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

Imagine no more USA but Corporate States of America

In scathing/hilarious dystopia Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!, USA is renamed Corporate States of America. Romney/Paul Ryan/Koch Brothers/GOP/corporate tycoon elites/1% have taken over the country.

In Chapter 1, at a public event people recite the Pledge of Patronage instead of the Pledge of Allegiance. To honest, decent members of the 99% the words have a terrifying ring:

"I pledge my patronage to the brand of the Corporate State of America and to the profits which it commands. One Emporium, under Mammon, with liberty and lucre for all." Especially before the November election, READ Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! and watch the struggle between the 1% in power and the 99% trying to regain the country. It's fiction--but eerily like today's reality. It's also a roadmap for retaking the USA in the name of "the people."
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

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"Atlas Drugged" a ForeWord Magazine's Best First-Fiction Finalist

Submitted by Harley on Fri, 2012-07-20 15:50

Atlas Drugged, by Stephen L. Goldstein, has been named one of 6 finalists in ForeWord magazine's "Best First-Fiction" contest. According to the magazine's publisher, Victoria Sutherland, the competition "spotlights and honors great books that deserve more attention."  

Kingsley Guy on Atlas Shrugged or Atlas Drugged? from South Florida Sun-Sentinel

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-07-20/news/fl-kgcol-atlas-fri0720-20120719_1_rand-tax-code-stephen-l-goldstein

Atlas Shrugged or Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! Which has the greatest BUZZ?

Follow the buzz about Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!: http://tinyurl.com/crwp3hd

On Firedoglake.com Book Salon: Author Stephen Goldstein discusses Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned

FDL Book Salon Welcomes Stephen L. Goldstein, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

Email your comments and questions to author Stephen L. Goldstein directly at trendsman@aol.com

Saturday, July 14, 5 p.m.-7p.m. Eastern, join the discussion of Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! Here's how:
1--Go to Firedoglake.com, the story will be on the front page
2--If you would like to comment during the live chat, Register a few minutes early at the "Log In" at the top of the page. You'll be emailed a password
3--If you want to just follow along, you'll need to refresh your browser occasionally to see the new comments: PC=F5, MAC=Command + R keys, or any browser has an arrow/button to refresh by the URL bar

Welcome Stephen L. Goldstein (Journalist – SunSentinel) and Host Nicole Sandler (Nicole Sandler Radio – RadioOrNot.com)
Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!
Ayn Rand has become the symbol for today’s right-wing obsession with selfishness. In the half-century since her opus Atlas Shrugged, numerous institutes and societies have sprouted to promote Rand’s philosophy of “objectivism” which teaches the ridiculous ethical egoism and her advocacy of “rational selfishness“.

To a compassionate person, these ideas are truly foreign. In a nation whose Declaration of Independence includes the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” and whose Constitution directs the government to provide for the “general welfare” of its people, the Randian philosophy seems at direct odds.

Yet today’s Republican Party is pursuing an agenda that favors the rich at the expense of the needy. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin chairs the House Budget Committee and, as such, has put forth a budget that, over the next decade, would spend about 16 percent less than the White House on “income security” programs for the poor — that’s everything from food stamps to housing assistance to the earned-income tax credit.

Medicare would be privatized as a voucher program, requiring seniors to find health insurance on the open, for-profit market, and reaching into their pockets to subsidize the wholly insufficient amount of the vouchers with which they are supposed to be able to purchase the coverage. Of course, being forced to buy health insurance on the open market also means buying from a company that would use up to 20% (or more, if not reigned in by the Affordable Care Act) of those premiums on overhead (and profit) as opposed to Medicare’s 3% overhead.

The lines between Rand’s vision of an every man, woman and child for his or her self world and that of today’s GOP and Libertarian visions are quite blurred. Congressman Paul Ryan requires his staffers and interns to read Ayn Rand (though he has recently denied this, the Atlas Society has released video of a Ryan address to their membership in which he stated this requirement quite clearly), and Senator Rand Paul (born Randall) is said to have shortened his name in reverence for the author.

Rand’s philosophies are now so far-reaching that one need not read her massive missives to know what it is she and her followers believe – government is bad, the individual is all that matters.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Rand. Although I read The Fountainhead when I was younger, I found it long-winded, boring and something which with I didn’t identify. So when my friend Stephen Goldstein (author, journalist, tv/radio host and South Florida Sun-Sentinel Op-Ed columnist) told me he had written a “sequel” of sorts to Atlas Shrugged, I wasn’t initially very excited.

No, I’ve never read Atlas Shrugged, nor have I ever had a desire to. But I’ve been inundated with the “Who is John Galt?” message – even on an ad for a restaurant here in Coral Springs, FL that I had enjoyed – until I saw the ubiquitous question sniped on an ad in a local monthly magazine. Now I no longer frequent that restaurant. (Sorry, if a local business believes it’s important to promote his religious devotion to Rand’s theory of selfishness, I believe it’s important to not be a customer.)

But after Stephen assured me that one need not have subjected oneself to reading her 1,088 pages of drivel in order to enjoy his new novel, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!, I jumped in, and was glad I did.

Atlas Drugged picks up where Shrugged left off. Sixty-seven years after John Galt’s “restoration” (revolution for the rest of us). The US has become a Libertarian paradise. No longer the United States of America, we’ve “evolved” into the United Corporations of America.
The divide between the 99% and the 1% is even more pronounced. Tent cities or shanty towns, known as Coopervilles (for then-President Cooper) have popped up in every major city, with the largest having taken over NY’s Central Park.

Government has become today’s right wingers’ wet dream – shrunk small enough to have drowned in a bathtub. The free market reigns so that no longer do governmental agencies exist to protect the citizens. It’s now buyer beware. If a product makes consumers sick, eventually they’ll no longer buy the products. And should a hurricane threaten Florida, there’s a privatized Hurricane center to warn the population … or not. Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! should be the warning shot to all Americans to be careful what you wish for.

In paperback and on Kindle, Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned is available from Amazon: (paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Ayn-Rand-Damned/dp/1555717098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342287664&sr=8-1&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned (Kindle) http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Rand-Damned-ebook/dp/B008L2H2RS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1342287664&sr=8-4&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned, as well as from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/, http://www.hellgatepress.com/ (directly from the publisher) and in bookstores nationwide.

Satire! Prophecy? Haunting! Helen Nash reviews Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!

What if corporate billionaires took over the government of the United States? What if the United States of America (USA) became the Corporate States of America (CSA)?

Stephen L. Goldstein explores these questions in his fictionalized vision Atlas Drugged:Ayn Rand Be Damned! Adept and gifted writing creates a tale of allegory, satire, fable, social commentary, and, perhaps, ultimately, prophecy.

Pitting the narcissistic ideology of Ayn Rand against the struggling, Promethean masses, the tale assumes nightmare proportions that will haunt your dreams for many nights...and days. Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! is a five-star Good Read that may strike readers as already borderline reality.

Email your comments and questions to Stephen L. Goldstein, author of Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned!, directly at trendsman@aol.com

Order Atlas Drugged: Ayn Rand Be Damned! now. It's available from amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/Atlas-Drugged-Ayn-Rand-Damned/dp/1555717098/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341961789&sr=8-1&keywords=atlas+drugged+ayn+rand+be+damned, barnesandnoble.com, hellgatepress.com (the publisher), and from bookstores nationwide.