Reader JB sends this re-telling of Obama’s press briefing (original here), and if you want to sample some wingnut tears, here’s a taste:
“Stop listening to the evil assholes who, with their voices or their pens or their computers or their activism, continue to fight my attempt to fundamentally transform this wretched capitalistic country. That flawed document you crackers all fetishize, the Constitution, and the rich white slave owners who drafted the ridiculous and largely obstructionist thing, would want you to do just that: shut up and let the professional political class manage you like the filthy herd animals you are. Economic units aren’t supposed to talk back. So know your place, tea-tards.
My only quibble is that “tea-tard” should not be hyphenated.
In the same vein, James Fallows has posted a massive load of correspondence with “Atlas Shrugged Guy”, the person who wrote him immediately after the 2012 election and announced he was going Galt. Almost two years a year later, the world is still going to hell in a bucket, to hear his telling, but he’s apparently still in business and doing as well as he ever has. As with most of the big-talking Galt goers, he’s evasive about how he’s really doing.
RaflW
Angry people just need something to lash out at. It’s just really tedious.
While pointing and laughing helps a bit, I think stepping over them and never looking back as they mumble their curses on the steam grate is a better idea.
Props, though, to Fallows for being willing to read all that crap and let us glimpse into the withered hearts of these sadly bitter folk.
Xecky Gilchrist
Has anyone challenged any of these Constitution fans to recite the thing on a live mic? Like that one Congresscritter who couldn’t shut up about how the Ten Commandments should be everywhere but could only recite three of them?
Baud
The Internet really has damaged the ancient and noble art of paraphrasing.
Ken
One bright spot is that with Obamacare, he can get treatment. Not that anything will stop the ranting voices he keeps hearing, until he turns off Fox.
MattF
Hmm. The phrase “Triumph of the Will” floats through my mind… why is that, I wonder. Anyhoo, they’re not nihilists, they’re utopians– as usual, what exactly happens after the Apocalypse is vague, but it’ll be terrific, you betcha.
RaflW
Reading the Fallows Galt-compendium. This jumped out pretty quick
Roaring asshole alert (surprise). I’m sure he has some hot, hot proprietary tech on which to watch late night girlie videos.
And I’d imagine he thinks he’s really a rugged individualist, making missile technology for, hmmm, wait, who’s that customer? Oh, the government! That’s who buys fucking missiles.
TR
My favorite part are the comments where they believe Obamacares failure is proven in … Oregon.
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/10/oregon_has_cut_tally_of_those.html
MattF
@RaflW: Small technical note– wifi is the only wireless technology that’s relatively unregulated. If you’re working on higher-power, non-wifi frequency stuff, you’re working in a highly regulated environment.
Culture of Truth
typical macho glibertarian – wifi is for pussies!
aimai
@RaflW: His story is both that he had a hard scrabble life and that his father had teh hard scrabble life but “ended up running a fortune 500 company.” Which is it? Did he really “sell scrap metal” as a child or was that just a hobby? He’s a terrible writer, but that happens a lot to people online, and he clearly has some education even though its reduced itself to rote quotations of Milton and the odd reference to Voltaire. I presume half of his allusions are to things he hears on wingnut radio.
Its like arguing with a deaf guy to read his posts. He knows what he knows and believes what he believes and his self love is so strong it leaves no space for any recognition that, yes, it was possible for people to be unemployed for 99 weeks and not because they were losers. In the end, though, one can’t be that gentle and empathetic with him because he is fundamentally dishonest and won’t cop to the reality which is that he promised he’d close his business because he didn’t need to be part of this anti randian hell hole and he didn’t close his business–it may have folded because he couldn’t make it work or some of his employees might have been hired away from him because other people were making it work but either way he’s no John Galt. His genius is neither needed nor will it be missed. Demand side economics, baby. Not supply side.
Napoleon
I have long been convinced that your average hard right American spews lies in support of their positions. It doesn’t matter if it is a letter to the editor, calling in to a Diane Rheem episode on healthcare, posting a comment on a blog or appearing on Hannity to talk about the horrors of Obamacare or writing James Fallows. I haven’t read Fallows latest on the guy but have read some of them in the past and to me its obvious he is flaming liar. You average teabagger type is a sociapathic liar. (a great current example that far right former KS AG who was just disbarred who, if the KS SC is to be believed must have lied under oath, you know, an oath to God, during the proceedings).
SiubhanDuinne
In the great scheme of things, this is tiny, but
Actually, slightly under a year.
