I would say that giving people accurate but non politically correct nicknames is indeed a masterful political move. It cuts through the political bs of dishonest people. He hasn’t been wrong yet at zeroing in on the basic characteristics of people he has given nicknames to

Mc Cain milked his tortured pow story for 30 years of sympathy. War heroes save other soldiers, win battles and don’t get captured. Instead of being freed and live to fight again, he chooses torture and sympathy

The hatred of trump has little to with what he says it does. The hate the fact he is anti the crooked establishment and they fear his ability to get public support. The libs come after him no matter what he does. The facts are he is actually doing a better job than a lot of other presidents

I can accept that ayn rand is entitled to whatever feeling she had. I am sure it was difficult for her to deal with people who were not up to speed with her. I can understand that. What I saw happen never deterred me from the ideas she proffered.

I didn’t really see the personal reactions of either rand or branden. Actually I wasn’t terribly interested in that. I would have preferred then to continue to work together, but it wasn’t up to mrr

Thanks a Moai is an impressive subject to be sure.

Not a picture Dob...Paint it and sign it!
Just think...you'd be Universally Renown!

your fan, Carl

The goal is not to elect an intellectual. A leader in politics must at least be able to articulate his own views (which requires having them). A swaggering sales pitch sticking people with burning nick names is not rational. Even when it manages to nail something recognizable, Trump is unable to defend it or its significance when challenged. He quickly lost his 'prisoner of war' attack on McCain and retreated, further entrenching a false premise.

Even when he does something right, he ties it to loutish, indefensible rhetoric, making it harder for more reasonable people to defend it as he drags all of it down into his playground bully mentality. His enemies are recording and archiving all of it for use in campaign ads against him. With that kind of material they don't need to defend their own positions or discuss anyone else's, including the ones he does not have himself and never understood.

Intellectual understanding occurs at all levels of abstraction, not just 'heavy duty' philosophy.

Branden was dropped because of what he made of himself; and ignored from then on as no longer important to follow, let alone feud with. All the public battling came from the Branden side. The false 'woman scorned' line was perpetuated by Branden. It's too easy to accept as plausible by those who don't know what Ayn Rand was. Read James Valliant's The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics: The Case Against the Brandens (2005).

Yes

Sometimes she responded with anger to questioners in public forums because she was angry over a false idea for which she saw the too clearly. Occasionally she misunderstood the purpose of the questioner. Sometimes she was impatient with people she knew and didn't see how they could not understand some aspect of something that was so clear to her. Occasionally fear of a 'dressing down' was visible in the form of the person breaking out in a sweat -- or invisible in the form of people not engaging at all. I suspect it is why some recordings have not been released in their 'raw' form. but it was not across the board personal hostile behavior; she was generally sincerely motivated to help people understand and was very generous and benevolent with her time. Branden's smears did not "expose dramatic psychological difficulties"; they were personal attacks that went well beyond any objective description.

If you don't understand the importance of the right philosophic ideas, how to spread them, and how radically different they are from western intellectual tradition, and instead focus on emotions as a strategy, you won't see why they haven't caught on much more rapidly.

Interestingly enough, when i visited Jefferson museum in Charlottesville, I came away with an appreciation of how difficult it must have been to get people to agree to things like the constitution and declaration of independence. Just like today, there were people for it, and others against it. There was the establishment then too who didnt want to give up the goodies they got from the English. But the English were so greedy and controlling that it fed the fires of independence and eventually led to their defeat (fortunately).

But there are some glaring holes in the constitution that led to the excesses of today that are bringing the country down. Also, one can see in the years after its passage that the government of the USA was not so high and mightly when it came to stealing lands from the Indians who lived here, Marching them off to reservations, running the mormons out of town after town, and then the most monstrous of all things- the destruction of the south because it wanted OUT of the union.

I say, the constitution was nice, but not often did the founding fathers actually go along with it. They did what they needed to do to take over the whole land from sea to shining sea.

