When I saw a picture of Elon Musk dip-skipping in the Oval Office I immediately thought of Atlas Shrugged.

Ayn Rand’s 1,168 page dystopian novel explores the consequences of a society where individual achievement is stifled by collectivism and government overreach. Dagny Taggart tries to keep her family’s railroad running while investigating the disappearance of John Galt’s and other “makers” as society collapses around her, victim of the “looters and the takers”. Galt and his fellow strikers have from a world that tries to take the fruits of their labor without just compensation. The book ends with John Galt making the sign of the dollar and promising to return to society and rebuild it in his image.

I loved this book when I first read it in my twenties (I also loved its prequel, The Fountainhead. I mean, what twenty-something wouldn’t see themselves in a story about an Übermensch imposing their will on the world, overcoming all obstacles to triumph in the last chapter.

Looking back at it now forty years later I see the flaws. An Atlas Shrugged sequel would have John Galt, like Elon Musk and his group of techno-fascists, co-opt the looters-in-power, the Epsilon-Minus Semi-Morons, so he (they) can enrich themselves and impose their twisted ideas on society, democracy be damned.

Elon Musk disgusts me more than Donald Trump.