Things Fall Apart<\/em> quoting Kennedy showed. Having someone who quoted Yeats and Aeschylus as easily as breathing and did it in a manner that made hearts sore is a sight to behold. And someone who people and children of every background raced to see and touch.<\/p>\nWe end now with an excerpt of a post from November 2016 just after the election in the US. It was part of a number of reflections on what had happened, what were and are the underlying issues, where we have been and where we are going as a species in this world.<\/p>\n
Here it is:<\/p>\n
11.29.16:<\/p>\n
We will be commenting for some time on the US elections and various inter-related global events.<\/p>\n
But let us start with this.<\/p>\n
Everything has changed and nothing has changed. There will be basic human needs and basic human rights guaranteed for everyone or there will be hell to pay, as history has shown relentlessly. A small group of people and entities with the huge majority of wealth and power is not sustainable. Until the plight of the have-nots in needs and rights is addressed by universal equality as enshrined in the UN declaration of Human Rights at the end of World War Two, there will be chaos of varying kinds. The fact that its seems as if the post-war order is crumbling and there is nothing but tribalism on the horizon is partly true and partly not. Its the inevitable resistance the closer we get to the imperative of equality.<\/p>\n
Right, left and center, capitalism and socialism and every combination have all betrayed at some point because the same masters of various kinds resist, the most successful of the combinations has rarely been implemented, when it has, it has been successful, but not completed, therefore it regresses\u2013and democracy can only work if the citizens are fully participatory. Which means work and change and willingness to lay down everything for ideals. An evolution and choice for the ages both collectively and within each individual.<\/p>\n
The fight between nothing changing and change continues, with the global stakes making more clear than ever that we will change or we will die. Tragically and disgracefully, many have and will suffer and die needlessly. However, although we may well not make it as a species for much longer, our view remains that out of the inevitable conflicts of various kinds, we will make it to the next evolutionary step. Besides, what\u2019s the point of believing anything else and working with all we have to make it so?<\/p>\n
We begin our observations on the US presidential election and many other seemingly inter-related global events leading-up to it in what may seem an odd way\u2013by referencing a singular work of art imitating life\u2013in its 40th anniversary year\u2013the 1976 movie, \u201cNetwork.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won four, including for the late writer Paddy Chayefsky\u2019s script. He was the only sole triple Oscar-winner screenwriter in history\u2013who tragically died at 58. (The other three awards were for best actress, Faye Dunaway, best actor, Peter Finch, and best supporting actress, Beatrice Straight). Its hard to see a movie like this being made today as a mainstream studio financed film with a cast to die for, directed by Sidney Lumet. Much less one that was in the top-25 grossers in a year of movies such as \u201cRocky\u201d and \u201cAll The President\u2019s Men\u201d to mention just two (an iconic movie year, to say the least.)<\/p>\n
The late, great critic, Roger Ebert, wrote in a 2000 look-back at the film, which he gave his highest rating: \u201cSeen a quarter-century later, it is like prophecy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNetwork\u201d satirized, parodied and lambasted television\u2013but it went far beyond that. And if it was prophecy after a quarter-century, after 40 years in the context of the digital, internet and social media revolutions, it is like prophecy times something that we may, may, just be starting to understand.<\/p>\n
And the point here is not that the truth-telling in \u201cNetwork\u201d represents some recently occurring events prophesied 40 years ago, but that it represents what was already happening then and has been increasingly in many ways for 40 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cNetwork\u201d has a number of fascinating intertwined plot lines, morality plays and tales of the culture.<\/p>\n
We focus here on famous excerpts from a central thread.<\/p>\n
Peter Finch plays Howard Beal, who is the star of a kind of one-man commentary show\u2013which after he has a revelation, becomes increasingly enlightening and bizarre. And Precisely because of this, ratings go through the roof.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s Beal\u2019s famed \u201cMad as Hell\u201d speech to his audience:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It\u2019s a depression. Everybody\u2019s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel\u2019s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there\u2019s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there\u2019s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that\u2019s the way it\u2019s supposed to be.<\/p>\n
