statement, though, by the way, Politico writes this kind of story because their staff is married to government employees who get free benefits – they are terrified they will have to start paying them themselves.
Pretty sure the words “hit ya’ and ‘split ya’” should be part of the response in this occasion.
Aside: imagine a world in which you cannot get fired? Imagine a world that getting fired was not even a possibility? This is how you would react.:
Ayn “rhymes with swine” Rand is not a great writer; she uses far too many words to keep saying the same thing, she has no concept of subtext (in fact, her work is all completely text so don’t bother looking), and her characters are as one-note and predictable as The Smurfs.
But she hit on something, something terribly important, something about the self. Now, though, it seems was right in the exactly opposite direction – she feared the lumpen proletariat too much and the oligarchs too little (understandable considering her Russian revolution experience.)
All oligarchies devolve into atrocious nepotism – from America (until, hopefully, last week) to Russia to China to Justin Trudeau to “insert name of nation ruled by idiot son of someone who founded the African country” to back here to Hollywood.
Rand got much correct, but, like many of her acolytes, she missed the larger point of what could happen this past week.
Sometimes, Prometheus – or at least those to whom he has been given the fire - Shrugs.
And that has the ultimate power.
Is Trump the global Antigarch, a promethean agent of change, for good, almost certainly, or ill, depending upon your politics and where your checks come from?
If this week has shown anything, he may be for more than good.
That being said, if you know really rich people, there is - since they have nothing else left to prove - nothing more they love than sticking it to other really rich people. Almost as much as they love getting richer…
AmaXon, anyone?
So, predicting the oligarchy is always a bit fraught…though this time - at least for a bit - it seems everyone is part of the plan.
Good thing? For now, absolutely. For later? Let’s hope and see.
And, as offered each week, here is the epigram/closer/quote/whatever joke:
I may have put this in before, but no matter – it’s still hysterical.
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