who is john galt?

Posted by Friday on March 02nd 2008 to News, Opinion

According to a recent New York Times article, 1 in 100 U.S. adults are now behind bars:http://tinyurl.com/2oxar8

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around these statistics. Seriously.

  • 1 in every 99.1 adults in the U.S. is currently behind bars
  • 1 in 36 Hispanic adults
  • 1 in 15 black adults
  • 1 in 9 black men between the ages of 20 and 34

I’ve been meaning to reread “1984″; it’s been many years. But IIRC, it seems like the current reality of the U.S. may actually be worse than Orwell envisioned. This is actually worse than all sorts of sci fi dystopian books/movies I’ve read/seen over the years.

1 in 100? Huh?

I’m currently re-reading Atlas Shrugged, and these statistics just bring into sharper focus the fact that an ever-shrinking number of us (including myself in this “us”) are supporting a shocking chunk of the rest of the population. We really are carrying the world on our backs.

But for how long?

2 Responses to “who is john galt?”

  1. d_goddard
    March 3rd, 2008 | 2:43 pm

    To me, the truly mindblowing thing about Atlas Shrugged is how realistic it is. She’s captured perfectly, PERFECTLY, some of the personas I deal with on a day-to-day basis in corporate America: the go-getters who seem to make everything run, and the “meetings engineers” (or as she calls them power-brokers, or simply parasites)

    That a woman living in the glass-ceiling 1940’s could have grokked so completely these personality types is incredible to me.

    Her prose style is amateurish and annoying, like Hemingway’s or Frost’s. Still, she’s a great writer because of the insight and the characters.

    And the movie is supposed to come out any minute now, right? I think a posted on the IMDB forum summed it up best: “By my life, and my love of it, this movie will suck”

  2. Pat K
    March 3rd, 2008 | 8:59 pm

    Ayn Rand quotes:
    When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

    Yikes!!

Leave a reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.