I finally finished "Atlas Shrugged", writer and philosopher Ayn Rand's magnum opus. It was a slog at times, through 1800 pages, but it was also a sobering read. Rand's family lost everything when the Bolsheviks came to power in their native Russia, and she ultimately fled, first to Europe, then to the US. Her writings reflect the dangers of the rise of socialism and the decline of logic and rational thought. "Atlas Shrugged" details both, in what was a fictional account of a gradual leftist brainwashing of most of the citizenry followed by a socialist takeover of US industry, completely collapsing the economy. The book was published in 1957. In 2023, I figure the US is about in the position in which the novel placed us roughly 600 pages into the book. It's disturbing.