Atlas Sharted

A painstaking takedown of every trickle-down economist's favorite author. And Libertarianism!

Ayn Rand was born Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum. Despite her stance as a noted Libertarian and uncompromising individualist, she chose not to use her real name professionally or to own its Jewishness interpersonally. Objectively speaking.

Many years later, one of Rand’s acolytes, Barbara Weidman, legally changed her name to Barbara Branden, partly to likewise jettison the baggage of Moses, but also because bRANDen has Rand cleverly wedged within itself, like an intestinal fluke.

American Statesman, oddly-bewigged pseudo-ophthalmologist, and famously Libertarian senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is the son of former presidential candidate and famously Libertarian Representative Ron Paul (R-TX). Ron Paul obsessively quoted Ayn Rand in his early work, which is ugly reading even for 1960’s Texas.

Among Ron Paul’s most pressing concerns were:

-The need for Good Texans to properly arm for Imminent Race War.

-All the ways in which Jews run everything, but mainly banks.

-Welfare scams and the lazy blacks who buy candy with your taxes.

-Regularly calling the White House “the Pink House” as a hilarious gay cocktail pun.

While fans of nuance may choose to view Ron Paul’s obsession with sodomy as an admission of closeted self-hatred, Senator Rand Paul insists he is not named after Ayn Rand, let alone Paul Auster, Jake Paul, or Paul Giamatti. No one believes Senator Rand Paul, mainly because he is lying, but also because his son is named John Galt Paul.

“The Rand” is the unit of currency in South Africa. Noted Libertarian Elon Musk is from South Africa, but only because his grandfather got tossed out of Canada for being an Out-Loud Nazi, complete with uniforms and parades. The Musks moved/fled to Johannesburg, which is a gorgeous city known for its many artistic, musical, and cultural qualities, plus a generous Nazi Resettlement Program, complete with separation of human beings along strict racial lines.

Alyssa Zinovievna Rosenbaum-Rand came from a bourgeoisie St. Petersburg family. Her father had a successful business, and as a child Alyssa was waited upon by cooks and nannies, although such perks were soon snatched away by commissars of the Bolshevik Revolution. As the Red Army swept down upon them, Alyssa witnessed firsthand that, in practice, enforced Collectivism was not the Utopian economic model it purported to be.

Karl Marx, turns out, was a liar. Lenin, word is, was a douche. So the Rosenbaum family moved/fled to New York, which is a gorgeous city known for its many artistic, musical, and cultural qualities, plus a generous Immigrant Resettlement Program, complete with separation of human beings along strict economic lines

As a result of this traumatic experience, Ayn Rand spent her life advancing dubious pseudo-Libertarian political and economic theories under the name “Objectivism.” Although not unlike giggling cousins in the top bunk at grandma’s exploring under each other’s jammies, Libertarianism and Objectivism are not the same thing.

Libertarianism is to Objectivism as pleasureless masturbation is to the enjoyment of Kid Rock’s vocal abilities.

Mainly, though, Rand focused on the degree to which individual genius (for instance, embodied in the form of Ayn Rand) was superior to mass stupidity (embodied in the form of all those who were not Ayn Rand)

Such masses included New Jersey serfs, Westchester peasants, unwelcoming Manhattan high society, Bolsheviks in name or behavior, tax assessors, business regulators, Trotskyites, building inspectors, art critics, literary critics, leftist poets, unconvinced potential acolytes, those who preferred David Hume and H.L. Mencken’s brand of Enlightenment Liberalism to Self-Service Libertarianism, politicians larding gifts upon the conniving poor, and generally anyone whose existence tended to slow The Cogs of American Industry.

Which, when translated from Cyrillic to Capitalism meant Negroes, Latinos, Chinese, immigrants of all varieties (except misunderstood St. Petersburg merchant families), takers, moochers, beggars, General Parasites, individuals already dismissed by F.A. Hayek, and pretty much any laborer with the collectivist need to seek fair compensation for their labor.

Rand, in a Soviet fashion predating the collapse of irony, then made a career of literarily denouncing such traitors to the cause of the Free Market, if not the Revolution, relegating them to long sentences in the frozen Siberia of her imagination, if not a Riker’s Island cell.

A Brief Introduction to Libertarianism:

A political stance in which the individual is paramount above all else, while advocating for limited government in both the markets and the personal lives of citizens. It calls for privatization of most federal programs and departments (police, firemen, postal service, Social Security) with the idea that constant market innovation sheds lazy and unneeded bureaucracy, while a pretense of individual responsibility supersedes group actuality.

A Brief Dismissal of Libertarianism:

The theory that select individuals will create wealth for all, via unregulated personal wealth creation that eventually trickles down to the lower classes, has been repeatedly disproven throughout human history. Libertarians speak eloquently of personal rights, but tend to choose a-la-carte such things that best serve their personal interests, while not having the courage to carry the philosophy to its logical conclusions. A genuine Libertarian, as opposed to one who employs a fraction of the philosophy when convenient, would therefore enthusiastically support the legalization of all drugs, plus abortion, suicide, and prostitution. Individual choice is either sacrosanct, or it is not. But idealistic, less-wealthy Libertarians are often muted by pragmatic, more-wealthy Libertarians who retain scraps of incompatible Christian morality, mainly because they want to get elected.

Conclusion: Libertarianism is a vehicle of contempt for anyone who bothers to educate themselves about, and then question, the fatal contradictions inherent to libertarianism.

An Objective Look at Objectivism:

All the great things about Libertarianism, but even less plausible, intellectually grounded, or bound by basic moral precepts. The Objectivist Man (it’s always a man with Rand) is a cartoon super-individualist with incredible talent, looks, perseverance, confidence and architectural skills, who also happens to be dynamite in the sack. Those unlucky enough to be born slightly dumber, uglier, more needy, emotionally or physically damaged, and/or unproductive in conveniently measurable ways are consigned to The Masses — so less yapping and more laboring, Objectivists have Upper West Side cocktail salons to prepare for.

A Subjective Takedown of Objectivism:

If Marxism as a philosophy can be reduced to the relationship (Dialectic) between subject and object with knowledge (Material) being the currency exchanged as part of the social contract, Communism in practice is a loathing for the individual, as well as for Labor not yet collectivized for the benefit of individuals who are also Communist leaders. Therefore, Objectivism is the celebration/justification of Pure Greed (Rational Self-Interest) which dares to explore the relationship between ME and ME, wherein the lives of THEM are sometimes useful to ME, but mostly not. Which is why Ayn Rand is particularly popular with young men and their as-yet neurologically formed brains, plus rock drummers and Bitcoin enthusiasts. It’s always those who secretly long to be surrounded by others, while simultaneously despising others for inspiring that longing, who most deeply respond to the tenets of Objectivism.

Primae Noctis, which means “First Night”, and is sometimes also called Droit du seigneur, was the practice in which Feudal lords retained the option of sleeping with any vassal’s bride on their wedding night, mainly to get a quick one in before the woman was permanently soiled. While the Russian Feudal System might more accurately be termed “Serfs With Benefits”, it was really a forced-labor death sentence for millions of expendable people.

In America, we find it hard to understand why anyone would want to be Communist. On the other hand, in America, Martin Van Buren did not retain the option of banging your new bride before the cash bar closed at the reception. Today in the Land of the Free, “Communist” is generally a propagandistic epithet for anyone mildly Leftist who disagrees with anyone unthinkingly Conservative, but also for Radical Socialist Lunatics who continue to assert that health care and education are basic human rights.

In light of centuries of the misery and enslavement of Russian peasants — with the full cooperation of the Russian Orthodox Church — Karl Marx’s musings on the redistribution of wealth and fair compensation for labor make a great deal of sense. At least on paper. In practice, centralized economic planning, state monopolies, worker control of the means of production and distribution, and an abolition of private property are absolute disasters

Which is to say, Ayn Rand was 100% correct about one thing: apes are not built for Communism. We do not share on a large scale. Or really at all. Apes take. And if any random banana has a beef with it, apes get violent. We are also inherently hierarchical. Equality does not exist in nature, because ideologically mandated balance is unnatural. Deep-seated survivalist chaos is natural, and balance is for beams and speaker systems.

Which is to say, Ayn Rand was 100% wrong about almost everything else, since almost everything else she wrote either directly or indirectly asserted that while All Primates Are Equal, Some Primates Are More Equal Than Others.

FOUR Plots of FOUR Books by Ayn Rand:

We The Living (1936) – Protagonist Kira Argounova, a stand-in for Rand, is gifted with an independent spirit and razor intellect with which she rejects any attempt by her family or the nascent Soviet state to tell her what to do. She takes on several rugged, individualist lovers, Andre and Kiril and possibly Bob, but in the end is murdered by Lenin for refusing to be individually collectivized.

