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It was 1937, in Rome, at a get-together for foreign correspondents. (I was there for another reason, but I can't go into it.) Mussolini was a preposterous clown. It always amazed me that the Ities, who normally had so much style, were able to tolerate him. I guess people go crazy when unemployment is high enough.
Anyway, let me clear some things up about that Hitler/Ayn Rand nonsense down below. I met Hitler twice, once at the Olympic Games in '36, and then again a week after tea with Mussolini. He was one of the most tedious little fucks I've ever had to listen to; probably never would have gone anywhere if not for Goebbels (nasty one, that fella -- kind of a cross between Jimmy Carville and Hannibal Lecter -- nothing against Jimmy; he's all confused but he means well enough). Anyway, he was a pretty obvious pervert too. I'll bet he had a whole toy store up his ass when he died -- whenever that really was.
But I'm off my point here. What I really want to say is this: Hitler didn't BELIEVE IN anything in the way we usually mean that. He was stuck in making the world pay for not loving him, and he indulged any fantasy that fit in with his unconscious needs. He wasn't really a thinker. Ayn Rand, on the other hand . . . Well, I always felt sorry for her. We bumped into each other from time to time over the years, and she just didn't know how to get along with people. Always took offense, even when none was intended, and gave offense quite a bit too. Really just wanted to drive everyone away from her so she could be alone and miserable I think. I was one of the only people who could make her laugh -- a strange dog-like sound, really.
Anyway, she was a thinker. She saw that power corrupts, and she understood the hypocrisy of those who posed as saviors of the people to further their own ends. Her problem was that she got carried away with her vision -- injected it into everything, so that even the most banal aspects of life became aspects of some great Manichaean struggle. That's why she was so obsessed with the purity of her vision -- she honestly believed that enemies were infiltrating her movement and trying to corrupt it from within.
By the way, I didn't like her writing that much, but I remember once in India I ran into John Lennon, who gave me an autographed copy of "Atlas Shrugged." Turns out the corners of the pages were dipped in LSD. "This'll open your eyes, Arby," he said with a laugh. The arrogant pissant! I taught Richard Alpert everything he knows. Lennon was all right, though . . . I had to use the book to start a fire in Nepal, but that's another story.
Oh damn! It's time for my enema. Got to run. Glad I had a chance to set you whippersnappers straight, though.
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