Ayn Rand and the deranged presidente

I just read a piece about Ayn Rand. Learned more about her than I care to know. I was wooed into reading the article because it had the absurd title of something like "how Ann Rand turned people selfish and greedy". Baloney. There have always been selfish, greedy people in this world and many of them gravitate towards others who are greedy and selfish.

I learned Alan Greenspan was one of her devoted acolytes, fyi.

I learned she surrounded herself with a nasty, gareedy, selfish, brutish and callous crowd -- people like herself.

The piece did not mention, but I already knew this, that as she aged, even though she had raged against Social Security and Medicare from its creation until she became very sick. She did not want her husband to lose all their assets as she died from lung cancer so she accepted Medicare.

Is there a better case for Medicare for all? Even the big kahuna libertarian hater, Ayn Rand, turned to Medicare as she aged.

And get this:  I learned that she had always been a heavy smoker and her acolytes all did whatever they could to emulate her so they mostly all smoked heavily. When she was diagnosed with lung cancer, intimates suggested she tell, at least, her closest circle of admirers so they might stop smoking. She refused. No reason to be kind to others, not for Ayn Rand, just because she was dying of lung cancer.

A couple years ago, on Christmas Day, I went to the Jewish museum in SF with a friend. There was a superb photo show on exhibit. I don't remember the photographer's name. He shot photos of iconic, famous people. His photo of Ayn Rand captures her evil, her essence of evil, so well that I was chilled in the instant I looked at it. I averted my eyes, not wanting to feel any more of her darkness. A great photo, however. One snap and she was perfectly captured.

The ugliness unfolding in the world was always here, held in check by many of the things Ayn Rand objected to:  social safety nets, environmental protection, equitable wealth distribution, government regulations to force the greedy to treat workers well. Bosh. Nonsense. Says our deranged presidente. If children are put to work in unsafe conditions, have no fear. There will always be poor parents desparate enough to send their poor children to work in unsafe conditions.

Will our deranged presidente allow regulations that would avoid another Trianagle Waist Shirt Fire?  That case was the first case in our Torts book. Many women, and some children, died because the employer locked them in to keep them working. No wasting time to pee, ya know?

How about this consideration? Ayn Rand wrote fiction. How can so many allegedly intelligent people profess they abide by her fictional beliefs? Even she did not actually abide by her own dark vision when she needed . . . government help.