Harry reached for his machine gun and watched the Cubans' heads explode. He took a drink. A Cuban took a dying breath and blew a hole the size of a fist in Harry's stomach. "One man alone got no fuckin' chance," he groaned.
- <span style="font-style:italic;">To Have and Have Not</span> Hemingway
It is most entertaining how the Palindrome continues to pose as the Lone Ranger of Alaska while continuing her day job as just another welfare mom. Ah, but this is the biggest handout hawk of any state, which owes its existence to government gimmes and oil royalties. Yet does she still pretend to refuse all aid, for she is a Rugged Individual. So are they all, all Rugged Indivduals, owing their ascension to their own talent and competence and foresight in having family, friends, cronies, connections to boost them above their natural state like those helium balloons of the Macy's parade.
No man is an island, however, nor woman neither, and each Lone Ranger must have his Tonto. Each of us is a part of the continent, a cog in the wheel, a mote in the metaphor. For who among us depends not in general favor to advance his sad meagre stake in the light of common day? The writer must have readers,the diva a listener, the star an audience, the butcher a customer, the salesman or the plumber one who will watch over them, see they are not cast away all alone on a dangerous sea.
The law of the jungle was first presented by Herbert Spencer, in the middle of the nineteenth century, who held forth for strength and endurance and allowing them as were able to flourish and the rest to fall as flotsam, if that's what flotsam does.
<span style="font-style:italic;">The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.-</span> Herbert Spencer
Or at least way more banks, bankers and hedge fund managers than a sane world could ever need.
Herbert Spencer was a very sickly sort who needed assistance to rise up out of bed, yet was he a champion of the superman. (It was grotesquely predicted sixty years before the twentieth century catastrophe that Germany would be most receptive to his message.) Social Darwinism, it was called, and Spencer coined the term. He was the most celebrated Brit to visit America until the Beatles, yet he disappointed. At his last public appearance in the US, the lords of industry were poised to hear a blessing of their collective cold-hearted infliction of mass misery for personal gain - and Spencer advised them to have more fun in life, to take some time off now and then. He sort of waned in public acclaim from that point and you probably never heard of him.
Yet was America a nation of True Believers in Altruism as Assinine Afliction, and one of Spencer's spirited acolytes was William Graham Sumner, who agreed the mighty must by nature rise while the weak should fail and false hopes for deliverance only sapped the vigor of the Visigoths. Harsh but fair are the ways of nature, he proclaimed, and he carried in his course at Yale a text by Spencer. Which offended the chancellor, because Spencer did not honor god, and those who do are very sensitive on that score, much as children who are told at school there is no Santa Claus. So Sumner was challenged on his unsacred text, and you know from Ayn Rand (who cribbed the Social Darwin syllabus and somehow came away with screen credit, which is an advantage of working in Hollywood) what happens next whenever any Sampson be beset by Phillistines. You remember Gary Cooper as the stalwart architect in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Fountainhead</span> who would not allow his solitary creationism to be challanged so took his toys and went off to work in the quarry rather than be ruled by commoners. Stick to your guns, that's the way with any Lone Ranger ... except ...
In the real world, our hero capitulated. Okay, said Sumner, and he agreed to dump the Spencer text. Yet conflict with the spirit world of the chancellor continued, so that Sumner was forced into exile from Yale. Never fear for fulsome flotsam, though, for he spent his last days living off the charity of friends.
But that don't matter. What's important is the words, and here are some words, very powerful, very apt, and if you honor and obey and live up to them, you're probably a Repugnant, or some other brand of sociopath.
"The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man." - The Forgotten Man, essay by Sumner