Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Monday, March 2, 2009

Priorities

While the Dow is dropping to unbelievable lows, Megan McArdle has become obsessed about whether the crazy right is getting enough credit for its protests. Are they truly grass roots or are they shills for the elite? McArdle has four posts up trying to ferret out the truth. She'll let us know what she finds out.

Megan thinks it's perfectly natural for the right to heave themselves off the couch or abandon work in the middle of the day to complain about paying taxes and bailing out corporations. I am less sanguine. The heaving masses sat quite comfortably while their investments were stolen, so I doubt they'll do much now. But it doesn't matter if the protesters are genuine fools or paid fools. Either way the middle class is still a lot poorer. So let the right stage protests, let them vent their anger at their losses. McArdle and Michelle Malkin and Dick Armey and Steve Job's Forbes' Freedomwatch will help stir up the little people against Obama. And if they get violent, I'm sure McArdle will say that the right wingers should be preemptively hit with a 2x4, to teach them a lesson about coming in from Jersey to smash up New York.

13 comments:

Righteous Bubba said...

It doesn't bother me if those guys are the grass roots.

So were Birchers.

Anonymous said...

"Steve Job's Freedomwatch"

Oh dear. Say it idn so. Really?

Anonymous said...

It's pathetic how seriously she's taking this. Even more sad, she's completely missing the irony of calling out another publication for shoddy research and lack of facts and/or evidence.

Susan of Texas said...

Jobs? Oh my God, what a stupid mistake. Okay, I corrected it to Steve Forbes.

Anonymous said...

Megan simply assumes that Playboy took the article "down" because it was wrong. If it's not wrong, I think Playboy should sue Megan for defamation.

atheist said...

But it doesn't matter if the protesters are genuine fools or paid fools. Either way the middle class is still a lot poorer.

THANK YOU. Someone had to say it.

Anonymous said...

Anon - at the very least, they could sue for copyright infringement after she reprinted the entire article at the Atlantic.

Susan of Texas said...

I think the world could make a class action suit against McArdle for brain damage and suffering.

atheist said...

Susan, maybe it's just where my weird ol' mind is at, but it seems like in this economic situation, the way that libertarianism is looking more like a kind of religion is occurring to me. Of course, I'm predisposed not to like libertarianism, so maybe it's just me.

Susan of Texas said...

It does seem to be a faith-based way of dealing with the world.

Anonymous said...

I think of it more like a cult. Unthinking, reactionary, questioning one authority while submitting to another and united under a single mantra from which one never, ever deviates, regardless of the subject.

Think of Megan's response to whether art should be publicly funded. "No." That's it. Just plain no. No reflection on the value of art in society, no case for or against it. Just a smug, confident "no," delivered with the arrogant assumption that the correctness of this does not need to be defended, as it is obvious.

Anonymous said...

Religion...cult...

Stop! You're BOTH pretty.

Isn't a cult a religion that deifies a mortal and takes it from there? (Yeah, yeah--as opposed to a religion, which deifies a deity.)

I'm making this up as I type but I find it oddly compelling.

A religion is what a cult turns into after its founder and original acolytes are dead. It's the institutionalization of the memory of the cult.

I am on FIRE.

Susan of Texas said...

Great stuff!

I guess a cult is what They believe and a religion is what We believe.