Suppose your ship at sea sinks, and in the effort to stay alive, you latch onto the nearest buoyant object, in this case a floating door, as your life raft. A door sucks as a raft, but it beats the alternative of drowning. And in the absence of a proper boat, you might come to rationalize the door as a well constructed life raft which meets all your needs for survival.
Rand's philosophy has characteristics of the floating door in my model. Many people feel an organic revulsion against the world view of progressivism which threatens to drown them, as well they should. But in the absence of a proper ship, a number of such individuals have grabbed onto Rand's philosophy as a makeshift to maintain themselves in a viable condition.
In other words, when you have to choose between, on the one hand, the abyss of abnegation offered by progressivism, and on the other hand, a weak philosophy created by Ayn Rand which offers self-respect and values your personal fulfillment - well, to many people Rand's weak philosophy looks like a better deal.
Beneath Rand's nuttiness, I think she displayed fundamentally healthy instincts. People tend to feel spiritually replenished by association with competence, virtue and success (the constituency of conservatives); and spiritually depleted by exposure to incompetence, immorality and failure (the constituency of progressives). Human nature determines this polarization, not ideology. You see this reality in even the most degraded underclass communities from their enthusiasm for commercial sports. Sports celebrate the conservative values of competition, a meritocracy of ability, and differential financial rewards based on performance. Fans from the underclass would not respect a sport which tries to enforce the progressive world view on its outcomes, even when progressives try to do the same to them through the political process.
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