LittlePig
I assume this is Godlstein? (ain’t no way I’m clicking on a Jizz Whizz link)
aimai
@SiubhanDuinne: I think its a bit confusing because he started threatening to go galt prior to the election, in the run up. So it may well have been two years since he proposed that he would do it.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Nice catch. I love it.
RaflW
@aimai:
I started skimming. He really isn’t interesting, though I am interested in what Fallows says and extracts from it.
My takeaway, though I could be wrong, is that his business is struggling. If he’s a second or third line supplier to the 787 for example, he may be getting a rough ride as Boeing is, uhh, having a few problems with that bird.
Rather than own up to whatever is impacting his business – like, say, that unregulated Wall Street majorly f*cked the economy for years now – or that he hitched to a customer who is having problems, or that maybe he has good tech but runs his business poorly, who knows. But rather than own up to his company’s problems, it is all about Obama and the Dems and their confiscatory regime.
They cannot brook the idea that the business cycle still exists. We’re living through one of the bigger downcycles in a century, it has to be government’s fault because markets cannot fail (of course, they did far more often before regulation and central banking, but evidence, like wifi, is for pussies).
aimai
The other thing that struck me about it is that this guy is pathetically lonely. Far from being surrounded by hard working businessman friends and highly successful he is desperate for the attention from Fallowes and constantly emails him and tugs on his sleeve like a lovelorn puppy. In fact he backhandedly invites Fallowes to stop by and have a meal with him on one of Fallowes’ trips and he keeps referring to himself in an incredibly pathetic way as both a kind of special correspondent and a cast off lover to Fallowes. He is eager to share his insights, starts to query whether Fallowes and F’s readers really respect him or are just using him, but he can’t quit writing to Fallowes because no one in his real life social circle will “debate” him. Of course what he thinks is debate is extremely shallow and hectoring but I’ve met plenty of guys like this and they are, at bse, just lonely jerks who have tired out their friends and family with their obsessive, auto didact like regurgitation of their favorite wingnut tlking points. But they are genuinely excited to meet someone, even online, who engages with them and its clear that he became pathetically attached to getting the attention from Fallowes. He never would have ended the crank love letter relationship if Fallowes hadn’t pushed him for proof that he had gone galt.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@SiubhanDuinne: Yep, I fixed it.
RaflW
Ok, I’m in spam hell now.
FYWP cubed.
Baud
@Baud:
Oops. I thought this was the wingnuts’ error. Just an honest mistake, apparently.
Corner Stone
@Napoleon:
Yes, it didn’t take too long to become very obvious this individual is deluded to the extreme.
At this point he probably actually believes he does own a business (or did until Obama, damn him!), until he wakes up in the morning to venture forth to his personal cube at Big Corp.
He claims to be highly educated but there are too many errors, repeated too carelessly for that to hold up.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@aimai: When I ran a local political blog I had a guy who would write long rambling comments on the site and get upset if I didn’t address every single point immediately. My blog was about a particular Congressional race but in his world I was responsible to answer for every position ever held by a liberal, ever. I got a real hint of that mentality from Atlas Shrugged Guy.
RaflW
@aimai:
He does seem sad and lonely.
My take is also that he is having business trouble and cannot admit it might be his own management or marketing – or even just externals like the business cycle being against him, or a crappy customer – it has to be gumbmit, dammit!
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@RaflW: I fished out your comment – don’t know why that happened.
RSA
The Atlas Shrugged Guy comes across as being so needy. He sends mail in bursts, some days every couple of hours, and asks, “To busy to respond?” and “It would be interesting to have a discussion sometime? Would you entertain a meal at some nice location or am I to low on the food chain?”
Dude, grow up.
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai: Oh, quite possible. In that case, I withdraw my petty correction.
SiubhanDuinne
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): Thanks.
Mike E
@Xecky Gilchrist: Don’t know about the Ten Commandments but that 10th Amendment that we got? That thing is pretty fucking golden.
Corner Stone
@RSA: “I mean, I’m not gonna be ignored, James!”
Liberty60
There is a dilemma at the heart of libertarianism that has never been explained to me.
They want withdrawal from the social contract- asserting the autonomy of the self- yet insist that rights, property, and contracts all be protected and enforced.
By whom?
They envision society as a bargain- a compact where “if you respect my rights I will respect yours”-
Yet who are the counterparties to this agreement, and are we allowed to insert our own terms and conditions?
An example is the idea that individuals should be free to enter into any contract they wish, yet the enforcing agency is given no choice about whether or not to enforce it- they are, to use libertarian language, coerced into enforcing any contract, without choice.
