Ayn Rand's Victory Lap

A man set himself on fire in front of the White House on Wednesday morning.  Seriously.  You probably heard nothing of it. Here's a news photo, and I apologize for the graphic nature.

The Maryland man died from the injuries he suffered.  This would be the second person who set themselves on fire at the White House this year alone.  As a society, we may disagree about a lot of things, but human beings killing themselves with self-immolation in our nation's capitol is not a sign of a healthy country.

People will point out the obvious; that this man was mentally unstable.  That's a given. Conservatives will probably blame President Obama, as ludicrous as that is.  The reality is people have had it.  After 40 years of wealthy-centric, conservative rule, people are at their breaking point.  This country is dying because the political machine has moved us so far to the right it's leaving most of us without hope.

Ayn Rand wrote about how greed was a virtue and compassion was a sickness.  Rand believed a government helping its own citizens was the real crime, that people should be able to do whatever they wanted and reap the benefits of their success, no matter how many bodies they had to step on to achieve their goals.  She portrayed selfishness as the greatest human characteristic of all time, and built a following of believers to her cause.  The fact she was a fraud, dependent on government assistance under a false name in her later years, is ignored by her most loyal followers, many of whom currently write laws in this country.  Rand has been a major influence on the modern Right politicians, along with the Gordon Gekko 'greed is good' speech from Wall Street.

How far towards Rand have we fallen?  We have Republicans stopping the most basic form of government, natural disaster emergency relief, because they feel the money is more important than the people suffering, or because they want money for their agenda before they help the devastated.  Republicans have simply forgotten about Puerto Rico, an island of US citizens scoured clean by a hurricane, just because they're not white.  Russia interfered with our election, an undeniable fact, and most Republicans seem perfectly fine with the foundation of America being cracked with a Russian wrecking ball.  Trump is preparing to pardon war criminals, people who are guilty of heinous crimes, people who have been tried in military courts and who have been found guilty, because he feels killing Muslim women and children is not really bad.  He has ripped children away from their parents and has lost thousands of them in a US bureaucratic system seemingly designed to never reunite them with their grieving parents.  Many of these children have been sexually assaulted, and more than few of them have died in our custody.

And this legislative cruelty has boiled down to the state levels.  Republicans in Minnesota stopped creating a stockpile of emergency insulin to help poor diabetics who can't afford the life saving medication.  They gleefully voted it down, an action which will undeniably end up killing some people.

America is broken; it has no more soul.  We no longer worship loving peaceful Gods, only wealth and money.  The US is slipping further and further into madness, with droves of conservative voters screaming in delight as the people and things they've been told to hate are dealt harsh punishments.  A man lighting himself on fire out of mentality compromised frustration doesn't even register as a blip on our radar.  No sadness.  No pity.  No remorse.  No compassion.

Can we return from this wasteland?  Even if we could, will we be allowed to?  Scarier yet, what percentage of the population will eagerly want to stay?