The Hunger Games - Ayn Rand’s World All Over Again

How fortuitous that during these times when one elite backed group wants things their way or no way, a movie should come out depicting the world of which they dream.  This group is willing to shut down not only the government but also the American economy and wreck the world’s dependence on the dollar to get what they want.  Drum roll please:  and then a franchised movie comes out with its latest installment that represents the world this elite backed group is striving to obtain. 

Ayn Rand’s dream world and the setting for “The Hunger Games” are one and the same.  It is the dream world for the true leaders and backers of the Tea Party movement in the country and Washington. 

Rand Paul is named for Ayn Rand, so prominent was her work to his father Ron.  I would have gone with Twain or Vonnegut, but it’s a free country - for now.  While the Pauls are not true Tea Party fellows, they are fellow travelers.  However, there can be no truer Tea Party fellow than the former vice president candidate and budget slasher, Congressman Paul Ryan.  Ayn Rand’s dream world is his adolescent idealism.  The world they are lobbying for, the world for which they are willing to wreck the American economy to achieve is the world of “The Hunger Games”. 

The Ayn Rand connection of “The Hunger Games” is not the story of the young female protagonist.  It’s the controlling government against which she struggles.   

In this world, the top 10 percent, mostly Capitalist, own or control most of the country, while the remaining 90 percent live a life of subsistence.  For most, life is a struggle to provide food and housing for family, and nothing is left over, and there is no way out for their children.  No college or starting out your own; the only hope is to do as your parents did before you.  Today’s recessionary world but much, much worse: no health care – Obamacare or any other care - no Medicare, no Social Security, no retirement accounts, no savings, no nothing.  

The only way out is to win some game concocted by the elite 10 percent as a means to control the masses and retain their exalted position.  Am I describing Ayn Rand’s dream world or “The Hunger Games”?  How incidental the latest release of this franchise movie, or is it?  Is this planned, coincidental, or part of a conspiracy?

Much of Ayn Rand’s world and that of The Hunger Games is adolescents’ idealism or angst, which is not to be marginalized, but both works of fiction are targeted toward adolescents and nothing is more idealistic than adolescents’ reading lists.

As for economic theory, Ayn Rand totally missed the boat in the real world.  She is as wrong as Marx proved to be about Communism as the workers paradise.  By the way, Ayn Rand was no more a Capitalist than Marx was a Communist, but that is a subject for another post.  Ayn Rand’s dream world would be an economic disaster much greater than any recession in the free market.  It would be a Great Depression with no end, with the elitist doing whatever it takes to maintain their extravagant lifestyle and position.  These Ayn Rand devotees within the Tea Party are as delusional as the CINOs (Christian In Name Only) within their ranks.

What Ayn Rand and the Tea Party’s elite backers don’t get is the American Middle Class is the economy.  Small time capitalism makes the big time capitalists rich.  Until the middle class is booming there is no recovery.