Best Explanation Ever!

For the term “Galtian Overlords”-which I was asked to define today. Now I would assume that anyone who has been around the last few years would understand the reference, but considering the state of decay of America’s educational system and our news outlets ( with a few great exceptions) may be not.

So here is a the term well defined for you:

The letter:

Help — what does “Galtian Overlords” mean? I mean, I get who you’re talking about, but what is the reference to?

Thanks,

Rosalind

Our response (before we’d had any coffee, mind you):

Dear Rosalind,

In the children’s novel, Atlas Shrugged, there is a running refrain among the characters that goes like this:

“Who is John Galt?”

John Galt is, it goes without saying, a superhuman business genius extraordinaire. He also lacks any sense of civic duty, being a man-child narcissist of the first order. Anyway, long story short, ever since Barack Obama was elected president, there have been empty threats from various right-wingers and libertarians — people who think rather too highly of themselves — about “Going Galt.” To wit, dropping out of society and keeping the spoils of their hard-earned labor all to themselves. Many of these people don’t seem to realize that the rest of the country doesn’t give a fuck about their empty threats, and yet the threats have continued. “I’m going Galt, and I’m taking away my productivity, and let’s see if society can survive without me, harrumph!” To which America replies with a shrug. “Go ahead,” says America, “see if I give a flying fuck about you selfish assholes.”

So that takes care of the “Galtian” part. “Overlords” are overlords. “Our Galtian overlords” is, then, something of a joke. We make fun of selfish rich people with visions of grandeur, because we know full well that Ayn Rand and her characters are mostly idolized by disaffected high school students, not anybody who matters (because, you know, most people grow up, their acne clears, and they free themselves from their solipsistic bubbles). That said, there are indeed rich man-children who consider Rand to be a good writer and a deep thinker. Some of them have gotten press attention. Last summer, in the wake of the passage of Obamacare and at the height of the silliness, many outraged fellow citizens were warning that they might “Go Galt,” and that America would be doomed were they to do so. (These people did not, apparently, realize that with an unemployment rate of 10%, there would be plenty of qualified candidates to fill their positions once they’d left — again, the trouble with narcissism.)

“Our Gatian overlords,” then, are the acolytes of Ayn Rand, whose lack of self-awareness and inflated sense of self-importance (thinking that if they alone don’t pay taxes, America is screwed, e.g.) are symptoms of a larger cultural decay and a shirking of civic responsibility. They are the kids on the playground who always hogged the kickball — and moreover they are the kids who went running to the teacher if somebody else deigned to hog it, for even just a moment, because “THAT’S NOT FAIR, I’M BETTER THAN YOU!!!”

They are a scourge. They must be defeated.

All the best,

Tom O’Hare, editor