I'm as MAD AS HELL and I'm NOT going to take this ANYMORE!!!
Fri Jan 11, 2008 at 08:30:57 AM PDT
I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be.
Sound familiar? Sound like life as we know it? Well, it's not. It's from the brilliant 1976 movie Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet.
But the more I look at our country, our world, today, the more I realize that this movie was not only right, but that nothing has changed since 1976, it's only gotten worse. And I don't know about you but I've seen enough to know I've had enough. I'm not in the mood to play nice...I AM AS MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!!!
And I want you to get mad too!
Seriously. I just don't understand how thing have suddenly changed over the last few weeks. I remember 2006, when we voted, turning out in such numbers, that we were able to bring back a slim Democratic majority. We felt a sense of pride in our "mission accomplished." Then what happened? The Dems we put in power became weak-kneed at the thought of oversight. They parsed and spun, taking impeachment off the table before the ballots had even grown cold. Even with a Bush 30% approval, they felt as though all things were equal, let's not anger good King George.
WTF?
Suddenly we have to make nice with the very people who had worked, and continue to work, to destroy everything that makes this country great? More war? Sure! let's go to Iran. Health Care? Screw you, we're not giving you no stinkin' health care! Oh, and by the way, we're selling off New Orleans to the highest bidder. Then we'll fix the levees. But geez, we don't want poor people there.
As for spying on you, we're still going to do it. And we're still going to fire lawyers, defy the courts, put cronies in jobs they have no business doing. And hey, Ruppert? You want to add to your media empire? go right ahead.
No, we said! WE WERE MAD!!! People here at Kos, on the radio, and elsewhere threw up their hands and accused the Dems of having no spine. We wanted them to grow a set, get mad and take the power back for the people. We were MAD! We wanted, nay, demanded change!
But...
We know things are bad - worse than bad. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my [microwave] and my [High Def] TV and my [Playstation] and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and [al Queda] and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
Yeah!
You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' I want all of you to yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'
But then things changed. We got the primary season going and suddenly came this guy who said, no, don't be mad...have hope. Shiny, happy hope. Together we can hope to change things. Together we can hope the insurance companies will play nice when we ask them to help us. Together we can hope to end the war. Together we can hope for a better world. And the people loved hearing his happy message. They didn't care that he wanted to make nice with the very people out to drown our country in the bathtub.
Well I understand all about hope. I've seen enough elections to have hope for a better world. I saw one president, a guy who brought a whole lot of hope, gunned down too young. Then after him I saw Martin Luther King bring hope to his people, and hope that we could all have a better world. They took him too, as well as Bobby Kennedy, another man who brought us hope. The government told us three lone gunmen killed them. But some think it was deeper than that. For as much as we want to believe it, the world isn't run how we think it is run...
It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality of life on this planet. THAT is the natural order of things today. THAT is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And YOU WILL ATONE. Am I getting through to you? You howl about America, and democracy. There is no America; there is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
Sure, it's just a movie. But it's also true. You think this nation is still "Of, by and for The people of the United States of America?" The corporations of today are not much different from the corporations of 1976 (or 1776) - they've changed names a few times, maybe, but the only thing that has really changed is that they have gotten bigger. And they've worked the system so that they don't have to pay taxes or provide services, they simply have to rake in the money. You think Cigna really wants to provide health care? Nope. They just want to make money. You think Blackwater cares about America, peace, and freedom? Nope. It's all in the money. Countries and borders and people don't mean a damn.
I want a candidate who understands this. John Edwards understands this. (Yes, people, it's another John Edwards diary. Deal with it.) And no matter how much he tries to help us understand this, people flock to Obama, who smiles and gives us hope, who tells us what we want to hear. Who tells us that we can all get along. Who tells us that we need to work together and stop the bickering.
But I ask myself. WHO STARTED THE BICKERING IN THE FIRST PLACE? It wasn't my side, the "liberal agenda" who called my fellow Americans traitors because we were against warrentless spying on Americans, and them begged for immunity. It wasn't liberals who opened our government coffers and started handing out cash like it was monopoly money. It wasn't Democrats who put "Heckofajob Brownie" in charge of FEMA, and left the good people of New Orleans to drown and die so they could sell off their land to the highest bidder. It wasn't the left who cheered an immoral war based on lies. It wasn't the left who cancelled habeus corpus and posse comititus. It wasn't the left who worked with an evil man named Jack Abramoff who worked with Tom Delay to enslave people in the Mariannas Islands so their friends could reap billions selling crap marked "made in the USA" at Wal-Mart. It isn't the left who fights against providing health care for every American. Many of us want impeachment. And yet too many on the left think it's OK to screw a nation. It's OK to rape its future. Let's just all get along, shall we?