We know things are bad \u2013 worse than bad. They\u2019re crazy. It\u2019s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don\u2019t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: \u2018Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won\u2019t say anything. Just leave us alone.\u2019<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don\u2019t want you to protest. I don\u2019t want you to riot \u2013 I don\u2019t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn\u2019t know what to tell you to write. I don\u2019t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you\u2019ve got to get mad. (shouting) You\u2019ve got to say: \u2018I\u2019m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!\u2019<\/p>\n
So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: \u2018I\u2019m as mad as hell, and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore!\u2019<\/p>\n
I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m as mad as hell and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore!\u2019 Things have got to change. But first, you\u2019ve gotta get mad!\u2026You\u2019ve got to say, \u2018I\u2019m as mad as hell, and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore!\u2019 Then we\u2019ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: \u2018I\u2019m as mad as hell, and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore!’\u201d<\/p>\n
Following much of New York and the nation doing just that, Beal in his next show delivers the \u201cWe Deal in Illusions \u2013 Turn Off Your Television Sets\u201d Speech:<\/p>\n
\u201cEdward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems and he died at eleven o\u2019clock this morning of a heart condition! And woe is us! We\u2019re in a lot of trouble! So, a rich little man with white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you people and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books. Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers. Because the only truth you know is what you get over this tube. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn\u2019t 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, god-damn force in the whole godless world. And woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people. And that\u2019s why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died.<\/p>\n
Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communication Corporation of America. There\u2019s a new chairman of the board, a man called Frank Hackett sitting in Mr. Ruddy\u2019s office on the 20th floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome, god-damn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what s\u2013t will be peddled for truth on this network.<\/p>\n
So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth. Television\u2019s a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We\u2019re in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the Truth, go to God! Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that\u2019s the only place you\u2019re ever gonna find any real truth. But, man, you\u2019re never gonna get any truth from us. We\u2019ll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We\u2019ll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker\u2019s house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don\u2019t worry. Just look at your watch. At the end of the hour, he\u2019s gonna win. We\u2019ll tell you any s\u2013t you want to hear.<\/p>\n
We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We\u2019re all you know. You\u2019re beginning to believe the illusions we\u2019re spinning here. You\u2019re beginning to think that the tube is reality and that 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\u2019s name, you people are the real thing. We are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!\u201d<\/p>\n
During the next broadcast of \u201cThe Howard Beale Show,\u201d the \u201cmad prophet\u201d Howard (as he was now known) criticized the growing economic take-over power of oil-rich Saudi Arabia which was causing economic ruin in the US because of oil prices. In fact, the conglomerate\/corporation that owned Beale\u2019s network was tied to Saudi interests:<\/p>\n
\u201cNow you listen to me. And listen carefully, because this is your goddamn life I\u2019m talking about today. In this country, when one company wants to take over another company, they simply buy up a controlling share of the stock. But first, they have to file notice with the government. That\u2019s how CCA took over the company that owns this network. But now somebody is buying up CCA. Somebody called the Western World Funding Corporation. They filed the notice this morning.<\/p>\n
Well, just who in the hell is the Western World Funding Corporation? It is a consortium of banks and insurance companies who are not buying CCA for themselves but as agents for somebody else. And who is this somebody else? They won\u2019t tell you. They won\u2019t tell you, they won\u2019t tell the Senate, they won\u2019t tell the SEC, the FCC, they won\u2019t tell the Justice Department, they won\u2019t tell anybody. They say it\u2019s none of our business. The hell it ain\u2019t! I will tell you who they\u2019re buying CCA for. They\u2019re buying it for the Saudi-Arabian Investment Corporation. They\u2019re buying it for the Arabs\u2026<\/p>\n
We all know that the Arabs control sixteen billion dollars in this country. They own a chunk of Fifth Avenue, twenty downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the port of New Orleans, an industrial park in Salt Lake City. They own big hunks of the Atlanta Hilton, the Arizona Land and Cattle Company, the Security National Bank in California, the Bank of the Commonwealth in Detroit. They control ARAMCO, so that puts them into Exxon, Texaco, and Mobil Oil. They\u2019re all over \u2013 New Jersey, Louisville, St. Louis Missouri. And that\u2019s only what we know about! There\u2019s a hell of a lot more we don\u2019t know about because all of the those Arab petro-dollars are washed through Switzerland and Canada and the biggest banks in this country.<\/p>\n
