Shelby Steele Channels Atlas Shrugged
"Inversion, when vice becomes virtue, manifests itself when mobs demonstrate their innocence with spray paint, ropes and gasoline to deface and destroy monuments. Ironically, many of the statues being desecrated actually glorify Democrats. So it makes sense that when reason and reality are abandoned, this behavior is hailed by partisan Democrats in media and Washington.
Malevolent life is good when a mob is confused with legitimate protest. Armed with pedestrian slogans and bricks, they aspire to show the world their clean hands and individuality.
However, lacking wealth doesn’t matter when need is virtue, independence and ability are punished, and the coin of the realm is envy and guilt. This is where Steele identifies the looters house of cards."
Malevolent life is good when a mob is confused with legitimate protest. Armed with pedestrian slogans and bricks, they aspire to show the world their clean hands and individuality.
However, lacking wealth doesn’t matter when need is virtue, independence and ability are punished, and the coin of the realm is envy and guilt. This is where Steele identifies the looters house of cards."
a) COVID-19 virus-related demands that if you don't socially distance, wear facemasks, and keep your private business closed, then you are violating "We are all in this together.", and
b) expectations that those of certain races or lack of career achievements (I am putting this nicely.) should be considered more noble than store owners.
Instinctively, President Trump rejects the unearned guilt and wants to embrace capitalism, but because he lacks the appropriate Objectivist philosophical underpinning, his rallying cry lacks the moral superiority that it could have. The term "moral superiority" has been successfully vilified so thoroughly by the moral relativist crowd that the suggestion of the moral superiority that Objectivism could and should have has never achieved more widespread acceptance.