"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
"There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
"We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
John Swinton, 1880
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Who John Galt Is
* A fictional incarnation of Ayn Rand with a penis.
* A terrorist.
* A person so lost in their megalomania & sociopathy that they see the destruction of an entire society as a noble act of virtue - no matter how many innocent people have to die horribly for it to succeed. Thus: Galt = Osama bin Laden - Allah + $$$.
* Perhaps the most hilariously blatant example of political Asberger's Syndrome in modern literature.
* An icon to those who see no problem with augmenting the misery of the less-fortunate so as to inflate their obviously deficient egos by default - just as long as someone else winds up paying the bill.
* The guy who gave P.T. Barnum's ghost a severe case of Grifter Envy when he successfully made the scientifically impossible hokum of free-energy machines & indestructible alloys into vital components of a canonical text of a major 20th-century political philosophy - so move over, L. Ron Hubbard, there's a new kid in town!
* The nonexistant Messiah of a cult of societal sadism that mysteriously somehow retains to this day the name "Objectivism" - despite its need for such subjective conditions as fanatical dedication & active denial of basic human reality as prerequisites to membership.
* The neocon version of the Jonas Brothers. What that Farrah Fawcett poster was to teenage boys back in the 70s, & the JoBros are to pubescent lassies now, so Galt is to the less clued-in libertarians everywhere: a Hawt Hunk Of Magic That Really Can Change The World If We All Just BELIEVE. Yeah, it looks grim for a while there with all those awful corrupt liberals wrecking everything & keeping "the best of the best" down - but fear not, Teh Mighty Galt makes everything peachy in the end (for the few remaining survivors) so trust us, you don't need to think things through (in fact, such activity is discouraged) because heretical thoughtcrimes such as cause-&-effect, empathy or logic are for liberal weaklings - just keep faith in The Gospel According To Rand & eventually our cause will prevail due to the power of our will.
* An asshole.
* A terrorist.
* A person so lost in their megalomania & sociopathy that they see the destruction of an entire society as a noble act of virtue - no matter how many innocent people have to die horribly for it to succeed. Thus: Galt = Osama bin Laden - Allah + $$$.
* Perhaps the most hilariously blatant example of political Asberger's Syndrome in modern literature.
* An icon to those who see no problem with augmenting the misery of the less-fortunate so as to inflate their obviously deficient egos by default - just as long as someone else winds up paying the bill.
* The guy who gave P.T. Barnum's ghost a severe case of Grifter Envy when he successfully made the scientifically impossible hokum of free-energy machines & indestructible alloys into vital components of a canonical text of a major 20th-century political philosophy - so move over, L. Ron Hubbard, there's a new kid in town!
* The nonexistant Messiah of a cult of societal sadism that mysteriously somehow retains to this day the name "Objectivism" - despite its need for such subjective conditions as fanatical dedication & active denial of basic human reality as prerequisites to membership.
* The neocon version of the Jonas Brothers. What that Farrah Fawcett poster was to teenage boys back in the 70s, & the JoBros are to pubescent lassies now, so Galt is to the less clued-in libertarians everywhere: a Hawt Hunk Of Magic That Really Can Change The World If We All Just BELIEVE. Yeah, it looks grim for a while there with all those awful corrupt liberals wrecking everything & keeping "the best of the best" down - but fear not, Teh Mighty Galt makes everything peachy in the end (for the few remaining survivors) so trust us, you don't need to think things through (in fact, such activity is discouraged) because heretical thoughtcrimes such as cause-&-effect, empathy or logic are for liberal weaklings - just keep faith in The Gospel According To Rand & eventually our cause will prevail due to the power of our will.
* An asshole.
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