Plus now, there is really no sanctity of private property, and this country is more fascist than capitalist. You can own things, but you dont control them.

Of course they misrepresent her; they both lack objectivity and require a straw man to refute their enemies. We can only address better and more honest thinkers.

I would say you dont like Trump. You seem to find fault with him pretty much 100% of the time. He is a LOT better than the liberals floating around our country, and I think he deserves credit for that.

I think a lot of his "attitude" is designed to defend and defuse nastiness thrown at him by the left. He should disrespect them, they are the real intellectualized trash. So he calls them names which, by the way, pretty accurately describe them- Lyin Ted, Crooked Hillary, Low Energy Bush, etc. He even exposed McCain for using his self sacrificing POW status to get sympathy that he milked for his entire career. After all, we would rather soldiers that DONT get caught than ones who stay in prison after being permitted freedom by his captors.

To his credit, however he did it, he trounced on the crooked Hillary and Bill Clinton foundation that was putting our government up for sale to foreign countries for the price of a contribution. He showed the liberals for what they really are, and he went farther than anyone else to stick a dagger in the heart of political correctness.

He isnt the intellectual that you woudl want, but no intellectual would EVER be elected currently until the liberal establishment is weakened.

Ayn Rand was very gracious when interviewed on TV, I would have to say. Quite easy to understand.

I suppose maybe I was put off during her lectures at Ford Hall where she appeared distant and demanding. One got the feeling that emotions were to be discounted and ignored with her, while Branden was more understanding where people actually lived day to day.

He was never pompous in my presence, however.

It is an intellectual movement. I wish it could relate more to people than only to the intellectuals. I understand the need for intellectual understanding, but not everyone can catch on to the heavy duty philosophical principles.

Branden was indeed excommunicated It was as if he never existed, and I never really heard good reasons from Ayn Rand like you are saying. It did seem more like a woman scorned....

Ayn Rand demonstrated very hostile behavior if for any reason you did not immediately understand, or some aspect of what you said was not 100% right. I went to a few of her lectures and witnessed that firsthand. It made one afraid of opening ones mouth for fear of a dressing down from her. Sometimes people just dont understand right away and are not perfect. After all, her philosophy was indeed a bit new and not part of the mainstream most people grew up with.
I didnt personally see any pompousness in Branden, although I wasnt around him a lot. He hardly talked about Rand, but was pretty involved in his psychology practice and writings.

I almost went to work for him actually, but I am an engineer and didnt want to leave engineering.

As you can tell from my ramblings, I am pretty interested in why objectivism has not caught on like I thought it would, and what would reverse that. I suspect it has to do with the fact most people have more allegiance to their feelings from an early age, and never realize that their feelings are the result of their thinking. I dont want this culture to crash and burn, but the way its going I dont see anything but that happening.

Honesty is not a hallmark of Trump. It's not so much that he lies, but that he doesn't know the difference -- in his mentality of bombastic sales pitches.

The establishment frantically wants to destroy him because he openly rejects them -- with visible disrespect -- rather than pander to them. They are accustomed to the pandering from their victims and enemies. Open challenging of the establishment, both intellectually and in refusing to grant a moral sanction, is what we do need, but Trump is unable to articulate rational explanation on any level; it's all highly public name-calling and loutish taunting -- even against his own appointees who work for him. That doesn't explain anything to anyone who does not already realize they are angry, and doesn't take his own followers beyond that. His enemies don't know what he thinks either, but are capitalizing on his own loutish slogans and lack of ideas.

That is not who we are or should be. His lack of intellectual leadership on any level is a self-defeating false alternative. It's the frustrated, emotional 'follow the man on the white horse' mentality that Ayn Rand warned of and feared when she was advocating for the necessity of an intellectual response challenging the establishment intellectuals at all levels.

That better people did not surface to run in an election with two such sorry choices, and that an ideal candidate could not be elected now, is not a defense of the lesser evil of the two sorry choices.

Whatever you personally care about, Trump is not right "80% of the time", it does matter what the President of United States publicly says, and his "deal making" and stirring things up do not make him an individualist.

