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You are here: Home / Open Threads / St’Anconia

St’Anconia

by DougJ|  August 13, 20121:04 pm| 61 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Readership Capture, Green Balloons

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We need some kind of an Ayn Rand open thread. In particular, I’d like to choose a new Ayn Rand themed name for myself. D’AnconiaJ doesn’t seem to work.

In the meantime, I’d like to revisit mistermix’s brilliant post-structurlist reading of Atlas Shrugged:

A post-modern reinterpretation of the text as a paean to Dagny’s frustrated sexuality and Hank’s borderline impotence is the only way to truly understand Rand’s magnum opus. Dagny tries to sublimate her sexuality into her work, but the appearance of Hank, who is cut from the same bolt of distant, quasi-rapist cloth as her dearly departed father, makes her long for the kind of semi-fulfillment that she can only find in the arms of a uninterested and dispassionate lover. Sadly, Hank is unable to perform even to her low expectations, and thus begins the perfection of “Rearden Metal”. Though ostensibly used to create rails for Dagny’s railroad, it’s real use is for a cock ring so that Hank can finally rail Dagny.

The train metaphor is thus extended throughout the book, culminating in the famous “train” and “tunnel” sequence. There, the failure of Rearden Metal causes Hank’s failure, and the whole sexual escapade blows up in a smoky dirty mess.

And also too:

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Previous Post: « It starts with a face and ends up a fixation
Next Post: Paul Ryan’s Free Market at Work »

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    Steeplejack

    August 13, 2012 at 1:09 pm

    The obvious “DougJGalt” doesn’t work for you?

    ETA: On second thought, I like “DougJShrugged” better.

  2. 2.

    Face

    August 13, 2012 at 1:12 pm

    DygJ?

  3. 3.

    Ben Franklin

    August 13, 2012 at 1:13 pm

    Ryan was big on Ayn Rand until he realized the Tea Party is big on God.

    What I am waiting for is theRepublican Convention. The silence of the Paul Wing of the Party as to Ryan, gives me hope there is some mischief afoot.

  4. 4.

    PeakVT

    August 13, 2012 at 1:13 pm

    RyanJGalt? RagnarJ?

  5. 5.

    BethanyAnne

    August 13, 2012 at 1:13 pm

    DagnyJ

  6. 6.

    Rommie

    August 13, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    How about DanneskjöldJ? Given the piracy that was returning money to the rich folk, it fits right in with RomneyHood and Purina Paul.

    DougJShrugged works too.

  7. 7.

    cathyx

    August 13, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    I saw this on Digby’s and thought it would fit in here nicely.

  8. 8.

    BGinCHI

    August 13, 2012 at 1:14 pm

    DougRandPaulRyanJ?

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 13, 2012 at 1:15 pm

    The classic quote sums up the whole fucking thing.

    I will not repeat the classic quote here, it’s been cited FSM knows how many times already today.

  10. 10.

    chopper

    August 13, 2012 at 1:15 pm

    catlas shrugs.

  11. 11.

    srv

    August 13, 2012 at 1:15 pm

    Wasn’t Rand a pedophile?

  12. 12.

    shortstop

    August 13, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    RagnarDougJanneskjold.

  13. 13.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    August 13, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    D-Shrug Night

  14. 14.

    The Other Chuck

    August 13, 2012 at 1:17 pm

    @srv: Nope, she just hero-worshipped a child murderer.

  15. 15.

    Keithly

    August 13, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    @srv: Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

  16. 16.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 13, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    Time to revisit this gem from Kung Fu Monkey:

    There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    August 13, 2012 at 1:18 pm

    __
    __
    BethanyAnne:

    DagnyJ

    Or DagJ for short.

    .

  18. 18.

    The Other Chuck

    August 13, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    Put me down for DagnyJ too

  19. 19.

    Comrade Mary

    August 13, 2012 at 1:19 pm

    Something train-themed? DouglasTankEconomy?

  20. 20.

    shortstop

    August 13, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    @JGabriel: DougnyJ, I think.

  21. 21.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 13, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    @Dennis SGMM:

    And here Dennis SGMM provides the quote to which I was referring.

