Not that he literally has transistors and diodes within, but Alan Greenspan is robotic in the sense that he is an acolyte of supersocialdarwinist author Ayn Rand, and unlike 95 percent of people who read Rand in their youths, Greenspan has shown little evidence of putting the batty woman's theories down.
In other words, Alan Greenspan hasn't truly grown a bit since he wrote to the New York Times way back in 1957 that
Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.
(Italics, irresistibly, mine.)
Knowing that Greenspan shares their Fuck The Poor philosophy, now it comes time, as it every so often has in the last 25 years when the rightwing has enjoyed too much power, for the Republicans to plug in Alanbot the Randroid to give a veneer of legitimacy to some batshit rightwing plan. This time, Alanbot's been activated to blame any and every looming fiscal difficulty on Social Security.
In response, Krugman calls Greenspan what he is, as does Senator Harry Reid. Wolcott simply wishes for Alanbot's decommissioning, to the weary nodding of all the rest of US fed up with retro 80s government.
The Kossacks, in an enough's enough attempt to counter the Alanbot mystique (and the all too frequent Greenspan hagiographies from the center, and even high tolerance from the left) are trolling for info. Alanbot the Randroid has had a long career, and has let his Randian cats out of several bags over the years -- which the Kossacks hope to gather.
Happily, I'm already privy to the wingnut spin on this, via an (I assume) accidental email I received this afternoon:
I just wanted to alert everyone, especially Andrea Mitchell, that she is being targeted by the readers of Daily Kos...
I thought she would be interested in knowing that she is being targeted for a slime attack merely because her husband said positive things about private accounts.
That last sentence is hilarious in its mendacity. Almost as hilarious as this paragraph from the nutjobs at AEI:
More than one member of the Collective marveled at his ability to attract beautiful women. "It was incredible how he always had a beautiful woman at his side," recalls Barbara Branden. "I think it was the attraction of his intellectual power and probably his reserve. You couldn't knock him over by batting your eyelashes at him. He certainly had a profound effect on women." Another member speculates: "Maybe he was a good kisser, from all those years as a saxophone player". His ex-wife Joan Mitchell Blumenthal offers a different explanation. "He is very clever, he knows a lot about a million things, and he has a wonderful sense of humor. Alan is charming and always interesting."
"Beautiful women" [sic!] like Andrea Mitchell -- who is, to be fair, not only a perfect match to Alanbot in the looks department, but also in the political hackery department.
In case you don't know, a "parasite" to a Randroid is the same thing as a "bum" was to the wheelchaired fraud in The Big Lebowski: the opposite of an achiever. And achievers never take -- much less need -- financial help of any kind. Achievers don't need no stinkin social security check because they take care of themselves, and only "looters" (the Randroid synonym for "parasite") would want their hard-earned dollars to be taken from them and put into a government account for safe-keeping and for later redistribution. To put it even more bluntly, a Randroid considers any government enterprise past the Army and perhaps the post office to be a totalitarian instrument of parasites, bums, and looters who, in their envy, would drag high-flying alpha-persons like ..yes, Randroids down to their level.
(Here I should mention that like the fraud in The Big Lebowski, Randroids have an insufferably high -- and false -- sense of their own talents. Rare indeed is the real life Randroid who has an iota of social skills or intelligence. Most of what irritates me about Randroids, aside the evil in their philosophy, is their delusions of grandeur: they all think of themselves as alpha humans but, in reality, could only charitably be consigned to the delta aisle, and that's on a good day. Point out the obvious to them, and they simply accuse you of envy; a self-reinforcing myth, thus the circle-jerk inside their empty noggins. Obviously, Greenspan himself has achieved in the real world, but via no arsenal of charms. The man's personality is pure chloroform; he owes his position to other means.)
Alanbot was and always will be a Randroid. It's foolish to expect political decency and fairness out of him. Let there be no more free passes for this antique Republican appliance.
*edit: made a few style changes.
posted by RETARDO MONTALBAN @ 3:12 AM
<< Home