John Edwards doesn't think it's OK. John Edwards wants to change things. He wants to give US back the power, YOU back the power and make the corporations have to play by the rules. He wants to see the Natlie Sarkisyans of the world have a chance at life, instead of some cubicle worker denying her health care to save her life. He wants YOU to have the same health care coverage as Congress, whose health care YOU pay for. He wants YOU to be safe from fear of the government taking what YOU have and giving it to those who don't need it.
But he gets little press. The media coverage has told us who to vote for. They've told you for months that it is a race between Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama and don't you worry your pretty little minds on the issues, just listen to us as we spin, obfuscate, and tell YOU what the pols say. We'll tell you who to vote for. We'll build people up. We'll tear them down.
And you just gotta ask yourself. Why? What is so scary about John Edwards?
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, {Mr. Edwards] and we won't have it. Is that clear? You think you can stop [big business]? That is not the case. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are a man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.
Some see this and ask why change it? Hey, it works. Not well, but it works. Let's keep things status quo and hope we can change it, little by little. Or let's keep it and let the corporations have their power. After all, they provide jobs, right? No use rockin' the boat. Let's let the corporations continue to grow, amassing such power that we might one day NEVER be able to get it back. Until, like another 70's movie, Rollerball, only 5 corporations run the world.
And hey, who cares? You've go your new Wii, Playstation, a new HDTV to watch your teams/movies and videos. You don't mind a steady diet of Brittany Spears and Anna Nicole Smith and crime coverage, Cops, World Wrestling, etc. It's OK by you as long as YOU don't have to know about what's really going on. You don't care as long as YOUR ass isn't in Iraq (a country most Americans can't even find on a map?).
And after all, they are all the same, aren't they? All those politicians? Why vote - nothing ever changes. Why bother?
You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here, you're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs. In God's name, people are the real thing, TV is the illusion.
Too many believe the illusion. Too many believe that if it isn't on the TV, it' didn't happen.
Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube. This tube is the gospel, the ultimate revelation; this tube can make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers; this tube is the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people. And when the [five largest media conglomerates in the world] control the most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth?
Well, like many, I'm tired of the Bullshit.
Bullshit is all the reasons [they give us] for living. And if [they] can't think up any reasons of [their] own, [they] always have the God bullshit. We don't know why we're going through all this pointless pain, humiliation, decays, so there better be someone somewhere who does know. That's the God bullshit. And then, there's the noble man bullshit; that man is a noble creature that can order his own world; who needs God? Well, if there's anybody out there that can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me: That man is full of bullshit. I don't have any bullshit left. I just ran out of it, you see.
Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.
But the bullshit continues. We've had two primaries and already one candidate has been annointed as the second coming of JFK. We've had one primary where one man who didn't have the money, and wasn't covered by the media, came in second, but still got no coverage.
The pundits and polls will tell you who to vote for. The pundits and polls will tell you that everyone is jumping on the bandwagon of hope. They don't know where it's going to take them, but they hope they get there.
I wonder where all those angry people, who were mad as hell, like me, who wanted to wrest the power back for the people went. Why is nobody angry anymore?
Well, I'm here to tell you that I'm tired. But I'm still angry. My anger about the stolen elections has not abated. My anger about "impeachment off the table" has not abated.
Look, I understand Obama's message. I understand that Hillary Clinton is a fine person, a good American. I think any of the Dems running (even those how have dropped out) would make far better presidents than anyone on the right. And after Bush, don't speak to me about experience. After Bush, a cadaver could be resident and speak more eloquently and have better ideas.
But I want more than just hope. I want someone who will fight for ME, fight for YOU, fight for US. I want someone who is going to tell the corporations, you don't get a seat at the table, you can't even buy one if you want to. WE are going to tell you the rules, and you're going to obey them. You're going to have to use your creativity to build better mousetraps, here, with Americans building them, instead of using your creativity figuring out how to squeeze out another dime for a big CEO salary, or how to register your company in Bermuda so you don't have to pay US taxes, and can give your CEO an even bigger salary, or to grease the palm of congresscritters who will pass legislation to give you breaks, or help you build bridges that don't go anywhere. I want someone to fight to bring ALL Americans the health care they need, to educate ALL our children, and to clean up the environment and preserve it for future generations.
I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.
How about you?
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