By CHRIS PACKHAM
Master and Commander: Before Daily Briefs, I knew I was good at writing. But I never knew how good I was at writing tales of high adventure on the open sea!
Just one of many journeys of self-discovery and deep reflection and whatnot that I've embarked on in 2K8. Yesterday's action-packed nautical adventure was the 200th Daily Briefs post, which I totally did not notice until this morning. Starting on Monday, Daily Briefs will abruptly transform into a serial novel of action and intrigue on the vasty main, since that is obviously my core competency. Lord knows I can't stick to writing about "the news."So okay, here is some news: The Dow is down 400 in early trading, and a smart friend says that between 1 and 3 p.m., there will be a big sell-off as hedge funds try to meet their margin calls, which should all be an exciting prelude to the last week before the end of a presidential campaign that began, seemingly, eons ago when single tiny hobbit named Frodo saved us all from evil.
BR-RING! BR-RING! Hello? Daily Briefs? Click here or here:
Pointing the pointer-finger of blame: While she was alive, author Ayn Rand wrote some stiff, unintentionally hilarious novels and developed a half-ass philosophy called Objectivism which, without all the underlying math, basically says, "Eh, do whatever you want. You were going to, anyway." Middlebrow college dudes who grew up in the suburbs, subsist on parental largesse and hang Gustav Klimt posters in their dorm rooms are drawn to Objectivism because it's really, really easy, plus, as a factory-installed bonus, offers prefabricated self-justification for douchey shit like not calling chicks on the phone after you've fucked them.
Uh. I'm worried now that I've actually sold a few people on that whole thing. So allow me to add: Not only did Ayn Rand personally betray and crucify Jesus Christ, she is directly responsible for the current and ongoing econocalypse. It's true! If you can't find a job or buy formula for your Baby Genius, it's because of The Fountainhead. Ayn Rand literally caused the proliferation of dubious sub-prime lending vehicles and the collapse of the housing market because her foul spirit inhabited the body of Rand acolyte and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose decades of lassez-faire deregulatory fiscal policy yielded a deindustrialized credit-based economy and a business culture of greed and unaccountability. Anyway, Greenspan had to get up in front of congress yesterday and admit that he was basically wrong about everything he ever thought or believed, which is a pretty significant personal inventory if you think about it.
"Yes, I found a flaw,'' Greenspan said in response to grilling from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. ``That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I'd been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.''
Also, I seem to remember something about the time when Ayn Rand personally flew an airplane into one or both towers of the World Trade Center. So, there's that, too.
The Lost Years & Last Days of David Foster Wallace: Here's an excerpt of Rolling Stone's pretty much heart-breaking account of author David Foster Wallace's life-long struggle with clinical depression, which ultimately led to his suicide last month. The current print edition has the whole piece, and it's so sad. Wallace was an unbelievably gentle, humane soul whose entire writing career was spent asking the reader: Do you empathise? Do you feel the same way about this that I do?
Anyway, if you've never felt the compulsion to go up and hug a dude you've never met and never will, this piece should do the trick.
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I doubt you have ever even read a novel by Ayn Rand. If you have and you got from it the nonsense you're asserting as her ideas here then you must be half retarded or fully dishonest. If you think you have to misrepresent someone so badly you must on some level know their real value and your own lack of it. People like you make me sick. If you're going to attack someone attack them. Don't set up a straw man, that betrays your own character as both weak and cowardly.
Your references to Ayn Rand and suggestion that the behaviors of very very non-Objective teenagers in any way represent her ideas are ridiculous and unfounded. Worse, your accusation that she is the cause of the financial crisis is irresponsible and damaging to Americans.
From The American Competitive Enterprise Institute:
�While the Dow collapses, we have a bull market in government regulations. The 50-plus departments, agencies and commissions are now at work on 3,882 rules; 757 will affect small businesses. More than 51,000 final rules were issued from 1995 to 2007.�
That�s 51,000 NEW regulations, added to what was there before.
http://cei.org/articles/%E2%80...
On another of their web pages:
�Well over 48,000 final rules were issued from 1995 to 2006�that is, during Republican control of Congress.�
That is hardly Rand's laissez-faire capitalism; that�s fascism/corporatism & socialism. At root, those are the very ideologies Rand spent her lifetime hoping to save Americans and America from. Now, when the effects of those destructive ideologies, at work in Washington, hits the fan, everyone is blaming capitalism instead; they are ridiculous.
Consider reading �Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal� after, and to see how, �The Virtue of Selfishness� really works, and why Capitalism is the only moral system. (n.b. Greenspan dropped any pretense of understanding her arguments sometime before he became head of the Fed., and he then became a major part of the problem.)
I really used to not have a phone in my armor, but I did have a lighter and some smokes.
Way to go on 200! Hmm...so that makes about 2,000 minutes you've stolen from my employer by 'making' me read this every day. :-)
Congratulations on 200. I remember when Cousin Fred first forwarded me your work, mr. Briefs. I believe it was this and the emo wall.
"We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story."
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