Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On January 29 2026 02:47 Billyboy wrote: To me the scariest thing is look at the blatant lying about this most recent shooting. Which has a shit ton of witnesses and videos from multiple angles. Imagine how different reality is from what they are saying when it’s behind closed doors.
Please, cease with the conspiratorial thinking. We must uncritically trust everything the government tells us, like drug prices having come down 1500%.
But also, as per ETisME's comments, we're idiots if we believe anything the government says because all politicians lie, we just have to trust that they have our best interests in mind and are extremely competent despite the obvious lies.
On January 29 2026 02:39 LightSpectra wrote: Feel free to pontificate to your heart's content about your feelings about the Dallas shooting. Doesn't change the fact even if you discount the victims of that one event, dozens of innocent people are dying in horrific conditions and the secret police have been stonewalling all attempts to help or investigate.
You're the first that called me a bootlicker for thinking they shot at ICE agents when they fired on an ICE vehicle in an ICE facility, but maybe you’re intending this post to transition to something more defensible. In the vein of “I never actually thought you were a bootlicker for believing the official explanation. I just reacted angrily because I thought you were therefore discounting the victims.” You can both honor the victims, and not call people bootlickers. Well, at least reserve the term for circumstances apart from government conspiracy doubters.
Referring back to a previous post that you must not have read, with emphasis added:
But just to be clear, the bootlicking part isn't that you uncritically believe things Kash Patel says, it's that your only remark about innocent people dying in secret police custody is that a small fraction of that number includes people who might've been killed due to ICE negligence rather than direct malice.
The guy was in Chicago for 30 years, he had a DUI in 2008 and was ordered to be deported to Bulgaria, but, he was appealing and was actually arrested as he was attending his Green card hearing.
So this guy with health problems was arrested, held for 2+ months in shitty conditions with a diet that was going to cause his death (he had diabetes) eventually, to which he complained about, but your fascist buddies ignored it and let him die.
This was a guy who paid his taxes, had a permanent status until he fucked up with a DUI and then he was punished for this by death, while being called a criminal.
This is what secret police does, the guy was trying to stay in a legal way, he paid for this with his life and you are here defending this.
This is just the first guy from the first link from this page:
So far the administration’s retreat on ICE isn’t much of a retreat – they’re still beating up random civilians in MN, Noem and Miller still have jobs – but it is notable in that their whole theory of power and PR has been “never back down, never apologize.” They’ve arguably backed down before – bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia when SCOTUS told them to, for example, or promising not to take Greenland by military force – but this is a pretty public “oo, we touched the hot stove, we regret that” which they are normally insistent they never do.
Now part of why they normally refuse is because they think it just shows weakness and forces you to keep giving more and more ground. We’ll see, I hope so! But a big component here is that it happened to time out exactly with Senate Democrats deciding whether to block more ICE funding. If it were just public outcry over the killing, they might have held to their line; if it were just Democrats shutting down the government over ICE, they might have relished the fight; but the combination has them suing for peace.
In the broader picture, I regret to conclude that elected Democrats, those limp-dick septuagenarians, are still a pretty important piece in stopping the fascists. How best to use them, I’m not sure, but impressive as the street-level organizing in MN has been, I don’t think we can take our eyes off the traditional mechanisms of power, however badly they’ve failed us up to this point.
There isn't much of anything to use them for. At their best, they "do" (much less than the minimum they reluctantly promise in response to) what an overwhelming number of people demand happens, once those demands have made the status quo unsustainable. At the end of the day, that's what people expect of any political class, even dictators.
The example that comes to mind is refusing to fund ICE unless they have accountability measures like (somewhat ironically) visible identification of some kind (as opposed to masked goons). The only way that happens is if there isn't a functional choice for Democrats not to. But elected Democrats know they can disregard their supporters needs/demands and those supporters will even rationalize Democrats continuing funding the US Gestapo themselves.
