To Dream the Impossible? Objectivist Dream

Objectivism is a hard sell. A streak of masochism is almost a sine qua non for engaging in such a thankless task. Indeed,as even the head no less of the Ayn Rand Institute himself Yarron Brook frequently opines it is depressing and dispiriting how little headway into the culture objectivism has made.

If someone at the top of ARI is openly lamenting the dire situation of the 21st century state of Objectivism one wonders what future it realistically has. And yet,what's the alternative but a headlong descent into the abyss -one has to persist in making the case but it is Sisyphean labour.

Part of the problem is linguistic.Objectivism is so alien to Western culture it proponents can often seem like they have just beamed down from another planet and it requires an extremely articulate person to convey its complex challenging revolutionary concepts requiring as it does almost the adoption of a new  language as so many redefinitions are needed.

Try for instance  telling people that selfishness is good when thousands of years of conditioning have dinned into them its inherent evil. Good luck with that one.Who is going to criticise motherhood and apple pie.

Where on earth do you begin? As most people are not taught to think in principles or at all come to that and have been through an educational system of cognitive assault and battery,indoctrination,almost brainwashing into the altruist statist dogma one would have to get to someone extremely early before such damage is done in order to stand any chance of having a salutary influence.

A culture can get so corrupted it can reach  a critical point of no return  and one wonders indeed whether that stage has not been reached already; certainly  the radical deterioration in the last few few has been breathtaking and staggering to witness - on a veritable exponential level and has taken even the most seasoned objectivists by surprise. Rather as I said than it being too early for Objectivists it has turned to be out much much later than they thought.

Who would have imagined just a few short years ago that a truly terrible figure like Donald Trump would emerge to become president of the most powerful country on earth, or that a far left Bernie Sanders would almost pip Hillary Clinton to the post as head of the Democratic party -or that Jeremy Corbyn would become leader of the Labour party 25 years after Margaret Thatcher had to almost universal acknowledgement kicked socialism into the dustbin of history forever?

Yet here we are in an Alice Wonderland world where 6 impossible things have happened before breakfast and the time that Ojbectivists thought was on their side has been contracted to almost nothing hence the bemusement of Brook and co which is beginning to look like desperation if not outright despair.

The situation is made even more awful by the staggering fact that people who call themselves objectivists have gone over to the dark side, openly defending Trump and his economic nationalism,his insane anti American protectionism and tarriff impositioning.If Objectivists are now behaving irrationally what hope in convincing those unversed in its principles?

It is now looking like a monumental mistake on the part of objectivists finally not to have started making inroads in politics decades ago. When I asked Peikoff years ago of the existence of an objectivist manifesto he replied tersely monosyllalabically in the negative. Such lofty academic detatchment and disdain for the political arena amongst the higher echelons of Objectivism has now come back to bite it and the consequences could alas, prove to be fatal.