I Think It's Time to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I am very annoyed with the politicians in this novel. I found myself frustrated with them when reading Atlas Shrugged just because I cannot wrap my head around their thought processes and their ideals. I don't understand Jim’s reasoning, which seems to be almost everyone’s, that being happy doing something you love is wrong and he sees that his sister is that way and he despises it. He wants to be portrayed as someone who is noble and altruistic but I do not think he or any of the other politicians are because I find it completely against their nature to be either of those descriptions.

It is my opinion that these men are following a system that simply does not work, and I believe that this is what Rand is trying to demonstrate to us. These socialist ideals of making everyone and everything equal simply does not work, and it has been proven with the Anti-Dog-Eat Dog and Equal Opportunity Bill since both did not help the economy but instead made it worse. These annoying politicians such as Wesley Mouch, Dr. Floyd Ferris, Jim Taggart and others, create one law after another, and each one is simply undermining the current economic state of the country causing it to spiral downward and they see that but they never entertain the idea that the laws are the source of the problem. On the contrary their only response is to make another absurd act; Directive 10-289. This act is not only absurd but entirely hypocritically. It claims that inventors will be compelled to “voluntarily” give up their patents, which is not the case for Rearden who is blackmailed into signing the rights to Rearden Metal away to the government in order to protect Dagny’s reputation. Even more absurd than that to me is the fact that the Wet Nurse is the ONLY character out of the looters and politicians that faces reality and realizes that everything that is being done is not helping the economy at all.