shannon_f_r (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shannon_f_r) wrote,@ 2006-02-17 15:16:00 |
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I can't keep up.
Is it just me, or has everyone in the official and unofficial Objectivist movement gone completely batshit crazy lately? I happened upon this juvenile little screed a day or two ago, and I'm tempted to copy it to a Word file just in case he dirty deletes and disavows the whole thing later. Really. Here's my summary: "There are people after me. I can't say anything more now. But oh, a reckoning will come. Oh yes. A reckoning will come." The spectacle of his clique circling the wagons around him doesn't do anything to dispel the impression of a particularly nasty corridor of a cheese-stinky middle school, either. And you can take that mixed metaphor to the bank.
But when I went a'searching to see if ANYONE knew ANYTHING about the TOC Summer Seminar line-up that TOC has thus far failed to post, I found my eyes wandering somewhat aimlessly over this. Now it's true that part of my initial impression of, well, insanity had to do with the fact that there's some sort of year-long history dating back to the publication of a book about the Brandens, or the Brandens' books about Rand. (It also appeared on SOLOHQ's successor, which I consider a priori the sort of nuthouse that gives nuthouses a bad name.) But on a second reading, I realized that the whole thing is--insane. Nathaniel Branden wrote a book about Ayn Rand. Someone wrote a book about Nathaniel Branden. Somehow, accusations of alcoholism went flying. I have the impression that the earlier-mentioned, Robert Bidinotto-sponsored rant might have something to do with all of this, but I'm not absolutely sure.
As a (relative) newcomer to Objectivism who doesn't really give a flying fuck about who insulted who when, can someone explain to me, slowly and clearly, why anyone's still fighting about a 40-year-old affair in which one of the participants actually died in the year of my birth?* If TOC really is trying to kill this Valliant book, why bother? Why don't they start, oh, I don't know, working on posting that Summer Seminar schedule? Or finding someone other than the same three people to write for The New Individualist?
Of course, I'm exaggerating a little. I think the batshit crazy thing started with Diana Hsieh.
*Really. I was born the year Ayn Rand died. We also both get motion sickness when we read or write in the car, which leads me to the unimpeachable conclusion that I am her reincarnation. Then again, if reincarnation really is true, I don't think Rand's ethics would have caused her to remain human. I think she'd probably be a toad or something.
Is it just me, or has everyone in the official and unofficial Objectivist movement gone completely batshit crazy lately? I happened upon this juvenile little screed a day or two ago, and I'm tempted to copy it to a Word file just in case he dirty deletes and disavows the whole thing later. Really. Here's my summary: "There are people after me. I can't say anything more now. But oh, a reckoning will come. Oh yes. A reckoning will come." The spectacle of his clique circling the wagons around him doesn't do anything to dispel the impression of a particularly nasty corridor of a cheese-stinky middle school, either. And you can take that mixed metaphor to the bank.
But when I went a'searching to see if ANYONE knew ANYTHING about the TOC Summer Seminar line-up that TOC has thus far failed to post, I found my eyes wandering somewhat aimlessly over this. Now it's true that part of my initial impression of, well, insanity had to do with the fact that there's some sort of year-long history dating back to the publication of a book about the Brandens, or the Brandens' books about Rand. (It also appeared on SOLOHQ's successor, which I consider a priori the sort of nuthouse that gives nuthouses a bad name.) But on a second reading, I realized that the whole thing is--insane. Nathaniel Branden wrote a book about Ayn Rand. Someone wrote a book about Nathaniel Branden. Somehow, accusations of alcoholism went flying. I have the impression that the earlier-mentioned, Robert Bidinotto-sponsored rant might have something to do with all of this, but I'm not absolutely sure.
As a (relative) newcomer to Objectivism who doesn't really give a flying fuck about who insulted who when, can someone explain to me, slowly and clearly, why anyone's still fighting about a 40-year-old affair in which one of the participants actually died in the year of my birth?* If TOC really is trying to kill this Valliant book, why bother? Why don't they start, oh, I don't know, working on posting that Summer Seminar schedule? Or finding someone other than the same three people to write for The New Individualist?
Of course, I'm exaggerating a little. I think the batshit crazy thing started with Diana Hsieh.
*Really. I was born the year Ayn Rand died. We also both get motion sickness when we read or write in the car, which leads me to the unimpeachable conclusion that I am her reincarnation. Then again, if reincarnation really is true, I don't think Rand's ethics would have caused her to remain human. I think she'd probably be a toad or something.
