Atlas Mugged

I finally went to see Atlas Shrugged Part 1 yesterday. It was not any better than I imagined it could be. Ayn Rand built into her story physical limitations and ideological failings that I've mentioned before but which are not the reason I am writing this.

The movie does not deserve the bad press it has gotten. For one, at least two of the no-name actors are enjoyable to see. Why some critics would lambaste it for using unknowns positively stinks of elitism.

For another, it is so laughable that some critics gave it 0 stars. I'm not the first to point out that one of the villains in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead was a critic (I think his name was Toohey). After yesterday's lambasting of Mr. Obama for being petty, I should point out that his level of petty vindictiveness pales in comparison to that of the critics of this film. How could anyone take Roger Ebert's opinon seriously ever again? Certainly not after realizing how he must be carrying an obvious vendetta towards a 2011 film for a book published more than 3-score years ago.

But let's look passed the clownishness of hyper-critics. More importantly, there is an ideologically damaging scene in this film for which the majority of NAILer outlet critics are paid to dissuade the public from ever seeing and comprehending its implications. (Just as Toohey was paid to destroy architects who built contrary to the wishes of the newspaperman that paid the critic's salary).

There is the scene where the industrialist goes to visit the director of the State Science Institute. It reveals to the viewing public, in a manner that mere words don't display, How Scientists On the Public Dole Are Pressured Into Standing Behind Fraudulent Studies.

Just for that scene alone, the NAILer critics panned this movie.

So, in complimentary fashion, just for that scene alone, pick one acquaintance who you believe is wavering about the global warming scam. Take them with you to see this movie.

In short, if you love the global warming scam, you want nobody to see this movie.

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Some afterthoughts:
A shorter version of the following  is something Og provoked out of me earlier today. I'm jotting it down here at length so I do not forget.

The “people” who went on strike in Rand's magnum opus were not really people. Although the movie winds up displaying warmth in its characters, that was something Rand strictly kept out of her novel and in the filmed version of The Fountainhead. What the looters in the book and in the movie (and in our real world) were killing was the drive in the human spirit to create something new out of the raw material God has provided.

Essentially what I've been cataloging in my posts for a very long time is the evidence of this.

There is the death cult, hiding in plain sight, at the rotten core of two-faced Marxism — and also at the core of corporate Statism (another two-faced institution that Rand wound up glorifying).

She neglected to point out that after the man is gone, the corporation remains, and they who govern it often have no regard for that which is in the human spirit that built the cat-bird seat that they now occupy.

This is precisely why benign despotism degrades into total despotism time and again. On one hand the son or heir to the throne has not an inkling or sense of what made his predecessor loved or at least tolerated. Nor does he have any sense of gratitude for all the good -- derived from the liberty previously granted his subjects -- that made life good for all. All he knows is that there are pretenders seeking to wrest control of the power from him, and he must protect the "precious" at all costs.