Rand Meets Trump

Like I said, I've always liked trains, but I never became a fanatic about them like some people.  I guess I could say the same thing about Ayn Rand.  I had read at least one of her books,  "We the Living" and I had watched part of  "The Fountainhead" on TV once, and I knew that she had somewhat of a cult following, but that was about it.  Then I stumbled onto an internet forum group called "The Rand Café".  They talked about other interesting subjects, but it was supposed to be mostly about Ayn Rand.  They liked to entertain these hypothetical fantasies like,  "A priest, a rabbi, and your brother-in-law are drowning and you can only save one of them.  Which one do you save?"   Although they were polite about it, they kind of hinted that, unless I read "Atlas Shrugged", I couldn't possibly know what I was talking about.  So I read "Atlas Shrugged".

I had tried to read it once before, just after I got out of the army, but I couldn't get into it.  This time, though, I had no problem with it.  I suppose that my previous reading of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" had imbued me with the patience and perseverance to tackle another really long book.  About the time I finished it, however, the Rand Café went out of business, so I never had the opportunity to expound upon the principles elucidated in "Atlas Shrugged".  Suffice it to say that I agreed with most of them, but I think the author carried them way too far.  I also took exception to Rand's labeling her personal philosophy "Objectivism", since I had recently discovered that I was an objective realist, which is not the same thing.

So what if Ayn Rand were to rise up from the dead today and meet Donald Trump?  Well, they  are both egotistical and self centered, but would those shared traits endear them to each other?  I think not.  I mean, being self centered, by definition, would seem to preclude bonding with another self centered person, because there is only room for one self in the center.  Trump is an authoritarian, while Rand is more of a libertarian, so that would be grounds for disagreement.  On the other hand, both of them are fans of capitalism and not fans of socialism, so they should agree on economics, if not politics.   Trump is a bit of a lady's man, and Rand was a bit of a man's lady, so they might be able to form a bond with that, if only a temporary one.   Too bad this is only hypothetical, because the two of them would make great running mates in the next presidential election, if only they could agree on which one should be president and which one should be vice.