You did not observe what you wrote in your personal attacks. There is no excuse for it.

Branden's earlier articles and lectures, along with Ayn Rand's, were helpful to readers of her fiction and who had questions and sought more non-fiction explanation. But according to those who attended their NBI, Branden developed a reputation for being the worst in pompous talking down to people; He was later thrown out for much worse after Ayn Rand had tried to help him.

He didn't "expose dramatic psychological difficulties" after the break, he ruthlessly smeared her in a sustained personal attack while exploiting his former association. He spent the rest of his life doing that whether or not he included it at a lecture appearance at Stanford (and other such appearances) in the period shortly after the break. It took a few years, essentially until after she died, before he turned his obsession into a career.

Ayn Rand was very intent on people understanding when she spoke with them. She could sometimes be personally "difficult", as Leonard Peikoff called it, but she was focused on ideas, not personal hostility. The "deviance" she did not tolerate was people acting as if they understood and agreed, serving to keep an association going, only for her to find out later they did not.

Branden had a place before he self-destructed; not after. Those interested can still read and benefit from what he produced with Ayn Rand's agreement and encouragement, but that's it. His writing took a dramatic plunge after the break and he lost most of his following for good reason in both his work and his obsessive drive to undermine Ayn Rand both personally and in misrepresenting what she thought.

This has nothing to do with their ill-fated affair, they did not lie about it -- personal privacy from the public is not lying, and her husband did not "count for zero" . The affair was over long before Branden was thrown out for persistent dishonesty and irresponsibility across the full range of his behavior. Your posts have been one big personal smear. None of it justifies spreading malicious gossip incongruously mixed with the outrageously false assertion that Ayn Rand "had nothing to do with the spread of Objectivism" beyond an "inspirational book" and mere "icon". Ayn Rand invested an enormous effort in speaking and publishing both before and after Branden. An intellectual movement is the spread of and application of ideas; organizations of different kinds are one aspect of how a movement works; physical "recruitment" is a much smaller part.

Doesn't matter much, just to point out that no matter how perfect a premise is, there will always be someone who will misinterpret it.

Thanks T2 you merely confirmed my own observations.

The movement did not stop. It is an intellectual movement, not groupies. Branden was not "excommunicated" with the "sex slave" smear; he was thrown out for his dishonesty and irresponsibility.

People could and did talk to Ayn Rand. They lined up out into the hallways every year after Ford Hall. She was very gracious and wanted people to understand. Branden had been known for his pompous attitude.

And yet, her many critics misinterpreted her all over the place. Most people are not rational on the same level as Rand, or for that matter members of this forum.

Getting a movement going is more than being an icon. It takes work, and recruitment and myriads of publication distribution and personal appearances.
Let's boil away the relationships. Rand had a weekly sexual encounter with Branden whom she met as a youngster fresh out of high school.Like most of us, he adored her, as the brilliant writer who moved our minds and yes, our emotions. If she asked him to hang upside down from a flag pole he might have done it.I met him through my psychologist who was part of a small enclave of shrinks who were all "Randoids." Let's face it, she was no beauty. A somewhat dowdy lady with a brain that could melt ice at 50 feet.While I've read several bios of AR, I know what I witnessed and I can tell you that these were not deities but just people, with exceptional intellects.Look more closely at the Rand Branden affair. They kept their relationship a secret except to the inner circle. In that sense, weren't they lying to her followers? She was only perturbed about that when it looked as if he was lying to her. He on the other hand was filled with trepidation about her finding that a 3rd female was involved with him. His wife, a close friend, counted for zero as did her own husband. But none of this had changed the truth of a single thing she wrote.There's more but..... No more from me.

I would have to say that this is THEIR problem really. We have so little power to affect things more than may 4 years into the future. We gave them 4 years of a slowdown in the march of socialism, but thats about all we can do. 2020 will bring in democratic socialism and the completion of the destruction of medical care in the USA