system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
It just hit me how much people hate Ayn Rand. If you have strong feelings or a keen understanding of this trend, what's your opinion?

Back in high school a teacher of mine led me through a string of books from 1984 to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to Brave New World to Animal Farm to Anthem. Once I got that first taste of Rand I dove in head first, and I love her reasoning and style. I love her characters. 

I have seen a few jokes over the years and have faced some grilling, but nothing I couldn't bat down. This is rural Texas and there isn't a lot of real deep philosophical study. As I'm getting more into broader philosophy and trying to define and challenge my views, I'm finding a lot of people refer to her in passing with some dismissive and angry attacks, but so far I haven't seen the reasoning.
gpt
It's important to understand that her philosophy, Objectivism, was heavily co-opted by groups of rich people who wanted to feel good about themselves for being evil assholes.  Like many political philosophers (think Marx), her followers have distorted her message to justify some pretty awful things.  Much of the backlash is due to this fact.

It's also true that her books tend to separate people very clearly into a small group of super-human 'ubermensch' types, who do all the work and provide all the creativity and drive of their entire society, and the large mass of stupid, incompetent, greedy, evil 'leeches' which represent everyone else.  This is generally considered a pretty distorted, and somewhat repugnant, view of human nature, and the fact that this view is part of the rationalization for her larger philosophy brings that philosophy into question.

EDIT: The term she uses is 'looters', not 'leeches'.