Democrats are a right-wing conservative party full of enablers, Republicans are fascists they're enabling until/unless they are both stopped afaict.
Ten years ago when there was a Republican party, that book was waved around, with political leaders swearing by it as the next best thing to the Bible and the constitution.
Ayn Rand is pretty good at exaggerations and operatic figures, but you don't have to imitate her.
This is rooted in Rand Paul or Ron Paul, and some very clever try at "it was mentioned favorably, therefore stood just behind the Bible and the Constitution?" If the Republican party said Atlas Shrugged stood behind the Bible and the Constitution, then clearly the Democratic Party swore by the Communist Manifesto and Rules for Radicals.
No, no. If it was just Ron Paul that would be a very dishonest characterization by me. Ron Paul was very obviously marching to the beat of his own drum compared to the rest of the party: "I think the problem with walls is they don't just keep people out, they keep people in..." I don't even remember Ron Paul talking about Atlas Shrugged to be fair.
I don't know if you just weren't around or have forgotten or what, but I was loosely paraphrasing Paul Ryan, you know former speaker of the house and former running mate for Romney (loosely because it's been too long to remember the exact quote and I couldn't be bothered to look it up). There was a whole crop of mainstream Republicans from that era that would voluntarily describe their favourite book as Atlas Shrugged to explain their political beliefs and that it was key to understanding the ills of big government (which might be followed with a caveat: favourite book, after the Bible.) If it was just Ron Paul, I wouldn't have bothered to read the book to figure out what they were going on about.
On January 29 2026 02:47 Billyboy wrote: To me the scariest thing is look at the blatant lying about this most recent shooting. Which has a shit ton of witnesses and videos from multiple angles. Imagine how different reality is from what they are saying when it’s behind closed doors.
Please, cease with the conspiratorial thinking. We must uncritically trust everything the government tells us, like drug prices having come down 1500%.
But also, as per ETisME's comments, we're idiots if we believe anything the government says because all politicians lie, we just have to trust that they have our best interests in mind and are extremely competent despite the obvious lies.
On January 29 2026 02:39 LightSpectra wrote: Feel free to pontificate to your heart's content about your feelings about the Dallas shooting. Doesn't change the fact even if you discount the victims of that one event, dozens of innocent people are dying in horrific conditions and the secret police have been stonewalling all attempts to help or investigate.
You're the first that called me a bootlicker for thinking they shot at ICE agents when they fired on an ICE vehicle in an ICE facility, but maybe you’re intending this post to transition to something more defensible. In the vein of “I never actually thought you were a bootlicker for believing the official explanation. I just reacted angrily because I thought you were therefore discounting the victims.” You can both honor the victims, and not call people bootlickers. Well, at least reserve the term for circumstances apart from government conspiracy doubters.
Referring back to a previous post that you must not have read, with emphasis added:
But just to be clear, the bootlicking part isn't that you uncritically believe things Kash Patel says, it's that your only remark about innocent people dying in secret police custody is that a small fraction of that number includes people who might've been killed due to ICE negligence rather than direct malice.
Your only comment on deaths in ICE custody was that the gunshot victims were from somebody that shot an ICE vehicle in order to kill immigrants and not ICE officers, and that a government conspiracy covered up that fact.
But now bootlickers are anybody that offers criticism of a Guardian article. You’d think it was state media with how quick you were to label a bootlicker based on the critique.
Ten years ago when there was a Republican party, that book was waved around, with political leaders swearing by it as the next best thing to the Bible and the constitution.
Ayn Rand is pretty good at exaggerations and operatic figures, but you don't have to imitate her.
This is rooted in Rand Paul or Ron Paul, and some very clever try at "it was mentioned favorably, therefore stood just behind the Bible and the Constitution?" If the Republican party said Atlas Shrugged stood behind the Bible and the Constitution, then clearly the Democratic Party swore by the Communist Manifesto and Rules for Radicals.
