January 23, 2022

Why Ayn Rand is trending on Twitter under the heading "Sports."

I thought this was odd:

 

But I clicked through and saw that it was no mistake:

Yes, I blogged Aaron's bookshelf gesturing — back on January 4th... in happier days....

49 comments:

Big Mike said...

Is there something in Atlas Shrugged that says your special teams should be poorly coached? One thing I noticed last night in the 4th quarter was that Packers receivers were having trouble making their cuts on the rock-hard frozen surface while the 49ers receivers were running simpler routes that didn’t require hard cuts.

Loren W Laurent said...

The "Trending with Colin Kaepernick" caught my eye.

Seems he has a Netflix show.

Loren Shrugged.

-Loren

Loren W Laurent said...

Twitter is full of wannabe Ellsworth Tooheys.

-Loren

Ann Althouse said...

"The "Trending with Colin Kaepernick" caught my eye."

The reason for that is that people are saying things like "Just a reminder: Colin Kaepernick led the 49ers to three victories over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers." (That particular quote is from Robert Reich.)

I guess the idea is CK has better politics and he was better at football too.

mezzrow said...

Sprinkles are for winners. So is objectivism.

What's emanating from your penumbra said...

"The reason for that is that people are saying things like "Just a reminder: Colin Kaepernick led the 49ers to three victories over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers." (That particular quote is from Robert Reich.)"

Your quoting Robert Reich here seems like a foreshadowing of your subsequent "creepy" post. The instinct to reject him based on his creepiness is very reliable.

Clyde said...

What, no mention of the sponsored trending by Mr. Peanut? That’s just nuts!

jaydub said...

"Colin Kaepernick led the 49ers to three victories over Aaron Rodgers and the Packers." "(That particular quote is from Robert Reich.)"

Colin Kaepernick is tanned, rested and ready for any team who wants him, which is obviously no team at all. Mr Reich will soon discover that Rodgers will be one of the most sought after free agents of all time. Even Terry Bradshaw, during the pregame show yesterday, allowed as how Rodgers would be the first player he took if he wanted to build a franchise. Maybe Bradshaw didn't know Kaepernick was still available?

Temujin said...

Lefties, most of whom have never completed a book or essay by Ayn Rand, love to slam Ayn Rand because it seems to be de rigueur among the left intelligentsia. But what she laid out is literally happening in front of us every day. As for Aaron Rogers, he's the best I've seen in my life, and I'm a lifelong Packers hater. (a tortured Lions fan). But I do know this:

Aaron Rogers seems to be comfortable in his own skin. He's a multi-millionaire, has a Super Bowl Ring and multiple MVP awards, will be a first ballot Hall of Famer, and seems to be well read and prone to an open mind of discovery. I say this not just based on his reading Ayn Rand, but his comments over the years on many topics. This is a bright man.

Then there is Colin Kaepernick and Robert Reich. Both will be footnotes at best, most likely forgotten within 5 years.

Leland said...

I doubt any of the twits actually watched the game, especially the one that brought up Colin Kaepernick, who hasn't led a team to any victory since Obama was President.

Bilwick said...

People who believe their lives belong to themselves and not to The Hive should be locked up in a rubber room. Submit quietly, serfs.

Biff said...

Long before there was "Trump Derangement Syndrome," long before there was "Bush Derangement Syndrome," there was "Rand Derangement Syndrome."

rehajm said...

I just know the Packers offense makes them suck at clock management.

rehajm said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
rehajm said...

I see Dick Butkus did a good job making a twitter name for himself by jumping into Aaron Rodger’s slipstream…

…but someone should explain to Mr Butkus that Twitter everyone can see his tweets.

Mark said...

If you want evidence of a group of people linked together in mind-melding, brainless, sheep-like, copy-cat collusion, just see how one Dem/progressive after another, like dominoes falling, passes along the social pathogen from one to another to all of the culture.

One of them says something, and everyone else starts parroting it.

Ann Althouse said...

I reactivated YouTube TV for that.

MadisonMan said...

The Packer loss would be depressing if it weren't for the fresh snow cover. Everything looks better robed in bright white.

Big Mike said...

@rehalm, no you go tell Mr. Butkus he’s wrong.

Koot Katmandu said...

I might have to look into this Aron Rodgers. If he likes Rand, he is a free thinker.

Jaq said...