For example, what we don\u2019t know about is this CCA deal and all the other CCA deals. Right now, the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars to come right back and with our own money, buy General Motors, IBM, ITT, AT&T, DuPont, US Steel, and twenty other American companies. Hell, they already own half of England.<\/p>\n
So listen to me. Listen to me, god-dammit! The Arabs are simply buying us. There\u2019s only one thing that can stop them. You! You! So, I want you to get up now. I want you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the phone. I want you to get up from your chairs, go to the phone, get in your cars, drive into the Western Union offices in town. I want you to send a telegram to the White House. By midnight tonight, I want a million telegrams in the White House. I want them wading knee-deep in telegrams at the White House. I want you to get up right now and write a telegram to President Ford saying: \u2018I\u2019m as mad as hell and I\u2019m not gonna take this anymore! I don\u2019t want the banks selling my country to the Arabs! I want the CCA deal stopped now!\u2019 I want the CCA deal stopped now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deal got stopped, leading to one of the great film cameos of all time\u2013and riveting speeches of all time on how the world in fact worked.<\/p>\n
Angered UBS Chairman of the Board Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) summoned Beale into his imposing conference room (\u201cValhalla\u201d). He nicely led him in and sat him down at one table-head, saying \u201cThey say I can sell anything. I\u2019d like to try to sell something to you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He then strode to the opposite end, stood with his hands on the table, glaring at Beal, and boomed:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won\u2019t have it! Is that clear?! Do you think you\u2019ve merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old 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 and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!<\/p>\n
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and 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. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state \u2013 Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there\u2019s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beale asked:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jensen responded:<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you\u2019re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beale, with a look of bewildered and terrified awe on his face said:<\/p>\n
\u201cI have seen the face of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jensen replied:<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just might be right, Mr. Beale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which leads us full circle to Beal\u2019s pacification and de-humanizing of humanity speech.<\/p>\n
Roger Ebert notes importantly in his 2000 retrospective: \u201cOne of Chayefsky\u2019s key insights is that the bosses don\u2019t much care what you say on TV, as long as you don\u2019t threaten their profits. Howard Beale calls for outrage, he advises viewers to turn off their sets, his fans chant about how fed up they are\u2013but he only gets in trouble when he reveals plans to sell the network\u2019s parent company to Saudi Arabians. There\u2019s a parallel here with \u201cThe Insider,\u201d a 1999 film about CBS News, where \u201c60 Minutes\u201d can do just about anything it wants to, except materially threaten CBS profits.\u201d (Note from the writers here, \u201cThe Insider\u201d, critically acclaimed, is still one of the greatest films ever made, and one of the most important, about the worst single corporate killer in history\u2013tobacco\u2013and their exposure in the US by a whistleblower and journalist acting with integrity willing to take down his bosses. Our own work converged with this as we searched out and challenged any non-profit in our area of work that took money from Big Tobacco. It was a challenging time\u2013we lost millions in potential revenue by refusing any funding directly or indirectly related to tobacco. Stress ran high, but its the stuff activism is made of, and all who challenged this evil were vindicated when CEOs of Big Tobacco got caught in the Big Lie in front of the US Congress and were forced into the biggest multi-billion dollar settlement of all time by attorneys general of combined US states. Still, today, the tobacco industry threatens to kill a billion people this century outside the US and the World Health Organization has called for radical measures to prevent this.)<\/p>\n