Starfish
@aimai: It doesn’t say his father ran a Fortune 500 company. It says he had a position in a Fortune 500 company.
Mike E
@Liberty60: Looks like that steel trap of libertarian logic has got you. Better to gnaw off the limb and just chalk it up to ‘lesson learned’.
RaflW
@Starfish: A counter server at McDonalds has a position in a Fortune 500 company.
Starfish
@RaflW: Yup. The guy just seems to have such a huge ego.
Corner Stone
@Liberty60:
I disagree here. IMO, they envision a society where *they* are smarter or stronger or otherwise better suited to dominate their particular environment somehow. They don’t envision a society where someone is stronger and takes what’s theirs.
They can envision this fantasy society because it doesn’t exist and they don’t have to face the reality of what would actually happen in their dreamy world.
Corner Stone
Further, regarding property rights, I love reducing the glibertarian argument down to just property rights during a discussion with one of them.
mai naem
Sounds to me like his business got hurt by the cuts at the defense dept or the sequester. My guess is that he’s a small time gubmint contractor/consultant who was probably making a very decent but not enough to make him a one percenter livng. I thought it was funny that he kind of treated Fallows like he was an idiot when he was talking about the 787. He’s been exchanging email exchanges with Fallows for several months but hasn’t looked up his bio? I remember hearing Fallows on NPR years ago talking about planes. He was one of those “experts” for air plane disasters for one of the networks(CNN?) I also thought it was amusing how he would avoid answering Fallows’ questions and veer off onto some high fallutin’ philosophical road. BTW, what the heck is Seattle University? He didn’t have the chops to get into UW or WSU?
Villago Delenda Est
@RaflW:
One of the central characteristics of the wingtard “mind”, if you can call it that, is their utter unacquaintance with history, as in, how we got to where we are today. As you point out, before regulation and central banking, business cycles were much shorter and much more severe. The end of the 19th century was littered with “panics” that sent the economy routinely into tailspins, causing untold misery for millions.
You see this particularly with the IT types who think the intertubes sprang fully formed from the head of John Galt and have always been here, when in fact, the evil state had a hell of a lot to do with not only the creation of the internet but with the PC itself. The first computers, the giant ones that took up entire rooms to do what could be done on a wristwatch 20 years ago were created at the behest, again, of the vile evil government.
The stupid is even more pronounced because it is willful, and this guy exhibits all the characteristics of that willful stupidity.
Villago Delenda Est
@mai naem:
Seattle University is a Catholic school in Seattle.
Lurking Canadian
The woman from CNBC who was on Bill Maher last week sounded like this guy. What is the macroeconomic mechanism through which the size of the national debt slows down the economy?
Sure, if government borrowing was driving up interest rates, that would deter investment. And if government debt service were a big chunk of the federal budget, that’s a drain, since it means taxes are just disappearing. However, interest rates right now are low for everybody, and have been at times negative (in real terms) for the government.
Is it that they thought the “Tyrannosaurus Debt” cartoon from Schoolhouse Rock was to be taken literally, and they don’t want the monster to eat them up?
Pogonip
I’m impressed that a guy who worked 12 hours a day 7 days a week had the time to write all those long e-mails. He should market his method of time management.
I have a Wingnut relative who sends long rants about Obama. Reasoning with him doesn’t work. What does work is to write back and say, “OK, granting Obama’s approach to [problem] is wrong, what’s yours? How would you solve this?”. Hours, or if I’m lucky, days of blessed silence will result. Try it with your Wingnut. (For some reason iPhone insists on capitalizing Wingnut.)
My relative’s real problem with Obama is that he insists on presidenting while black.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Exactly. The rights of others (particularly “negative” rights) never enter in to their self-absorbed heads.
These assholes imagine that they will be the new feudal lords in their libertarian society. They are mistaken. They will be serfs.
Villago Delenda Est
@Pogonip:
Well, and also while being a Democrat. But the two together crank up the crazy to 11.
mai naem
@Pogonip: This is my go to response to people who bitch about Obamacare, esp. wingnuts. What is your solution?( selling insurance across state lines and tort reform is not going to take care of the issue What did Bush did for the uninsured in the six years that he could have pretty much gotten anything? Part D is N/A.
@Lurking Canadian: That woman was a freaking idjit. I watch a little CNBC and have never seen her on. CNBC has truly some of the stupidest female anchors around. Bartiromo, Caruso Cabrera, Becky Quick. And they always have a mean girl edge to them. I still wonder how Bartiromo managed to miss that Palin was a flaming bag of stoopid. I am figuring she spent at least an hour with her. That would have been enough time for me .
