I used to have such optimism about humanity. There are still some who are worthy of my production, including you and all those here in the Gulch. However, it is getting a lot more difficult to remain optimistic. Each time I read Atlas Shrugged I see more of the internal struggles that numerous characters had.

She once wrote, somewhere in The Ayn Rand Letter, that she felt fortunate that she would no longer be here when what she foresaw would come to be, but she never gave up on the human potential and continued to advocate and expand her ideas.

And as bad as it was then, look where we made it to. Ayn knew what was coming. I'm thinking she would be surprised it took this long.

Excellent responseto JB's post EWV!

I think she pretty much covered 2020 in AS.

Boy,does this take me back. I was subscribing to her newsletter when I was in High School. Still have them in a 3 ring binder. I remember her ending the newsletter with this little essay while in College. Her sentiment here is so appropriate. She had all ready said it all.

This is the first part of that Part I. There is more and there is Part II as well. It is about time for me to reread about everything of hers.

Ayn Rand anticipated how she would have written about 2020:

From The Ayn Rand Letter
Vol. IV, No. 2 November-December 1975
A Last Survey--Part I [Ayn Rand's last article before closing down her publication]

"This is to tell you, regretfully, that I am discontinuing the publication of The Ayn Rand Letter after these last two issues.

"I say 'regretfully' because I am sorry to disappoint the readers who have supported this publication, and its predecessors, for so many years. That is why I wanted to make this announcement personally and to tell you my reasons...

"There are many aspects of the Letter's publication which I will miss and regret, but, for me personally, the decision to close it, was something of a relief...

"2. My purpose in writing articles was to discuss the application of Objectivism to modern events—i.e., to explain today's trends by identifying their philosophical roots and meaning, and to present the Objectivist alternative. In this respect, reality has proved too cooperative: so many trends are going the way I predicted they would (only more crudely and viciously so) that I find myself in the 'untitled' predicament over and over again Most of you will remember that I wrote 'An Untitled Letter' once (January 29, 1973). Its first paragraph read: 'The most appropriate title for this discussion would be ''I told you so.'' But since that would be in somewhat dubious taste, I shall leave this Letter untitled.' I am tired of saying 'I told you so' indirectly. It would be better for someone else to observe it.

"My criterion in selecting the subjects I discussed was: the subject's philosophical importance, which had to be demonstrable, but not too obvious. Today, the issues are becoming so crudely obvious that those who do not see them, cannot be helped by any discussion. Time and again, I have found that the basic evil behind today's ugliest phenomena is altruism. Well, I told you so. I have been telling you so since We The Living, which was published in 1936. Those who still pretend that they can save freedom and individual rights without challenging altruism, are outside my power of persuasion (and, I suspect, outside any sort of persuasion, i.e., outside the field of ideas).

"Today's disasters are concrete manifestations of one or more of three fundamental abstractions: mysticism, altruism, collectivism. I have discussed such manifestations in many of their current forms, so that the method or pattern of identifying, understanding and opposing them should be clear to you by now. You should be able to recognize them in their next appearance or latest fashion, which will vary endlessly in form, but not in essence. In this respect, I have given you the intellectual ammunition required.

"As far as I am concerned, I do not care to go on analyzing and denouncing the same indecencies of the same irrationalism. I enjoy writing only so long as I say something I have not said before. For me, every article has to involve some new identification, big or small, not only new to my readers, but new to me. I cannot bear merely to repeat myself. In the last two years, watching the gray monotony of the culture's disintegration, I saw that the time was approaching when I would have to report on the same kinds of phenomena over and over again. I began to feel as if I would have to become a journalist. Casting no aspersions on that once honorable and always badly needed profession, a journalist is what I most emphatically am not...

"3. The state of today's culture is so low that I do not care to spend my time watching and discussing it. I am haunted by a quotation from Nietzsche: 'It is not my function to be a fly swatter.' The evils destroying modern civilization are enormous, but their representatives, agents and carriers are too small to contemplate. This is an illustration of the fact that evil is not 'single and big, [it is] many and smutty and small' (The Fountainhead)—or that evil is a default." [She then described the repetitious smallness of the time before concluding.]

All bets are off for individual liberty

If I were making a movie if it I would put it in the mountains of Alaska. Remote, inaccessible, protected, but still part of the USA. Alaska wasn't a state when AS was written. Colorado was like that decades ago but not now.

Her words about student militants still seem apposite!

I was just re-watching and re-listening-to some of the interviews with Rand from decades ago. Her discussion about how our (U.S.) government was (and is) undermining the constitution in one of them from 1964 (republished by the Ayn Rand Institute, titled "The Structure of Government," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mQmP... really got me thinking about how much more, and how much worse, our rights in the constitution have been undermined in recent decades. I think she'd be surprised that New York has not already gone dark.

In terms of Atlas Shrugged...we are already at the end, minus the self destruction of their businesses as punishment to the government, the looters, the attackers.
As for an Atlantis...from what I remember about it's theoretical structure, (not physical structure) America was to be it... in a sense.

A unique observation provided in a comment here...the parasitical delete (looters) already have several "Gulches" to choose from.
Maybe we should call it: George Gorge, (as in sorass)...reminiscent of the "Crack of one's butt".

Melbourne, FL is a suprisingly nice place. In a different thread, I recently reposted a link to our plans for Atlantis:

https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

They already have that place. It is called China.

At present, it is more likely that the moochers and looters will have their equivalent of Galt’s Gulch. See Moocher’s Mesa or Comrade’s Canyon.

Where is Galt’s Gulch? Maybe Ms Rand could come up with a less magically hidden place. As it now stands, there is really no place to go. I suppose the richest of producers can buy an island or a small country. As for me, when the dollar is worthless and taxes take what’s left.......fade to black.....

Bingo!

I said that often during the Obama administration, and it is still true. +1

She already wrote this. It's like someone is using Atlas Shrugged as a playbook.