I know, you hate Atlas... I don't hate it. It starts really well and stays that way until that appalling speech that goes on and on and on and on... a speech of that duration is more normally associated with a 3rd-world despot whose subjects have no choice but to listen. That speech announces that Atlas didn't shrug, he sulked, nursed a grudge and in the end was displaying the same self-centered characteristics as those he abhored. Maybe that's a useful message in itself.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