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
Fixed for accuracy there at the end. Because of course *I* will be the one holding the Sword of Grayskull aloft while bikini clad Raquel Welches drape themselves along my lower torso and mewl appealingly.
.
.
Oh wait, that was supposed to be for my “Glibertarian Warlord Meets Cavemen” crossover for my Time Machine series.
Corner Stone
@Pogonip:
Actually, I think this is one of the few valid criticisms coming from the right. It’s been five years now and it’s pretty clear Obama has no desire to address this issue in any meaningful way.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
LOL.
Seriously, these people are the useful idiots for the likes of the Koch Brothers, who, once they are fully in control, will do to the libertarian footsoldiers what Stalin did with all of his useful idiots.
Their father learned that much from Uncle Joe.
stinger
@aimai: Excellent insights. However, I respectfully disagree that he has ended the “relationship.” He’s just flounced off pouting for a few days. He’ll be back. Too needy to stay away, too dishonest to come clean about his actual situation under the Obama regime.
West of the Cascades
In my mid-20s, I joined some book club (I think it was the Mystery Guild) – 10 books for 99 cents. One of the books I got was “Atlas Shrugged,” because I’d heard it was influential (or something) and had a speech that lasted, like, 120 pages. “Intriguing” thought I. Sadly, I never opened it, but did learn more and more about the book over the last 25 years, thanks to the internet and Wikipedia.
Last month, I unpacked some old boxes from storage, and lo and behold, there was my copy of “Atlas Shrugged.” Being in “clean up” mode, I donated it to Goodwill, along with dozens of other books that had languished in storage for a half-century.
Now I feel bad – both because I inflicted that on some other person, and because I could really use a heavy object to hold my bathroom door open. At least the book could have had some utility …
kc
Jeff Goldstein? He hasn’t been involuntarily committed yet?
West of the Cascades
@TR: TR — they’re factually correct but draw the wrong conclusion (failure) from that fact. Applications for private insurance through the exchange are being processed manually for the moment, and so it’s technically true that “no private insurance” has yet been purchased through the Oregon exchange.
The reality is that on October 1, we were able to see all of the plans that are available, the monthly premiums, deductibles and total out-of-pocket expenses, and whether we would qualify for subsidies. What you could not do was actually purchase anything on-line … you could go to an insurance broker, or directly to the health insurance company.
I figured out that I’ll be able to get a policy that saves me about $140 per month (compared to the $500 per month I now pay for insurance that is a “portability” plan out of a COBRA plan from a group plan for a company I left six years ago — I could not buy other private insurance for the last six years). Last week, on the exchange website, plan details became available … and they expect that the ability to apply on-line through the exchange will go “live” by the end of October.
Rather than go through a broker, I’m going to wait and buy my new insurance through the exchange in early November — still nearly two months before it goes into effect. I just want to be one of the statistics we can eventually point to for what a great success the exchanges are (who knows if the transactions through brokers this month will be attributed to the PPACA).
But — notwithstanding the Medicaid expansion and 10% reduction in uninsured Oregonians so far — there has been an unfortunate slow roll-out of the exchange for private insurance. It will get fixed in plenty of time for me to get my new coverage, and I’ve been waiting six years to be able to shop for insurance, I can wait another couple of weeks. It’s ridiculous of these people to point at the Oregon situation as a “failure” at this early point in the process.
Jewish Steel
@aimai: I can almost muster enough sympathy to feel sorry for him. But that would require a modicum of empathy, altruism. And since that would be incommensurate with Galt Guy’s ethos, I’ll save it.
TG Chicago
Mistermix: I think you’re wrong to say that Atlas Shrugged Guy is “doing as well as he ever has”. ASG indicates that he lost an important employee.
I think his situation is more like this guy:
There seems to be a segment of the American population that believes any woes they are experiencing must be the result of the yet-to-be-fully-implemented Affordable Care Act (or perhaps other nonspecific, unnamed taxes or regulations that Obama has imposed upon them). I don’t recall liberals lamenting that every problem in their life was the result of the Bush Tax Cuts, but perhaps there is a news outlet that can show me that both sides do it.
Jay in Oregon
@West of the Cascades:
Now I feel bad – both because I inflicted that on some other person, and because I could really use a heavy object to hold my bathroom door open. At least the book could have had some utility…
What the was paper quality like? Was it soft on the skin?
MaryRC
@Pogonip:
Yes, you can tell that’s this guy’s problem too. The giveaway is his comment that “Obama doesn’t pay anything and lives like a king.”
