We are getting close now, I can almost taste it. After this chapter, there are approximately 40 pages and two chapters remaining. I have to say, I didn’t anticipate completely what happens in this chapter and I am still noodling how this is going to end. So let’s get into it.

This is the chapter that follows the 60 page statement by John Galt. Immediately, the government representatives that were hijacked are stunned. The entire country is in a tailspin, of course and government continues to put up a false front. This is where the plan to coopt John Galt starts to happen.

Dabny looks up Galt’s address despite being warned not to. Her finding him draws the government to him as well. They capture John Galt and he is then held in an attempt to give the appearance that he has joined sides with the status quo.

The entire book has been this chess match of proxy conflicts between the group saying they represent ‘the people’ and the group of people that say that they represent ‘the individual’. In this chapter, we have direct interaction between the two groups. Surprisingly, Galt gets captured and is held prisoner in the attempt to win him over to the side of the people.

I suppose, this is where the rubber meets the road in this chapter. It is sometimes a good strategy to emulate what is successful for your own purposes. For instance, I have heard the advice that if something is working in a particular genre, then that means that there is a market and the possibility for it to work for you. In more plain language, I will use an example.

In today’s day and age, there is a kind of career as what is called ‘an influencer’. The nearest way I can figure is that people get money for being a celebrity of sorts. It is enough money to be a full time job and sometimes significant amount of money. So, because that is a career, that means that there is room for others to do the same thing even in the same space. The same can be said for contractors or widget makers too.

What isn’t said or known is the formula on how to make it actually work. Certainly, there are attributes like appearance, use of popular platforms, consistency of interaction but there are also intangibles; one of them that I would call luck. My point with all of that is that emulating success is a way to obtain it. I think we have quite the opposite in Atlas Shrugged.

One of the characteristics of obtaining success is authenticity. Politicians are in a way influencers as well. Recently, a former pope just died. During his time at the head of the Catholic church, he was seen as a traditionalist or conservative. This direction of the church was really seen as a shift from the populist direction of his predecessor.

I am not a Catholic, but a Christian so I am adjacent. There is no doubt that the Pope is an important figure to people in that religion. My sense is that even though there was strife over policy, there was no doubt that he was a man of faith and genuine in his beliefs. What I am trying to say is that whether we agree with the direction I don’t think that we can disagree on the intent.

That is the thing that any organization which tries to coopt a movement or attach itself to a rising star could possibly make it work. Of course Atlas Shrugged was not going to work because the government really didn’t believe in the same things as John Galt. They wanted to use his popularity and be seen as associated with him rather than embrace his beliefs. The reason that I say this is because they truly don’t need Galt to fix the problem, they need to change their beliefs and therefore the policies.

I sometimes think that a parliamentary style government would be better than our government. But, then I think that Parliaments are so much more subject to opinion with the ‘no confidence’ card that can be played that I am left with no good government options. You might think that makes a government more responsive to the people but my observation is that it is an entity that is more manic.

End Your Programming Routine: Just like Lord of the Rings and a score of other fiction works, you cannot control the power if you are not worthy. Simply attaching your name to a rising star doesn’t work without being genuine with your convictions. Even at the point of a gun, John Galt refused to cooperate. Because after all, are you going to murder someone on a national broadcast? Before completely chancing it, know your environment and risks. If you stand for your convictions, you can’t be swayed, even by force.