  22. 22.

    Comrade Mary

    August 13, 2012 at 1:21 pm

    DagJ is perfect.

  23. 23.

    mathguy

    August 13, 2012 at 1:21 pm

    RoarkianJ.

  24. 24.

    The Bearded Blogger

    August 13, 2012 at 1:21 pm

    The mistermix quote sums it up perfectly. Galtian overlords are making up for small weiners.

    If we could only convince them that peace, social justice and sustainability promoted penis growth, all would be fine.

  25. 25.

    Citizen Alan

    August 13, 2012 at 1:22 pm

    D’Janconia, perhaps?

  26. 26.

    JGabriel

    August 13, 2012 at 1:22 pm

    __
    __
    Villago Delenda Est:

    I will not repeat the classic quote here, it’s been cited FSM knows how many times already today.

    You could at least link it.

    .

  27. 27.

    LanceThruster

    August 13, 2012 at 1:23 pm

    In “The Fountainhead,” why is it that Gary Cooper’s character (Howard Roark) couldn’t submit his skills to someone else’s vision as an architect, but that did not come into play as a stonecutter? Who knows what awful crap they were building with his slabs?

  28. 28.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 13, 2012 at 1:23 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:
    Sorry about that, I just skimmed the thread and fired away. I read Rand’s novels when I was in High School and I thought that they were rubbish back then. Anyone who clings to Rand’s bullshit after the age of 23 is, to my mind, a sociopath.

  29. 29.

    TG Chicago

    August 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    Anybody know how to start an email forward chain amongst wingers? I’m thinking there’s great potential in a Romney/Ryan = SATAN theme. Use some stuff about how Mormons supposedly think Jesus and Satan are brothers and how they have restricted mysterious temple rites. Then add some stuff about Ayn Rand being an atheist and how the founders of LaVey Satanism were highly influenced by Objectivism. Tons of potential for ratfvcking.

  30. 30.

    chopper

    August 13, 2012 at 1:31 pm

    stankonia, love it.

    i once had a dream where andre 3000 was my waiter and he was all

    hi i’m Dre and welcome y’all to applebees
    burger motherfucker, burger, american cheese
    excuse me sir but would you like some apple pie
    bathroom’s down the hall the second door on the right
    i need yo tips cause my wife’s on birf control
    and my bank says my checking account is on hold

    and it went on like that. it was fucking strange.

  31. 31.

    Haydnseek

    August 13, 2012 at 1:32 pm

    @Comrade Mary: I think DagJ is the winner, although I sort of like this one, with a hat tip to a favorite band and Rands other novel. How about Fountains of Doug?

  32. 32.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 13, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    Atlas Douged?

  33. 33.

    Ash Can

    August 13, 2012 at 1:35 pm

    The 12-year-old read a stripped-down version of Rand’s Anthem for a school reading project this summer. He loved it; it made for a good adventure yarn as far as he was concerned. Even so, he was able to recognize plot holes in it. And I have a feeling that if and when he tries to read more of her stuff, he’ll lose patience with her non-edited writing style and penchant for writing the same fucking plot over and over again.

  34. 34.

    Haydnseek

    August 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    @Dennis SGMM: Precisely. Reading these novels only proves that you were once a college sophomore with a certain capacity for beer and 3 am bullshit sessions with 3 friends who had read them as well. Once you were a senior, you had misplaced the novels, and had ditched the friends.

  35. 35.

    JGabriel

    August 13, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    @Comrade Mary: @Haydnseek: Thank you, thank you..

  36. 36.

    different-church-lady

    August 13, 2012 at 1:40 pm

    Holy crap, I finally figured it out: Ryan is a knock-off Keane big eyes painting come to life.

  37. 37.

    srv

    August 13, 2012 at 1:42 pm

    @The Other Chuck: Ayn Rand, Cougar Zero

    Rand developed a coterie of followers in New York City that called themselves The Collective. Rand and a young graduate student (25 years younger) named Nathan Blumenthal (he later changed his name to Nathaniel Branden) became close. Although they were each married to other people, Rand is said to have coordinated approval for their affair among the spouses, asserting to his wife and her husband that it was in their financial interest to support her assignations. This unconventional arrangement was completely consistent with her philosophy of economic self-interest.

