BREAKING NEWS: For Toxic Ayn Rand Syndrome: Cure Found

            by Stephen L. Goldstein

           email: trendsman@aol.com

            The following column appeared alongside one by Kingsley Guy in the South Florida Sun-Suntinel, July 20, 2012

            I want to thank Kingsley Guy for the kind words he has to say about my just-released novel, “Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!”; his countervailing “digressions” and oblique tweaks go with the territory. We “duel”; therefore, we dig.

            Of course, Kingsley is correct that the 240 fast-moving (some have said “hilarious”) pages of my dystopia are a frontal attack on Rand’s lumbering, badly written “Atlas Shrugged,” a merciless 1068 pages in my paperback edition. And he accurately states that “Shrugged” is considered “Scripture by libertarians,” a curious label for the work of an atheist but by no means an overstatement: Rand’s acolytes worship her. And yet, her philosophy is nothing more than one woman’s neurotic obsession with legitimizing unbridled greed, sanitizing it by calling it “rational self-interest” and Objectivism—and glorifying it in works of fiction.

            Impressionable high-school students read her with predictable devotion, finding justification for their adolescent pre-disposition to selfishness. What’s worse, many have grown up to occupy influential positions, never breaking free of her spell. When he was 16, former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, who ultimately dug the grave of the economy, crashed Rand’s funeral with his mother. University of Chicago Professor Milton Friedman built a whole school of economics compatible with her thinking. The schemers at Enron who were defrauding investors and the public allegedly met in informal discussion groups to draw energy from her works. Fair-haired GOP budget boy Cong. Paul Ryan said Rand inspired him to seek elective office and made his staff members read “Atlas Shrugged,” at least until recently when the devout Catholic first discovered Rand was an atheist. (Can you believe it?) His budget proposal is pure Rand. Less obviously, but more consequentially, the current tea party/GOP in Congress—the Party of No—has been re-enacting John Galt’s “strike” in “Atlas Shrugged,” bringing the economy to its knees to force the country to accept its policies.

            The United States is suffering from Toxic Rand Syndrome: capitalism perverted, the nation in a corporate stranglehold, self-reliance run amok—which is why I called my novel “Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned.” It begins 67 years after “Atlas Shrugged” ends. The USA has been renamed the Corporate States of America, the equivalent of a wholly owned subsidiary of the likes of the Koch Brothers. Kingsley rightly recognizes that it’s a dystopia: a nightmare vision of a future none of us would want to live in—and yet one that seems frighteningly like what we’re enduring today. It’s a difference of degree, not kind. You want a country without strong government, regulations, a social safety net, and solid infrastructure? In “Atlas Drugged,” you get it. But even the most Randian of you won’t want it. Remember New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: helpless victims stranded on rooftops, corpses floating in floodwaters, thousands huddled in the Superdome for days without food and water? That’s mild compared to some of the most horrific scenes in “Atlas Drugged,” which happen to be set in Florida.

            The success of “Atlas Shrugged” proves that, tragically, you can fool too many of the people all of the time. “Atlas Drugged” takes a stab at opening the eyes of enough of the rest who haven’t yet swallowed the Kool-Aid. It’s truthful fiction and fictional truth. Those who are most likely to reject it are precisely those who most need to face it.

            The cure for Toxic Rand Syndrome is "Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!" It's available in bookstores nationwide, through www.barnesandnoble.com, www.amazon.com, and other online booksellers. Order it NOW from Amazon:  www.amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Ayn-Rand-Damned/dp/1555717098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1344306781&sr=8-1&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned