Just Don't Step In The Elephant Poop -- February 19, 2016

I will apologize in advance. It is very possible that for the next few months -- until this works itself out of my system -- I will make references to Ayn Rand. I recently finished Anne Heller's wonderful biography of Ayn Rand, c. 2009. I must have been the only person in the world coming of age in the 1960s and 1970s who had not heard of Ayn Rand, much less read either of her two most famous novels. Maybe I had heard of her, but simply forgot. Who knows?, he asked rhetorically.

I was reminded of this twice in the past month. The first time was by my snarly wife when I mentioned something about Ayn Rand -- it seems to me "Ayn Rand" is one of those names in which you have to print both when referring to her unlike two-named personalities everyone knows by one name: Willie, Elvis, and Cher. One-named personalities, like Prince and Madonna, are still different, and then, of course, there are the one-named personalities that might not even refer to them but rather the group to which they belong, like Blondie. I think other personalities whose two names always need to be linked like Ayn Rand's include Bob Dylan, Anais Nin, and maybe even Jimi Hendrix. Others only go by initials (JFK, LBJ) and some may have monikers that are better known than their real names, e.g., Tricky Dick.

But I digress. Where was I? Oh, yes, that's right. To clarify: my wife was not snarly. Her comment only seemed to suggest she was snarly. And now looking up the definition of that word, that's not the best word to describe her reaction, anyway.

My wife was surprised I had not heard of Ayn Rand. My wife says she "grew up" with Ayn Rand or something to that effect and that "everyone in the 60's knew Ayn Rand." I didn't. I was apparently not among the "everyone" group.

On the eve of my departure from the Bakken last week, my closest high school friend asked if I wanted to join him at The Williston Brewing Company to "exchange" book lists -- the list of books that we had recently been reading.

When I mentioned Ayn Rand he said that her novels had been among his favorite when he read them back in the 60s or 70s. I assumed he read them when he was in college which would have been in the early 70s. I assumed they were a required reading assignment, but, no, he read them on his own. I was thrilled to be able to answer his question, "which one was John Galt in?" Atlas Shrugged. That friend is now an incredibly successful founder of a tech company partnering with international tech companies; his company is headquartered in San Diego, with wholly owned subsidiaries in Charleston, SC; Columbia, NC; and Sydney, Australia.

He says Ayn Rand had a huge influence on him during his coming of age years.

Needless to say, I am absolutely blown away by Ayn Rand. It was particularly interesting reading that biography at the same time I was reading a "new" history of the Spanish Civil War. I was completely unaware of the controversy surrounding the free market / capitalistic theory during the first half of the 20th century which continued even after WWII. That war -- the war between capitalism and socialism has already been fought -- numerous times -- but to my surprise it is now being fought again in the Democratic primaries. Reading Ayn Rand and the history of the Spanish Civil War simultaneoulsy helped me put everything in perspective.

But perhaps nothing puts things into perspective as well as this paragraph written by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker's The 50's: The Story of a Decade as an introduction to the section on "Shifting Grounds."

In a Profile of Dorothy Day (the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, "advocating a Utopian Christian communism"), Dwight Macdonald described the Catholic Worker movement this way: "Politically, the Catholic Workers are hard to classify. They are for the poor and against the rich, so the capitalists call them Communists; they believe in private property and don't believe in class struggle, so the Communists call them capitalists; and they are hostile to war and to the State, so both capitalists and Communists consider them crackpots."

That's about how I see things today. We have Pope Frank hugging the Castro brothers, praising them, and telling us Donald Trump is not a Christian because the latter advocates building walls. Never mind that the Frank's Church is one of the richest (and most capitalistic) institutions in the world and resides in perhaps the biggest walled city-state in the world. (It's interesting to see how Reuters "treats" the Castros on this issue. LOL. Dwight Macdonald would be smiling.)

There are days when I get depressed / irritated / frustrated / angry / suicidal reading about the craziness in Washington, DC. But reading The 50s: The Story of a Decade puts everything into perspective. I realize I can change very little -- perhaps nothing -- but I can have a great time watching the circus.

I just have to make sure I don't step in the elephant poop.