    So Cougar, pseudo-pedo.

  38. 38.

    srv

    August 13, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    I think you fit Wesley Mouch or:

    Claude Slagenhop is president of political organization Friends of Global Progress and one of Lillian Rearden’s friends. He believes that ideas are just air, that this is no time for talk, but for action. Global Progress is a sponsor of the Equalization of Opportunity Bill.

    DougJ Slagenhop

  39. 39.

    Ash Can

    August 13, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    @srv: And how interesting that a group of supposed fanatics of rugged individualism should call themselves a “collective” and pride themselves on a certain uniformity of thought. I mean, the whole Rand phenomenon is just such obvious bullshit from start to finish.

  40. 40.

    TomH

    August 13, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    Honk Reardown?

  41. 41.

    JGabriel

    August 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm

    Damn, DougJ, that’s a great post title.

    .

  42. 42.

    Haydnseek

    August 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm

    I play bass and guitar with some friends in an informal band that gets together once a week or so, and I think we’re ready to introduce a style of heavily distorted power chord driven rock with Rand inspired lyrics. Well call it Rearden Metal.

  43. 43.

    Judge Crater

    August 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    It’s sad that the “ideas” of a third rate novelist and genuinely narcissistic personality like Ayn Rand have become the “intellectual” bulwark of a significant portion of America’s political, economic and social elites.

    Today, the free market grifters on Wall St. were beside themselves with joy. “Economic freedom” (the freedom of the rich and powerful to game the system) is the latest banner to be hoisted over the smug and self-proclaimed “entrepreneurial class.”

    Ayn Rand has given rise to a clique of self-important money changers who believe, genuinely as far as I can tell, that they are doing “gods work”, and that the marketplace (governed by their rules) is the ultimate arbiter of all things great and small.

    Government interferes with this holy calculus, thus it must be starved and drowned in a bathtub. This is the real “Ryan Plan”. The rest is malarky that only the main stream media would swallow.

  44. 44.

    Seanly

    August 13, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    @Dennis SGMM:

    I haz a sad as my work blocks KFM. Only blog I like which is blocked… though I haven’t tried Rude Pundit or Jesus’s General since I got here.

  45. 45.

    Dennis SGMM

    August 13, 2012 at 2:21 pm

    @Seanly:
    That just plain sucks. I can understand an employer wanting to block pr0n sites because of the liability angle. I cannot understand blocking blogs.

  46. 46.

    Gus diZerega

    August 13, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    I think one of the more interesting aspects of Rand’s contemporary importance is she was the principle ‘vector’ by which Nietzschean nihilism got established in the American right.

    Its individualist roots were too strong for the kind of collectivism and state worship popular in European fascism, but its love of hierarchy and authoritarian spirit made it very open to Rand’s version of the “superman” once the moral power of their earlier belief in natural rights had dwindled away to meaningless incantations.

    Paul Ryan as “Fuhrerprinzip.” History first as tragedy, then as farce.

  47. 47.

    Sapheriel

    August 13, 2012 at 2:25 pm

    DougJectivism

  48. 48.

    Uncle Cosmo

    August 13, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    “mistermix’s brilliant post-structurlist reading” demonstrates beyond question that Atlas Shrugged should have been titled Witless Shagged…

    Upon further review, I need to check out The Book Thing for a freebie paperback of one of Rand’s tomes–I’m going to be spending a lot of time on overnight trains in Europe & I sleep so badly in couchettes I’m gonna need all the quaaludicrous help I can get…

  49. 49.

    Donut

    August 13, 2012 at 2:50 pm

    @BethanyAnne:

    DagnyJ gets my vote.

  50. 50.

    different-church-lady

    August 13, 2012 at 3:00 pm

    @Dennis SGMM: Shouldn’t he be working anyway?

  51. 51.

    Josh G.

