Real life is imitating Ayn Rand's great novel Atlas Shrugged in many ways. More and more people have observed this and the sales of her novel have shot up tremendously in the last year or more. But did you know that among the imitations of real life is a character using the name Cuffy Meigs on a blog named Perfunction? He has a special flare for misspellings and calling the People teabaggers.
In Atlas Shrugged, Cuffy Meigs is a particularly crude and nasty guy, who dresses in a military uniform and carries a pistol. He is a bully who is made Director of Unification for the Railroads, so that unhealthy railroads can suck the life's blood out of the last of the healthier railroads. He eventually seizes the weapon of Project X while it is in trial and incompetently manages to destroy a large area of the United States, including the last railroad bridge over the Mississippi River. He kills himself, his men, and Dr. Stadler in the process.
I have no idea whether the Cuffy Meigs of Perfunction is using his real name or whether he aspires to be like the Cuffy Meigs of Atlas Shrugged.
Postscript: See the comment of Cuffy Meigs below. It turns out he is actually rather a libertarian/conservative commentator with an inclination toward sarcasm, irony, and the occasionally slightly twisted way of expressing himself. He sure managed to mislead me in the posting I had initially read. Beware that since I am not given to sarcasm and irony, it can take me awhile to understand that that is what is going on in some cases. Perhaps here I was especially set up by the use of an awful name like Cuffy Meigs to hide one's identity behind. It may be irony, but it is an irony I cannot conceive of using myself.
Individual freedom, for 400 years, has proven far better than a few thousand years of tyranny, the rule of the few over the many. We have only to look at the Federal Government as an inept and corrupt center of organized crime to see how bad it will be to return to the Old World way. A new book, SAVE PEBBLE DROPPERS & PROSPERITY describes the libertarian ways that built America, on claysamerica.com.
ReplyDeleteClay Barham defends individualism, limited government, and the creative, independent mind. He apparently admires Ayn Rand and yet believes in Christianity. I have not delved very far yet into his beliefs and arguments, but at first glance, he appears to have worked seriously to develop them. So, though his comment could be viewed as a sort of ad, ideas are important and the defenders of individual rights are few enough that they deserve some support and attention.
ReplyDeleteHello, this is Cuffy Meigs of Perfunction (perfunction.typepad.com).
ReplyDeleteArriving at your post from an egotisical self-googling, I see you are not very familiar with my writings, which are avowedly libertarian/conservative.
I have a tendency to throw insults like "teabagger" back in the faces of liberals.
As for why I chose Cuffy Meigs as my alias, I simply chose the most repugnant antithesis character to myself from a book I enjoy. It's called irony.
Should you wish to discuss this more feel free to contact me at cuffy dot meigs at gmail dot com.
This Perfunction blog guy is right that I had not read much of his blog. Indeed, he does seem to be of the libertarian/conservative persuasion now that I have read more.
ReplyDeleteCall it irony or not, I would never sully my soul and hide my identity behind a name such as Cuffy Meigs. I am proud to be the man I made myself and the man I made is named Charles R. Anderson, not John Galt and not Cuffy Meigs.
As I have read more of his posts, I have found it a bit hard for a straightforward guy like myself to know when he is serious and when he is sarcastic or ironical or simply strange. Of course, his approach makes it difficult to know whether he is wrong, right, or simply twisted on some subjects. But, he is mostly libertarian/conservative as he says and I had the wrong impression based on the more limited reading I had done initially.
Mr. Anderson,
ReplyDeleteIf you're having a hard time putting your finger on Mr. Meigs' worldview...
Well, let's just say that you need to get out more.
Who is Mr. Meigs? Cuffy Meigs is no gentleman, at least not in the original, so why honor him with a Mr?
ReplyDeleteThe man using the name Cuffy Meigs on the Internet might be OK, but he is Mr. SomeoneElse.
Frankly, I am not obliged to understand how everyone else's mind works. We are all highly individuated and oftentimes I encounter others who simply have different ways of looking at things which may work well for them, but may not consistently do so for me. This is one of the most fundamental reasons why we need maximal and equal individual rights.