Next Volley in the Class War

Rich to middle class and poor: cheer for us as we walk all over you.

I suspect the reason this stuff sells in America is that we still hope to join the ranks of the people who congratulate themselves as Makers (you know, corporations on welfare and bailouts). It’s sort of like Horatio Alger, except with all the ties to the Christian tradition of respect for God and the poor incinerated by Rand’s absolute hostility to Christian charity. A Christian culture was smart enough to recognize that Rand and the people who make films like this are enemies of God and enemies of the human race. The Thing that Used to Be Conservatism is actually dumb enough to regard this as a message of liberation and not as a command from the Rich to the middle class and poor: “To a gas chamber, go!”

Most hilarious part: Conservative Catholics seriously trying to paint this evil woman and her hatred of God and man as Aristotle to Paul Ryan’s Aquinas.

That may have had the desired effect in helping maintain unit cohesion inside the epistemic closure bubble of the Thing that Used to be Conservatism. But outside it, where old people and veterans and other members of the worthless 47% live, allowing that Makers and Takers stuff to be spoken plainly by the Plastic Android turned out to be the most devastating single blunder of a gaffe-ridden campaign. Turns out people who have sacrificed for their country don’t like being dismissed as human debris by an out of touch plutocrat given to transparent class war rhetoric.

The problem, of course, is that they won’t escape such class warfare by voting for Obama. As Ross Douthat smartly noted, they are both lapdogs of the rich and both enemies of the poor, in their own ways.