Hello, Delayed_flight,
Well, on the one hand it is not that
exaggerated, as testify for the numerous cases in history of
far-leftists political programs unsuccessfully implemented in various
parts of the world. Just remember the numerous jokes you could find
in the media about totally preposterous economic and social programs
undertaken in Russia, China and elsewhere that ended into disasters,
and about which many would have say something as : Hey! But? It was
pretty obvious that such absurdity could not work!
But it was done and decided by experts,
scholars and top-policymakers, indeed ; not by crackpots living in
psychiatric asylums, and that's why everyone, not only accepted it,
but took it very seriously, exactly as Ayn Rand describes it in Atlas
Shrugged.
On the other hand, yes it is obvious
that Ayn Rand decided to exaggerate the scope of some directives and
laws, and some of their after-effects, she invented for Atlas
Shrugged, but not systematically, so far.
What makes this aspect of the story
unlikely is that all blunders and absurdities committed by the
looters of Atlas Shrugged are reunited together in a single book that
one can read within a month. In other words, it makes a lot to
swallow in a so short period. But things turn differently when we
witness similar events each separated by “true years”, if I can
put it that way. For, time helps us to recover from the shock of
similar catastrophes-time helps us accept the unacceptable-and it
prepares us to be less surprised, some months or years later, when
the next catastrophe occurs.
We may all experience the same
psychological phenomenon at an individual scale in our daily life;
if,as example, within no more than a fortnight, your car is stolen,
your house catches fire, your wife asks for divorce and you get fired
from your company. If these 4 events occurs within a so short lapse
of time, then I bet you might be brought to believe at some point
what you are experiencing is not reality. But if exactly the same
events occur within 10 years, then time change everything ; you'll
just say: Well, it's too bad, but that's life. It may happen to
anyone!
Now, closer to the context Ayn Rand
brought upon in Atlas Shrugged, imagine a man living in 1960 in an
imaginary country, who, within six months, witnesses a ban on
smoking, the appearance of surveillance cameras everywhere, the
disappearance of big roomy and comfortable car for small, cheap, and
unattractive ones, a spectacular rise on gasoline, a rate of
unemployment shifting from 4.5 percent to 10 percent, the appearance
in streets of bizarre gangs of violent youngsters ridiculously
dressed and listening to music that sounds like ambient noise during
the Battle of Stalingrad, and nearly all teen girls dressing like
whores, etc-you know all the rest. All this is not only unbelievable,
but absurd, far fetched, risible, unlikely to make a good novel
because it is plain unrealistic. Beside, if he had to witness all
this within 6 months, my man living 1960 would not wait for John Galt
to go immediately on strike, gun in hand-but he will not at all if
the same chain of events unfolds within 40 years!
Ayn Rand lived in Russia and she
witnessed a change in her country of birth that was very hard to
figure out to the average American who does not always have enough
time and patience to read some dozens of books on political sciences
and modern history. With Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand wanted to draw our
attention on the dangers of “too much government” in a way that
puts such a knowledge within the range of possibilities of the
layman. The genius of Ayn Rand has been to make a fiction of it, and
not one more of the numerous essays written on the topic; she brought
her mind and her knowledge down to the intellectual performances of
nearly everyone, and she introduced 5 superheroes in it (Galt, Dagny, Ragnar, D'Anconia and Rearden) and two supervillains (Jim Taggart and Doctor Ferris) who, to some extents, almost remind us of Marvel Comics characters. The negative byproduct of it is that it may sound
to some... as no more than a fiction, as "too much to be true". It is not, in reality ; I mean, no more
than what said the very serious essay The Year 2000, written in 1967 by the
super mind Herman Kahn, as example, in which there no fictional characters.
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