How many times has Trumper Tom Brady won? And he still may win again. I was sad when Green Bay lost though. My Bills are still alive, and may get another home game, if I understand the rules correctly.

Jaq said...

Aaron Rogers did not lose that game, special teams lost a game where if they had just played like an average special teams unit, and not had two major cock-ups, GB would have won.

AtmoGuy said...

According to an article on ESPN.com a few days ago, he has never even read Atlas Shrugged. He just talked about it because he knew it would wind people up. And he was right.

Mark said...

Good quarterbacks factor in that other players and units, like special teams or defense, will break down, or that the refs will pooch a call.

Good quarterbacks don't shift the blame.

Christopher B said...

@Big Mike, assuming what you're saying is true (I didn't watch the game) I would suspect that the more complicated routes are probably part of the GB game plan on the assumption that the GB receivers are more capable of coping with the conditions of the turf than the opposing d-backs.

Michael said...

I've never read any of Rand's big books (although I played Brock in an early-'60's high school production of "The Night of January 16th"), but I am now reading "The Return of the Primitive." She gets carried away in a number of places, but she is fundamentally not wrong.

P.S. I am not a huge football fan unless the Vikings are involved, which builds character.

F said...

Ayn Rand should be celebrated for two things: (1) she was right about the overall direction of the USA, as Temujin points out, and (2) she is the only philosopher of note who was a woman. When I studied philosophy in college (many years ago), I was introduced to a few very modern philosophers such as Nozick, Dennet and Quine, but not Ayn Rand. Yet here we are in 2022 and no one, outside of the field, talks about those guys, but Ayn Rand is still quite relevant as a philosopher of modern government. Ayn Rand is likely the most famous philosopher of the 20th century. Impressive.

Howard said...

QAaron Rogers demonstrated that choking is a long-haul Covid symptom.

Kevin said...

Robert Reich wants to put Aaron Rodgers back in chains!

Curious George said...

"Big Mike said...
One thing I noticed last night in the 4th quarter was that Packers receivers were having trouble making their cuts on the rock-hard frozen surface while the 49ers receivers were running simpler routes that didn’t require hard cuts."

Lambeau turf is heated to keep it from freezing.

"It's just like playing in the summer on the grass," Packers offensive lineman T. J. Lang said. "It's never hard, it's never frozen."."

They were slipping because of the snow.

Richard Dillman said...

Like I said yesterday, Rodgers should get the libertarian quarterback award. Libertarian MVP.

Howard said...

Why does Rogers always in the shallow dropback in a collapsible pocket? The pack had No running game.

How many potential pick six passes did Garrapallo throw and get away with?


The outcome of the game was random chance.

Curious George said...

"MadisonMan said...
The Packer loss would be depressing if it weren't for the fresh snow cover. Everything looks better robed in bright white."

I do my driveway and sidewalk, and four elderly neighbors too, so no.

Narayanan said...

why don't people read and mention The Fountainhead ?

Narayanan said...

Michael said...
I've never read any of Rand's big books (although I played Brock in an early-'60's high school production of "The Night of January 16th"), but I am now reading "The Return of the Primitive."
---------
Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology: is much to be recommended

Michael K said...

The Packers' special teams guys lost that game. Blocked field goal and blocked punt---> TD is what lost it.

Big Mike said...

@Curious George, no doubt you are right, but what stopped the Green Bay coaching staff from calling slants and quick hitters if the field was slippery?

Skeptical Voter said...

I had to say it. Ayn Rand readers ask, "Who is John Galt?"

Last night--after the 9ers kicked the winning field goal in the last seconds of the game, Aaron Rodgers had to be asking, "Who is Robbie Gould?"


Big Mike said...

And I note that the Green Bay special teams had a 39 yard field goal blocked. Crosby normally makes those so that’s 3 points they should have had but didn’t. A blocked punt was returned for a TD, which is 7 points the 49ers should not have had, but did. If your arithmetic is rusty, those two gaffes add up to 10 points, and Green Bay lost by 3.

The cherry on top of the whipped cream on top of the icing on the cake is that Green Bay only had 10 men on the field for San Francisco’s final kick.

Achilles said...

Howard said...

QAaron Rogers demonstrated that choking is a long-haul Covid symptom.

Dim minds wait for someone to fail for something unrelated and then attach political significance to the event.

You are dumb and look really silly right now Howard.

