Back in the days white Americas vitriol and hate was reserved for Blacks strictly because we were seen to be less than 100% man, as it was stated that we were 3/5th’s of a man. This racist mentality was the basis of laws like the Black Codes that made up Jim Crow America during the late 19th to the middle 20th century. Civil Rights initiatives beat down most of those laws and gave us better ground to stand on and since then we have been building upon a better foundation to reach our lofty goals.
But while we were building and fighting for every inch of ground that we got, a new animus was being nurtured by the “elitist” of our society. These people were the white people who were so blinded by their privilege that they lived in an impregnable bubble. This bubble would continue to grow and grow as more and more white Americans became wealthy enough to partake in the “finer things” in life and separate themselves from the other 99% percent of society in which we live in.
This 1% of society follows Ayn Rand and practices the Randian philosophy that she developed from Existentialism; a philosophy developed during the late 19th and early 20th century, that she called Objectivism! This philosophy emerged around the world after the Civil War, when Black men and women in America were finally afforded the same rights as white people.
Objectivism is, as stated here, “Objectivism’s central tenets are that reality exists independent of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one’s life is the pursuit of one’s own happiness (or rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism, and that the role of art in human life is to transform humans’ metaphysical ideas by selective reproduction of reality into a physical form”.
Her philosophy was developed from a philosophy that states that it “opposes positivism and rationalism because people make decision based on subjective meaning rather than pure rationality”. So if you look up these schools of thought you will quickly see why Existentialism is flawed, therefore Objectivism has to be flawed also because she stated that “she chose the name because her preferred term for a philosophy based on the primacy of existence, Existentialism, had already been taken. She freely admits that her philosophy is really nothing more than Existentialism with a different name.
Now Existentialism if practiced by the right people with the right beliefs isn’t really a bad philosophical way of living, but when you couple that with racism, then it becomes a way to rationalize the cruelty that you suffer upon those that you deem as a subordinate race, i.e. racist in America.
She wrote a book based on a collection of essays she published entitled The Virtue of Selfishness where she espoused Ethical Egoism as a rational code of ethics, the destructiveness of Altruism and the nature of a proper government.
Egoism (Ethical) is the position that a person should only act in their own self interest
Altruism (Ethical) is the position that a person should be selfless, have concern and act for the welfare of others and if necessary, at the sacrifice of self interest.
By these definitions alone you can see why Ethical Egoism/Existentialism/Objectivism in the hands of racist can and did lead to a whole lot of the problems that we see manifesting in today’s politics and the lives of the 99%.
Her greatest work is a novel entitled Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957, which was really a fantasy of how her philosophy should play out in the real world. As described here “The book explores a dystopian United States where many of society’s most productive citizens refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and government regulations and disappear, shutting down their vital industries……………….”In their efforts, these characters hope to demonstrate that the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society.”
Is this not what we have been hearing from the 1% since Obama has come into office? We’ve seen politician after politician play up this mythical group of people called the “Job Creators” whom, if over taxed and over regulated will stop “making jobs”! I wrote a post about it last year here where one of these ‘Job Creators” actually said in a letter to his employee’s in October of 2012, “You see, I can no longer support a system that penalizes the productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, so will your opportunities. If that happens, you can find me in the Caribbean sitting on the beach, under a palm tree, retired, and with no employees to worry about.” His name is David Siegel the owner of Westgate Resorts, and guess what Obama got re-elected but did he retire and get rid of his employee’s, I think not, Westgate Resorts is still doing business.
Then we have Paul Ryan who said that Ayn Rand’s philosophy is what shaped his life and look at the legislation that he has trying to get passed. Governor Walker in Wisconsin, Rand Paul and many, many others have been trying to get legislation passed that would move us closer to the Ethical Egoism type of society that Ayn dreamt of.
The thing is, Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, as practiced today by the Billionaire Koch brothers and their puppet politicians, doesn’t seem to differentiate between Black 99% and white 99%, we’re all in the same boat to them. Yet over 60 million people voted for Mitt Romney, another Randist who is part of the elite 1% who don’t give a crap about others, it’s all about selfishness in the form of corporatism, or “Job Creators”!
Answer me this, can 60 million people be part of the 1% if approximately 127 million people voted? Somewhere in this math, approximately 47% (pun intended) of the 47.2% of people that voted for Romney were actually voting against their own self interest, which is dead set against the political philosophy that the Tea Party and GOP hierarchy promote.
Altruistic middle class and poor white people who have been led to believe that they have skin in the Egoism elitist’s game need to wake up and see that the world that Ayn Rand envisioned, in which anyone needing help is considered a deadbeat and moocher, is right at our doorsteps and if nothing is done about it now, in the not too distant future John Galt will be the President of the United States of America. And Objectivism will be the rule of the day. And guess what, white, black or brown, if you’re not in the 1% you’re going down with the ship, period. You can keep believing that one day you’ll be a part of the 1%, but in reality, it’s a 1 in a billion chance, and that’s talking about odds and money.
The question isn’t if, it’s when, if we allow the 1% to take over the rest of our government? With Citizens United as their battering ram Objectivist are installing Randist in every aspect of our political machine, and it won’t be long before Atlas actually Shrugs!
And for Black people in America who understand that when the shit hits the fan, it’s usually going to hit us the hardest (see the economic crisis of 2008) we already know that if Atlas Shrugs were going to be put in a position where racist wannabe Egoist, who believe that they have a chance to be in the 1% elitist shoes someday are going to blame us and channel all their animus out on us, just like they’ve been doing since Obama got elected. But if these Objectivist get their way it will only get worse unless the white 99% realize that it’s not us that is destroying this country, as a matter of fact this country isn’t even being destroyed. It’s the Randist movement that could care less about anything but themselves that are pitting poor and middle class blacks and whites against each other to deflect from the fact that they transferred $100’s of trillions of dollars worth of bad debt from privately held corporations unto the backs of the public all while cutting more and more benefits that help the needed. You all need to wake up and not let the division be the reason why we are conquered!
What are your thoughts?