No, no. If it was just Ron Paul that would be a very dishonest characterization by me. Ron Paul was very obviously marching to the beat of his own drum compared to the rest of the party: "I think the problem with walls is they don't just keep people out, they keep people in..." I don't even remember Ron Paul talking about Atlas Shrugged to be fair.
I don't know if you just weren't around or have forgotten or what, but I was loosely paraphrasing Paul Ryan, you know former speaker of the house and former running mate for Romney (loosely because it's been too long to remember the exact quote and I couldn't be bothered to look it up). There was a whole crop of mainstream Republicans from that era that would voluntarily describe their favourite book as Atlas Shrugged to explain their political beliefs and that was key to understanding the ills of big government (which might be followed with a caveat: favourite book, after the Bible.) If it was just Ron Paul, I wouldn't have bothered to read the book to figure out what they were going on about.
So no, that wasn't 'some very clever try'.
Is there a reason you said the Republican Party instead of Paul Ryan? I already mentioned to you that I have no trouble believing that about Ron and Rand Paul in addition. Remember, this is Paul Ryan who said “I reject her philosophy,” with apparently no fear that such a rejection would alienate him from the Republican Party.
As far as a jeremiad against big government, I can tacitly agree that the Republican Party rejoices whenever anti-capitalist forces are railed against in novel form. Animal farm is definitely up there with it. But it’s a clunky unserious novel and has been lit into by prominent conservative voices, chief among these the ex-communist Whittaker Chambers. The only politically-oriented people I’ve ever heard recommend it to me were staunch libertarians.
I did fifteen minutes of searching for other Republican politicians that called it their favorite book or influential on their ideology. I found none stating something as strong as it being the next best thing to the Bible and the constitution (I have a favorite burger joint if you ask me what my favorite burger joint is, but that doesn’t make it the next best thing to barbecued steak.) I got a couple cultural and judicial figures that liked the book. So I really contest its importance and influence beyond a few select individuals, and into the Republican Party as a whole.
Because it was not simply one individual. You dismissed the book as being irrelevant except to politically idiosyncratic people like the Ron and Rand. I countered by saying it was very mainstream with people like Paul Ryan who said he got into politics because of Rand. He was the one I still remember, but I very clearly wrote that it was more than just him. But I also am not saying it was all Republicans all the time. Speaker of the House and Republican candidate for the VP is clearly not just the Pauls like you were indicating. Ted Cruz calls Ayn Rand one of his all time heroes for instance. Also not exactly a Republican outcast (until of course Trump recreated the party into his own image.)
And you are countering with a writer who was dead by 1961? What has that do with the political zeitgeist of the late aughts?
nice, thorough, in depth LEGAL analysis by a guy I've posted here before. I've said good things about him before... I think he makes my recommendation look good. Nice work by Nate The Lawyer.
That said, apparently there is a new video available and they go in depth on it. its great to see Nate live.
If you follow Nate The Lawyer's published track record he rarely sides in favour of the police committing crimes.
On January 29 2026 06:20 Falling wrote: Because it was not simply one individual. You dismissed the book as being irrelevant except to politically idiosyncratic people like the Ron and Rand. I countered by saying it was very mainstream with people like Paul Ryan who said he got into politics because of Rand. He was the one I still remember, but I very clearly wrote that it was more than just him. But I also am not saying it was all Republicans all the time. Speaker of the House and Republican candidate for the VP is clearly not just the Pauls like you were indicating. Ted Cruz calls Ayn Rand one of his all time heroes for instance. Also not exactly a Republican outcast (until of course Trump recreated the party into his own image.)
And you are countering with a writer who was dead by 1961? What has that do with the political zeitgeist of the late aughts?