Your vaccines failed miserably except making Pfizer record profits.

You lock downs killed thousands with no discernible benefit.

The billions of face masks that now lay on the ground and in our oceans were an obvious farce.

Everyone is making fun of you.

And your only recourse is to throw insults at Aaron Rogers from the peanut gallery after he loses a football game.

Big Mike said...

As an alumnus of the University of Illinois I was stunned to discover that when Aaron Rodgers was in high school he wanted to play quarterback for the Fighting Illini, but all the coaches would offer him was a walkon and a chance to compete for a scholarship later. So he went to a community college and then to Cal. This is even worse than Michigan having Tom Brady on the team and not wanting to start him.

Kind of explains the sorry state of Illinois football after Dick Butkus graduated (in 1965).

0_0 said...

The Manningcast curse is real.
(I also preferred the Mannings to the regular MNF show.)

Kaepernick- to whom I will always be grateful for showing us the real Boise State- has shown he doesn't want to play in the NFL. He makes more $$ from Nike, which is why I stopped buying Nike.

Narr said...

Back in the drawer, Reich.

Curious George said...

"Kind of explains the sorry state of Illinois football after Dick Butkus graduated (in 1965)."

Hey, we had Chubby Phillips! I played basketball with him at the Rec Center. Strong in the paint. Very strong.

robother said...

Ayn Rand isn't responsible for the Packers loss. Who hires Joey from Friends as their head coach?

loudogblog said...

I thought that it was interesting that the Ayn Rand institute withheld the movie rights to Atlas Shrugged for so many decades because they were waiting for someone who could do it "right." Then, when the movies were finally made, they totally screwed them up. There were three films and each film had a totally different cast playing the characters. Yikes! I'm not saying that Atlas Shrugged has any potential to be hit movie material. (It probably doesn't because it's a long, boring propaganda piece for Objectivism.)It's just that this reminded me of the plot to The Producers where they specifically set out to make a failure. Heck, maybe there is some big tax advantage for studios to have a box office bomb once in a while.

Lurker21 said...

Rand was considered on the right -- to the right of the right -- because she shared the strong anti-Communism of American conservatives and right-wingers, but she had something of the promethean anarchist thinking of the pre-WWI lyrical left. Lenin was a watershed figure who brushed aside the Nietzscheans and Ibsenites, the Greenwich Village Shavians and Back to the Land Simple Lifers of the 1910s left and forced the "advanced" and "progressive" thinkers of the left into a totalitarian mold. Rand resisted this and married the old yearnings to a determined anti-Communism. The Nietzschean side of her appealed to young people who didn't consider themselves to be conservatives or rightists. It still does. Rand fans and ex-fans can be found in very unusual places with ideas that are quite incompatible with hers.

The conflicts between Randian Objectivists and other libertarians are also revealing. Libertarians may have problems when it comes to imperialists and empire builders. Randians, at least in recent decades, have been all for that kind of pioneering expansionism and not very sympathetic with what it replaced. There is a kind of progressivism -- a capitalist and individualist progressivism -- that doesn't always go down well with an emphasis on freedom above all else.

Also, I don't know if I said it here or somewhere else, but she's going to remembered as a victim (in her case as a refugee and victim of Communism) and as someone who wrote victim stories (about how conformists and collectivists victimize the true individuals and superior men). She would really have hated that.

Jaq said...

If GB thinks that Aaron Rogers is not a “good quarterback “ there are probably 28 or more teams who would take him off your hands.

Bilwick said...

Narayanan asks,"Why don't people read and mention The Fountainhead?" Just guessing, but it could be because the villain, "Friend of Humanity" Ellsworth Toohey, after hiding behind goody-goody bromides and platitudes, eventually drops the mask and shows what his real objective is: power for him, servitude for everyone else--the kind of person H. L. Mencken said uses rhetoric about saving humanity as a smokescreen for a desire to rule it.

A few years ago, the local arts center had a screening of the movie version, and the "liberals" in the audience dutifully laughed at parts a local critic had instructed them to laugh at; but then an interesting thing happened. As Toohey became a more prominent character in the story, and the mouth piece for the kind of stupid collectivist swill the "sophisticates" in the audience thought was Gospel, the laughter, died down, and eventually disappeared. It was as if the alleged good guy in a WWII movie began quoting from Mein Kampf.