The expenses of the current President and his family are handled in the same way as previous occupants of the White House: they pay their personal expenses including food while other items such as a vacation home and staff come with the job. But no-one complained about seeing the Bushes enjoy themselves, while the sight of the present POTUS and his family dressed to the nines and hosting a party drives these people wild.
Bubblegum Tate
@Napoleon:
There is one wingnut blog commenter in particular I love to read because she has this bottomless well of apocryphal stories, and they’re just so amusing in their transparent dishonesty. She’ll bang on about some point or another, and then, a couple of days later, she’ll have some story about how she just so happened to encounter a random stranger, and she and the stranger got to talking about politics, and wouldn’t you know it, the stranger completely personified her talking points (either a brilliant, successful wingnut or a lazy, selfish, stupid LIEbrul). Boy, what are the odds? And the story totally proves that she was right about whatever she was saying!
kuvasz
@Villago Delenda Est:
I have found few people who truly could defend themselves as “conservative” based upon a personal, political philosophy anchored by reason. I do know some, but few. On the contrary, what I have seen all too often are people who interpret all state action, as “government interference,” and use as a term “government” that does not recognize differences between the popular will of the people via democracy and other less legitimate forms of government.
Refusing to see the distinction renders democracy unthinkable and void and legitimizes a mindset that rejects social contracts between people for the common benefit. What surely follows is the law of the jungle.
And I can only assume that is the plan of most of the more virulent so-called conservatives, who believe that they are the strong and will rule the jungle.
It is not in any sense a political philosophy, rather one of a method of achieving power.
Oddly, I’m struck by how right-wing extremists view democratic institutions as the biggest threat to democracy.
Hugely
@RaflW: yea that jumped out at me too – that Galt guy seems like he has the emotional maturity of an 11-year old
BruceJ
ASG guy sez: “I worked avionics and fly by wire systems and missile technology for 16 years and switched to embedded systems, gps and wireless telemetry (no not wifi, wifi is for pussies) for the past 10 with a emphasis on extreme ruggedization. We do research and development into new technologies and guess what funds that; r&d? Profits which apparently are now a resource better allocated by the geniuses in government than I.”
I expect the odds are essentially 100% the dumbass is profiting via some DOD contracts, if not exclusively DOD contracts, as he is whinging about profits that were better allocated by the geniuses in government via a medium that was developed with profits allocated by the geniuses in government…..
BruceJ
And what’s with the douchcanoe dig at WiFi (“WiFi is for pussies”) ? It’s a perfectly usable technology that’s worked very very well.
WHY are these ASG’s (and they’re almost ALWAYS guys) so fricking concerned over their dick sizes?
I mean duh, if I’m sending back telemetry from an instrument package 42 miles off the grid in the boonies, no I’m not going to use WiFi, If i’m doing it from my living-room I’d probably consider it, or XBee, or Bluetooth instead.
But I wouldn’t go all ‘WiFi is for pussies!’ Jeezuz dude, it’s just technology.
Fred
“As with most of the big talking Galt goers, he’s evasive about how he’s really doing.”
‘Falafles aren’t selling so well but the popsicles are really moving ’cause it’s been pretty hot lately. But that Obamacare is gonna bust me ’cause I gotta get insurance fer me and the girl that helps on the weekends.’
Ken_L
Weren’t they all going to make an artificial island somewhere and live on it? How’s that coming along?
Katdip
I don’t see enough in the media about how virulently anti-democratic these guys are. This guy, the 7th amendment folks, the voter restrictions, Obama’s elections – they can’t stand to see their Randian wet dream sullied somehow by the fact that people actually choose to have policies that support the public welfare like expanded health care, SS, Medicare, environmental protection. They would like to do away with the “wetwear” and have their overlords at the Heritage Foundation choose their leaders accordingly. I recently had long “conversation” with one of these guys – nice, smart guy, sends his kids to public school – who wanted to privatize the public sector (including schools) and get rid of regulations to unleash the free market. I pointed out the “free markets” require rule of law, level playing field, etc. While he admitted that was necessary, he said you couldn’t trust politicians because they’ll give people “the stuff they want”. I really stymied him when I said “OK, so what about the Constitution? Do we get rid of our current form of government because it leads to outcomes you don’t like? I have plenty of grievances that government isn’t doing ENOUGH (global warming, infrastructure, income security, etc), but I don’t advocate getting rid of it.” He had nothing…..
They don’t like to be challenged that the road to their Nirvana requires shredding their seemiingly precious Constitution. Deep down they all believe it’s a disposable rag that will only gum up the great wheels of commerce.