Who Is John Galt?

John Galt started out as a fictional character around whom the plot coalesced in the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. John Galt was an inventor and scientist who, when confronted with the overt intellectual tyranny of collectivism in his place of employment decides to not only quit on principle, but to drop out of society almost entirely. It was a classic textbook (pardon the pun) case of psychological reactance, which states that human beings will, when presented with conditions that limit or take away their freedom, take roughly equal and opposite measures to regain the amount of freedom they believe they have lost. John Galt was a hardened and adamant individualist, whose literary characterization by Ayn Rand could be considered a reaction against the spreading movement of progressive socialism in the US. The book itself is NOT a Sunday tea time read; fans of the written word can at times feel that Ms. Rand gave Nathaniel Hawthorne a run for his money in the verbosity department, but sometimes to make a new ideological omelette you gotta break a few eggs of easily digestible reading.

That I was exposed to Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead before it during my college years probably innoculated me to a certain extent against the insidious global-statism promoted as accepted thought in academe. My professors publicly mocked the 'New World Order' in class but quietly covered up for the criminals after hours. I was to learn roughly 2 decades later that supposedly 'liberal' academics were aware of the Bush family's Nazi money-laundering activities during World War II but in fact SAT on that information...information that would have prevented that brood of vipers and thieves from getting elected as town dog catcher, much less allow 2 presidents to slither in through their ranks. It wasn't until I was firmly esconced among the 'black copter crowd' that I would understand that left and right were merely cheeks around the same fascist asshole. An asshole that strangles intelligence, innovation and ingenuity throughout all walks of life - the academic, the corporate, the political and the personal. It is THIS vampiric system from which I seek to free myself. And from which to free my brethren. 'Unplug them from the Matrix,' as it were.

John Galt also struggles against a similarly interlocking global system of top-down collectivism and rabid anti-humanity. He does so by going on strike, by withholding his intellectual creations from an unappreciative and undeserving social hierarchy. He took his toys and found another sandbox - one that he selected in a location difficult to get to, but rich in natural resources. This was the famous 'Galt's Gulch' in the novel, and it's the namesake of this blog. Decades before terms like 'strategic relocation' became a part of the underground lexicon, Ms. Rand was clueing in those with half a brain to reason about the wisdom of the idea. It was a voluntarily founded, anarco-capitalist town where former industry tycoons (unlike the pasty-white, mealy-mouthed, trust-fund promoted CEO vermin that infest our boardrooms today) and skilled workers of ability and ambition could ply their trades unmolested by a predatory looter entity known as the collectivist state. Everything was downsized with the enterprises within that enclave, but unlike the burgeoning Keynesian 'money multiplier' effect of the system they fled from, Galt's Gulch signified a reset against the tyranny of super-sized collective living.

It is my own personal suspicion that Ayn Rand liberally borrowed from the personage of Nikola Tesla to flesh out the character of John Galt. At least in regards to the intellectual brilliance AND vocations of choice for the character. John Galt invented a motor that drew electricity from the ambient environment - a 'free energy' system. Nikola Tesla was often credited with developing similar technologies. Where Galt and Tesla differed is in their approach, and ultimately in the manner of their ends. Tesla wanted to share his free energy creations with the world to elevate mankind; this was NOT in the interests of the insipid 'robber baron' anti-capitalist swine who dominated the political and business landscape of his day. They shut him out, minimized his achievements, prevented him from securing what he needed to continue his research, and he died alone and poor after playing an inestimable role in kick-starting the modern era. John Galt, however, took an opposite approach, and in retrospect the approach he took in Atlas Shrugged makes sense in a 'Why didn't Tesla do it like this' kind of way.

When John Galt quits his day job as a research and development scientist for a manufacturing company, it's during a company meeting where the new 'hierarchy' uses the sloganeering of collectivism to erase all incentives for excellence in the workplace. Everyone's feelings are to be taken into account but nobody's achievements are to be credited or rewarded. Essentially the workers were all ants now, to be 'nurtured and guided' by the newly 'enlightened' management. Where have we heard that before? Pretty much at every stinking job that I've worked at EVER, in one way, shape or form. Group-thinking, 'infallible' management fucktards are going to be the DEATH of this country. But I digress. John Galt, a man trained in the scientific method as well as logic and reason saw this incalculable clusterfuck coming down the pike and did what anyone with a modicum of common sense would do - he got the fuck outta there! On his way out he tells the preening managerial shitbags of his now former employer "I am going to stop you!" Since nobody dares talk to the management gods like that an infamous question arose from this incident, namely "Who is John Galt?"

John Galt REALLY sticks it to the poobahs when he takes his pre-Timothy Leary dropout roadshow to the people. He convinces the movers and the shakers one-by-one that there is no way to fix the terminally cancerous social order from within, and that it needs to collapse from its own internal inconsistencies before the people can be free again. Sort of like what happened with the collapse of the Soviet empire, only with a complete institutional enema, not just a name change from the communist party to the Russian mob. But again, I digress. These 'men of the mind' all resettled in Galt's Gulch, leaving their fortunes and estates behind for the government vultures to pillage while they opted to start fresh, making an honest, downsized living as free individuals. HOPELESSLY TARDY SPOILER ALERT - Eventually the great ponzi schemes of the state and its corporate collaborator minions fall apart and society utterly collapses. THEN the 'men of the mind' come out from Galt's Gulch and into a world that finally might appreciate what they have to offer. Who is John Galt? I AM John Galt. I AM Spartacus. YOU are John Galt. YOU are Spartacus - if you choose to be. Our criminal ruling aristocracy uses the prison societies of 1984 and Brave New World as a roadmap for the future. I reject that roadmap, and choose the path to Galt's Gulch instead...now who's with me?

"I swear by my life and my love of it, that I shall never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."   -John Galt