On this Good Friday—Passover—Easter weekend observance, I present an email that has just arrived. It is from the person veteran readers will recall as "the Atlas Shrugged Guy." Its subject line was "So..." and it read in full:
Still worshiping at the alter of socialism?
Here is why I find this fascinating.
* * *
Back during the 2012 Obama-Romney re-election battle, a reader (whose real name, location, and business details I have known from the start) sent in a series of increasingly impassioned "we're about to lose our country!" messages. A sample from just before election day:
Subject: What happens if Obama wins?
I will tell you what happens, I close my business of 10 years and lay off my employees. I am done. Thats what happens. You might consider me one of those know nothings but I am highly educated, run a high technology company with several very high paying positions and am very much steeped in US History and am a stalwart in the notion of individual liberty and self reliance. Freedom and liberty built this nation, not parasites like Obama and ilk. Obama has never produce anything in his life. Nothing, zero. Yet he is qualified to lead? Really? I have worked for leaders and he is no leader.
He ended up sending many, many messages, including his responses to criticisms from other readers. I have a compendium and chronology in this post; the full Atlas Shrugged Guy archives are here. Some historian, at some point, could have a Hofstader-style field day with this material.
As the months have gone on and most economic indicators have improved, I've sometimes wondered what happened to this guy.
Obviously there is more to national life than economic indicators. And obviously too a case can be made against Obama's record from a variety of perspectives, even though (as I argued before his reelection run) I think he's avoided or corrected a far larger number of mistakes than he has made.