Ayn Rand’s Bitches

“This is America. How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills, raise their hand? . . . . I’m an Ayn Rander.”
— CNBC’s Rick Santelli calling for the uprising of a Tea Party Movement, Feb. 19, 2009

How many of you watched Mitt Romney’s Vice Presidential announcement last weekend? Yeah, me neither. Yet, most of us have seen his face before, only it was not a face, it was his Congressional budget plan, which has many people either confused or concerned. But Ayn Rand, at least, must be smiling from her upper east side townhouse in the afterlife.

Mr. Ryan’s Plan, called “The Path to Prosperity” for America, was a blueprint for minimizing the size of government which made him a darling of the Tea Party. You know those guys, the ones that demand that the US government takes its hands off their Medicare?

Well, in a way, Mr. Ryan’s budget does that — after he’s gutted Medicare so that the wealthy get a tax break and your mom and dad pay extra for what will end up as a $6,000 Medicare voucher. At least Mr. Ryan’s hands will no longer be on Medicare. There will be much less of a program for him to put his hands on. $6,000 won’t be enough to pay for a year’s worth of prescription drugs.

Oh yes, we’re very familiar with Mr. Ryan, who along with Mr. Romney is a devotee of the Ayn Rand philosophy of virtuous selfishness, or as Ms. Rand would say, “concern with one’s own interests.” It was Ms. Rand who said the equation of selfishness with evil had caused “the arrested moral development of mankind” and needed to be rejected.

As Chairman, CEO, and sole shareholder of Bain Capital — the corporation whose life depends on sucking the life out of other companies, Mr. Romney perfects the Randian religion of “every man for himself” and goes hand in hand with Paul Ryan’s budget to gut Medicare. These two are joined at the hip with an exact complimenting partnership with Romney’s Ascendant at 00 Gem and Ryan’s Ascendant at 00 Sag. Romney just feels good around this guy. So much so that he doesn’t care about the negative scrutiny Ryan’s budget has already had, or the fact that its highly unpopular, vetoed by the guy they’re trying to take down, and gives the country a chance to scrutinize and discover, to the Republican Party’s dismay, just how heartless they really are.

Chris Hitchens, author and former editor of Vanity Fair once said of Ayn Rand, “I don’t think there’s any need to have essays advocating selfishness among human beings; I don’t know what your impression has been, but some things require no further reinforcement.”

Here is the choice we face as the US comes to this edge of the river – the fourth decade of the supply-side economics sprung from the head of Ronald Reagan has evolved. In this evolution we are now making Rand’s John Galt ideals of “Every Man for himself” — also known as “screw you if you didn’t think for yourself” — into policy.

As I mentioned last week, the Pluto-Capricorn presidential election of 2012 is the response to the years of Chiron- Capricorn shedding light on things made wrong since Pluto-Uranus’ last conjunction forty years ago. The selection of Paul Ryan as Romney’s Vice Presidential nominee confirms this. The Romney-Ryan ticket is trying to resurrect Reagan at the worst possible time.

We’re dealing with the aftermath of supply-side economics: a war-based economy, runaway corporations, reeling unemployment figures, addictive outsourcing of manufacturing jobs to increase profits, unregulated banks and demonization of the poor have forced the majority of people in this country to their knees. Let’s add onto this a majority of our population on Social Security and Medicare — successful programs that are highly vulnerable under this type of budget conservatism. We know this extreme brand of policy philosophy no longer works. We’ve known since 2008.

Pluto is putting our national conscience to a test. In this election, we’re on two roads going opposite directions along the same knife’s edge. But that knife edge is not only economic. It is spiritual and emotional. As befitting any discussion about Pluto, the stakes aren’t just high, they are do or die. Republic or banana republic? I think we’re beyond that question. Some can argue that we’re already at the latter, only we have more weaponry. This election may not even be a fight for the soul of the country. I think it is beyond that. This election is about our country straddling that knife edge like a fence, looking at the traffic coming at us from both directions, deciding whether or not to continue having a soul.