I was more wondering if you had further evidence or news stories about the Republican Party as a whole. Let’s say I told you that the Democratic Party considers the Communist Manifesto as their Bible. I would hope you wouldn’t take my word for it, and would need more than a Bernie Sanders or Tim Caine to prove it. Or two senators that said Marx is something of a hero to them, and one congressman that said it was his favorite work of political nonfiction.
Pulling up The Right by Continetti, his mentions on shaping the right are basically William F Buckley rejection of those ideas.
Atlas Shrugged is 1957, so I’m raising an eyebrow about mentioning 1961 in a negative light. It’s an old book and we must look at all its potential influence.
I think you’re fine for telling me and indeed proving Republicans enjoyed the book for its fictional portrayal of big government collapse, and mentioned it favorably for it (great quotes, memorable villains), but I’m against you for influence in a party-wide basis (just behind the Bible and the constitution). It’s just not there. If you want to quote it, the passages on the parasitical class and the dangers of spending public money on altruistic purposes are fine. The philosophy is trash and, aside from the aforementioned libertarian wing of the party, rejected.
Also, recommend Ronald Reagan’s autobiography and Matthew Continetti’s historical “The Right” for a modern look at influences on the party as a whole.
What the right is and what it is influenced by changes. William F Buckley era conservatives absolutely rejected Ayn Rand and for good reason. I was speaking about a discreet time period where Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged seemingly had an outsized influence on the Republican Party, the Tea Party era, which is why I am dismissing pre-1961 critiques on Ayn Rand. That's a different generation of politicians.
I agree the philosophy is trash, but I don't agree that it has always been irrelevant. It was quite significant at a discreet point in time in the Republican party. Also, Sanders is to the Democrats what Ron Paul is to the Republicans except Sanders got more traction in a political climate of rejecting the mainstream. You'd absolutely believe the right wing media apparatus would consider it significant if Biden or Harris considered Marx their hero. I also don't think it's relevant now either as all that matters right now is whatever Trump says that day of the week though we'll see how far the 2a guys will follow 'you shouldn't carry a gun'.
The Republican Party of today has pretty resoundingly rejected the legacy of men like Reagan. There's no desire to be a shining city on the hill, to be aspirational, to be a leader within the western liberal community. Old alliances are broken. Old friends are betrayed. Social contracts are smashed. It's an insufficiently discussed part of Trumpism, it's not just Obama's legacy they're tearing down, it's Reagan's too.
Falling isn’t really misremembering. At a time when Republicans were far more concerned about being economic policy wonks, you had wonks like Paul Ryan and Alan Greenspan say that they were personally influenced by Atlas Shrugged and other parts of Ayn Rand.
But I’m old enough to remember conservatives in the 1980s handing each other copies of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as gifts. I can’t find proof but US and UK politicians definitely did do that whenever they met. Talking about Rand seems way more prominent with UK Conservative politicians like Sajid Javid or Daniel Hannan who have openly stated to the press that they keep reading the books to their wife or have a framed photo of Ayn Rand in their office. US politicians don’t seem as open to the press (or have a more contentious relationship so are far more guarded) so it’s relatively hard to find an interview where a politician states much of anything about their personal lives unless they’re running for President.
The easiest source of evidence is the previously mentioned Paul Ryan, one of the heir apparents of the Republican Party, who once said Atlas Shrugged was the reason he entered public service and that he required his staffers to read the novel.
But Trump’s administration has historically been filled with admirers who aren’t chomping on the bit to tell everyone how they’re making everyone read Ayn Rand novels. Numerous news articles from a Google search claim Rex Tillerson‘s favourite book was Atlas Shrugged. Andy Puzder, who was to be Trump’s Labor Secretary, owns Roark Capital Group. Mike Pompeo similarly has reports that he was impacted by Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
There’s no party manifesto that they all follow Ayn Rand’s philosophy and books but there are enough third party reports that Republicans politicians treat Ayn Rand’s novels like politicians of the past treated the writings of Cicero. I think it would be an odd argument to say that they weren’t influenced by the book(s).
EPT
