Or who do the women who voted for Donald Trump look to for
moral authority?
This longtime blog of running tips and whimsical reflections
by a 40-year runner has been interrupted by a continuing political emergency: the
imminent Trump presidency.
It begins – thanks to the insight of I HATE THE INTERNET
author Jarett Kobek http://bit.ly/2gdbuBt –
with Ayn Rand (1905-1982), the libertarian philosopher and author of THE
FOUNTAINHEAD and ATLAS SHRUGGED.
The unwitting part is that Trump is a self-proclaimed
non-reader (which is better than the line of thinking that he does read, with
bedside books headlined by a title of Hitler speeches, ie, http://tws.io/2gddWrZ) and hardly an Ayn Rand
acolyte. Still, his infamous “locker room” talk that has outraged feminists,
mothers and fathers, and pretty much everybody I know who regard it as license
to commit unwanted sexual advances, if not outright assault, is pure Rand.
Consider this gem, from Kobek’s aforementioned amazing
novel-screed:
‘… (Supreme Court Justice Clarence) Thomas was a devotee of
Ayn Rand, and each year, his incoming crop of legal clerks came to his house,
where he forced them to watch the film adaptation of Rand’s “The Fountainhead.”
The frisson of this discussion derived from the
juxtaposition of Thomas’s history as a person known for practicing the art of
sexual harassment and the presence, in the mandatory film and the novel, of a
rape scene.
Here’s Ayn Rand in a letter dated June 5, 1946, describing
the rape scene in a letter to Waldo Coleman. “But the fact is that Roark did
not actually rape Dominique: she had asked for it, and he knew that she wanted
it.” ’
Therein lies the moral authority, folks. Who are the female standard bearers of this sick anti-women’s rights twist on human affairs?
Let’s start with Laura Ingraham (a finalist for Trump press
secretary, the press tells us) and Ann Coulter, whose far-right ideas suddenly
win the imprimatur of the White House.
And many more to come, but these two are the line leaders.
Next: Running for Your Life: Leaf It to Me