Non-Ironic Money Line: “What are your masses but mud to be ground underfoot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it?”

Anthem (1938) – Dystopia turns out to be a place where geniuses and serfs get the same raw deal. A man named (really) Equality 7-2521 flees into the wilderness with Liberty 5-3000, a hot Tsarist Jennifer Lawrence who is a stand-in for Rand. Together they establish a new society based on individualism and sexy campfire speeches, although much like Adam and Eve, no one can figure out why their children’s children aren’t all inbred dolts. The End.

Ironically Non-Ironic Money Line: “What is my joy if all hands, even the unclean, can reach into it? What is my wisdom, if even the fools can dictate to me? What is my freedom, if all creatures, even the botched and impotent, are my masters?”

The Fountainhead (1943) – Rugged individualist architect Howard Roark (Frank Lloyd Wright) designs a low-income housing unit for takers and parasites, then wires it with dynamite rather than let sycophants and toadies alter its genius design aesthetic. Roark may be ruthless, and even sort of a prick, but at least he’s true to himself since empathy is unwelcome in both building design and rugged sex with engineering fangirl Dominique Françon, a stand-in for Rand. At the end, Roark drones on for twenty pages in defense of Self-Interest as a governing philosophy, Ego as the source of all creation, and the evils of Collectivism, Altruism, and Negritude.

Maddeningly Incoherent Money Line: “Why is it so important - what others have done? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it’s not yourself? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that?”

Atlas Shrugged (1957) – Rugged business wheel Hank Rearden (Andrew Carnegie) battles the forces of altruism by being an even more ruthless and uncompromising Industrialist/prick than he already was. Like, in one chapter he ups steel production way past what’s generally considered safe by OSHA, but in the end even selfless manufacturing cannot defeat the takers, looters, and parasitical negroes who insist on ruining all that is good about America. Sexy doormat Dagney Taggart, a stand-in for Rand, joins Rearden and his Industrialist pals as they jet off to a Colorado mountain lair to start a Utopian society based on unregulated, high-altitude Capitalism.

(In the unpublished sequel, Atlas Sharted, after three days in a frozen cabin together Rearden hoodwinks the other Industrialists by cornering the market on matches and kindling, and then they all stab each other to death with a deer antler.)

Libertarian Erection Money Line: “Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil, it’s the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.

Ayn Rand’s two most famous (debatably) novels (not that they’re famous, but that they’re novels) have sold a combined twelve million copies in America alone. In 2026, they still sell around 200,000 copies per year, which is more than every living American author combined. The ideas they contain, forty-four years after Rand succumbed to the Unregulated Tobacco Industry and ascended to Deregulated Heaven, implausibly continue to poison current politics. Not to mention modern economic theory, much of the tech industry, the MAGA New Right, Project 2025, the notion of Unitary Leadership, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Claremont Institute, Heritage Americanism, Elon, Peter Theil, Larry Ellison, Zuckerberg, a generation of 4Chan gamer fanboys, Russell Vought, Palantir wingnut Alex Karp, Sam Altman, Curtis Yarvin, and Stephen Miller.

Atlas Shrugged is basically the Neo-Right Of Mice and Men, except set in a Salvadorean prison where George and Lenny are guards whose narcissism and intellectual laziness make them rich. Of course, Rand’s version is called Of Men and Clearly Better Men, and instead of shooting Lenny behind the ear at the end as an act of mercy, George engineers a hostile takeover of Lenny’s share of the Pruno concession, repossess his car, and then revokes his visa.

Donald J. Trump is not intelligent enough to know that he is deeply Randian, and so comes by his Inner Objectivism naturally, like an infant real estate heir to a wet nurse’s gold filigree nipple: with unthinking, ravenous greed.

Ayn Rand had many young, bright-eyed Objectivist acolytes who flocked to her Manhattan apartment over the years, where boozy intellectual salons often devolved into sex. Alan Greenspan, who was head of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, or from the nomination of George H.W. Bush to the curb-kicking of George W. Bush, was one of them. Ayn Rand’s nickname for Greenspan was “The Undertaker”. She personally attended his swearing-in to Gerald Ford’s economic advisory board. Word is that all of Rand’s acolytes were fucking all of Rand’s other acolytes plus Alan Greenspan, the man who more or less controlled the size and direction of the entire American economy for twenty years, and was uniquely responsible for the worldwide economic collapse of 2008.

If the clear-eyed among us are beginning to suspect that, in actuality, there has been a forty-year Republican/Conservative plan secretly enacted that includes packing the Supreme Court, outlawing abortion, codifying White Nationalism, monopolizing information streams, promoting regressive Christian/Opus Dei Ideals, redistributing wealth to a tiny fraction of the populace, encouraging technocratic/plutocratic control systems, removing constitutional protections for The Masses and/or introducing them to the Prison Industrial System, and a rise of Immigration Fascism, Wealth Fascism, and Actual Fascism to replace American Democracy, which has culminated in the recruitment/blackmail of useful idiot/child rapist Donald J. Trump as figurehead, we can, in many ways, all thank Ayn Rand.

In the excellent Norse/Pagan religious tradition, Odin went to sleep at night with a bracelet and woke up every day with six. Which was good, because bracelets often broke or became tarnished, but more importantly, it reminded Odin that if he did not have the initial bracelet, it could never multiply, and so he would have none.

There are two types of people in the world: those who take Odin’s parable as a call to be thankful for what they do have, and those who see it as a reason to embrace the unfairly maligned governance systems of Stalin, Mussolini, Pinochet, Franco, Mao, Jeff Bezos, and Oswald Mosely.

Machiavelli is a lot like Dave Chappelle. Which is a sentence few people have ever typed before, although does not make it one degree less accurate. Chappelle walked away from fifty-million Comedy Central dollars when he realized that dipshit Lacrosse Bros were mistaking his pointed racial satire for quotable locker-room humor. If Machiavelli were alive today, he would patiently explain that “The Prince” is not, in fact, a user’s manual for Donald J. Trump and the billionaires/Russian blackmailers who control him to turn the wealthiest country in the history of the world into a personal plaything. Instead, it is a dire, point-by-point warning about the deception and treachery of those who would use Machiavellian means dressed up as Aristotelian ends to achieve full Soviet Control.

Atlas Shrugged is not at all like Dave Chappelle, but remains widely, if not fatally misunderstood. Which is interesting given how rudimentary it is both as literature, and as ideology dressed up as literature. As a prose stylist, Rand is a master of droning repetition and self-cannibalization, but her work is really an unintended cautionary tale that prophesizes the rise of those who would use simplistic moralism to stoke The People’s Anger, but do it in such an aggressively dimwitted way that it can neither be argued against, or even described, making it impenetrably effective

It’s the last ruse prior to the End of Empire: quibbling over equivocation, using tautology to promote totalitarianism, attacking speciousness with a deliberate lack of specificity. The title Atlas Shrugged itself is an act of deliberate confusion, since Atlas was a Titan tasked by Zeus with holding up the celestial heavens (represented as Earth balanced upon his shoulders, which makes no sense) because Atlas (Trotsky) and his boys (Lenin, Stalin) took over Olympus for a while and instituted the Titanomachy, but Zeus (Churchill) and the other Olympians (FDR, Patton) won the war, whereupon The Gods (Judges Of Nuremburg) declared that lifting the sky for eternity was the ultimate price for folly.

In the end, Ayn Rand was a sociopath with a neurological disorder that compelled her to search for a literary justification to unapologetically be Ayn Rand. And in the process left us a steaming heap of unreadable paperbacks. But, like many of us, she was also a walking contradiction. Rand was for abortion but against feminism. She insisted there was no God but founded an Objectivist religion. She wrote caricatured hagiography about men who refused to bend the knee to a society of users and moochers, but allowed no dissent from her personal coterie of users and moochers. She was a heavy smoker who insisted that cancer warnings on packs of cigarettes were fraudulent Nanny State tyranny, at least until contracting lung cancer, when she quit, began accepting tyrannical welfare checks to cover her medical bills, and then died.

Desperation transcends political philosophy, which is only apparent when you finally reach the moment, as everyone eventually does, of staring Objectively at their own human nakedness.

It is likely that the example of Donald J. Trump will last longer than the ideas of Ayn Rand, because while Objectivism is a simplistic, immoral, and easily dismissible philosophy, the genius of Donald J. Trump is that he has no ideas at all. It’s not possible to fight against pure, reactive selfishness. It has no coordinates. It has nothing to lose. It exists simply to burn its own fuel. A thousand-page novel can always be used to start a dystopian campfire, but an empire allowing a man like Donald J. Trump to rise to power is already as vacant as its leader aspires it to be.