    August 13, 2012 at 3:29 pm

    You know, you could easily interpret Atlas Shrugged as a tragedy/horror novel: two basically decent people (Dagny Taggart and Hank Rearden) get slowly sucked in to a destructive, doomsday cult led by Francisco d’Anconia and John Galt, which succeeds in toppling American civilization via terrorist attacks.

  52. 52.

    Villago Delenda Est

    August 13, 2012 at 3:32 pm

    @Dennis SGMM:

    NP! There was a request for it, after all, and JC himself created an FP post that proclaimed it everything you need to know about the literary works of Ayn Rand.

    I heartily agree with the good Mr. Cole on this topic.

  53. 53.

    LanceThruster

    August 13, 2012 at 4:56 pm

    @Sapheriel:

    Me likey!

  54. 54.

    lgerard

    August 13, 2012 at 5:09 pm

    I love having conversations with Randians

    Me: At the end of “The Fountainhead”, Howard Roark blows up the building he had designed.

    Randian: Yes

    Me: He claims he has the right to do so because others have used his intellectual property in a way he does not approve of.

    Randian: That’s right

    Me: If Roark has the right to do that, does Bill Gates have the same right today

    Randian: uh

  55. 55.

    1badbaba3

    August 13, 2012 at 6:14 pm

    Don’t go changin’ DougJ dontcha know. Also,too – motherfuck Ayn Rand, Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, Ryan Secrest, Rex Ryan, and thats all I can think of right now. All this rugged indivualism is making my brain hurt.

  56. 56.

    Alan

    August 13, 2012 at 6:38 pm

    Just add a dollar sign to your name. Wouldn’t that say it all.

  57. 57.

    LanceThruster

    August 13, 2012 at 6:47 pm

    @1badbaba3:

    Rye and ham also, too!

  58. 58.

    Rex Everything

    August 13, 2012 at 7:05 pm

    Rand fans all think of themselves as ubermenschen, but when you actually meet them they’re invariably either (i) 15 years old, (ii) self-styled “intellectuals” whose most prominent feature is breathtaking stupidity, or (iii) the kind of people who clubbed Nancy Kerrigan’s knee.

  59. 59.

    El Cid

    August 13, 2012 at 8:23 pm

    It pisses me off continually that this trivial, inane shit — primarily promulgated via the worst and clunkiest crap to be called a “novel” — must be discussed publicly as though there’s an idea in this pile of shit worth discussing.

    It’s no different than if people on TV and politicians and a few of the people you know keep discussing whether or not a nation’s economy would be better off based upon discussions between Moe & Larry in one of those philosophical works, the 3 Stooges.

    Admittedly, it would make for a much more intellectual conversation and would allow for a much greater depth of character and dialog than the Ayn Rand feces pool, but it’s still not the sort of thing which has anything to do with anything outside that particular show / movie.

  60. 60.

    YellowJournalism

    August 13, 2012 at 8:24 pm

    The FountainDoug

  61. 61.

    Chris Grrr™

    August 13, 2012 at 9:36 pm

    @TG Chicago: Here’s some nuggets of joy…

    “It is true that many of the Christian churches worship a different Jesus Christ than is worshipped by the Mormons or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” – LDS Quorum of the Seventy member Bernard P. Brockbank, The Ensign, May 1977, p. 26g

    President Spencer W. Kimball wrote: “Long before you were born a program was developed by your creators … The principal personalities in this great drama were a Father Elohim, perfect in wisdom, judgment, and person, and two sons, Lucifer and Jehovah.” (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 32-33).
    James Talmage explains who Jehovah is: “Jesus Christ was Jehovah…Jesus Christ, who is the Jehovah of the Old Testament” (Doctrines of Salvation, vol.1, p.11,27).

    fairmormon.org goes to Herculean lengths to avoid describing Jesus and Satan as peers, but it also gives us this wonderful chestnut:
    “The Father is understood to be the literal father of His spirit children.”
    …
    “God the Father also had many other spirit children, created in His image and that of His Only Begotten. These children include all humans born on the earth.”

    (Either somebody doesn’t know what “literal” means, or my Da has some explaining to do.)

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