As Beal began his next show, the narrator stated: \u201cThat evening, Howard Beale went on the air to preach the corporate cosmology of Arthur Jensen\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u201cLast night I got up here and asked you people to stand up and fight for your heritage, and you did, and it was beautiful. Six million telegrams were received at the White House. The Arab takeover of CCA has been stopped. The people spoke, the people won. It was a radiant eruption of democracy. But I think that was it, fellas. That sort of thing is not likely to happen again. Because at the bottom of all our terrified souls, we know that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick dying, decaying political concept, writhing in its final pain. I don\u2019t mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, the most powerful, the most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any other country. And I don\u2019t mean the Communists are gonna take over the world, because the Communists are deader than we are.<\/p>\n
What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It\u2019s the individual that\u2019s finished. It\u2019s the single, solitary human being that\u2019s finished. It\u2019s every single one of you out there that\u2019s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It\u2019s a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.<\/p>\n
Well, the time has come to say is \u2018dehumanization\u2019 such a bad word?\u2019 Whether it\u2019s good or bad, that\u2019s what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid, creatures that look human but aren\u2019t. The whole world, not just us. We\u2019re just the most advanced country, so we\u2019re getting there first. The whole world\u2019s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
That all folks, for now.<\/p>\n
It is necessary to remind for those of us who saw the movie at the time, or to inform for those who did not, that activism for well over a decade, started by a few, had become a norm at that point in many ways (often adopted even by our parents generation to an extent)\u2013we had stopped an ill-conceived war, that still, to date, killed by far the most Americans since World War Two, countless civilians, and at least assisted in bringing communist genocide to Cambodia and elsewhere, fought for (some died for) huge changes in civil rights laws and practices which had kept blacks oppressed even with slavery ended a hundred years before, run a constitution-threatening criminal president out of office, and had a Republican first lady at the forefront, among other things, of leading the way to what seemed the inevitable adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment gauranteeing women\u2019s rights, the movement for LGBT equality was at its start, and the list goes on.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right. We were closer by an indescribable factor to equality for all with the momentum to finish the job as never before\u201340 years ago. Bullets had stopped the momentum in many ways in 1968, and the lessons Bobby Kennedy should have taught us about how you win the votes of the white working class and the black underclass and everyone else appeared to go with him to the grave. Still, the ethos of the times was such that after the Nixon-Watergate trauma, Republican Betty Ford could make the White House feminist-central, and health care-central for women with breast cancer, and recovery-central for those with addictions and often co-disorders or underlying disorders of various kinds, leading to the idea that intervention must occur before people who are sick destroy themselves and other innocents, and who should be helped in treatment that addressed whatever was needed for mental health and trauma as well, increasingly understood with time. A long way to go in understanding and accomplishing all the above. But that\u2019s where we were in 1976 watching \u201cNetwork\u201d.<\/p>\n
For us, it brought no new or stunning revelations\u2013it brought a new and stunning use of Hollywood to tell the truths we already knew\u2013the ones we were fighting to change and confident we had on the run.<\/p>\n
Whoops.<\/p>\n
Doesn\u2019t bring much solace 40 years later does it?<\/p>\n
It isn\u2019t meant to.<\/p>\n
So let\u2019s pull out a favorite we\u2019ve used before, a quote from Aeschylus that Bobby Kennedy used the night of Martin Luther King, Jr\u2019s death as he sought to comfort the afflicted in the Indianapolis Ghetto:<\/p>\n
\u201cMy favorite poet was Aeschylus.<\/p>\n
He once wrote, \u2018And even in our sleep,\u2028 pain which cannot forget \u2028falls drop by drop upon the heart, \u2028until in our own despair, \u2028against our will,\u2028 comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.\u2019”<\/p>\n
One observation of courage and inspiration to end on. The activism hasn\u2019t stopped, the movement forward hasn\u2019t stopped. A barbaric law had been proposed in the Turkish Parliament to actually condone sexual assault of minors in some cases related to underage marriage. A story in-depth for another time. But thousands of the outraged did the politically impossible\u2013they stopped the bill, right up to turning around the not-so-democratic leader of Turkey on the issue. It was a done deal, until growing thousands would not be turned back and would have no other answer to their demand to protect all children. We salute and thank these wonderful sisters and brothers. They are one of so many reasons we believe change is still a\u2019comin. We said there would be more and more people in the streets on this issue.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, keep in mind, this step forward could easily turn into a step back, in Turkey, and everywhere in the world, before the change is accomplised.<\/p>\n
It can’t be said enough. Over half of all children on the planet abused, hungry, sick, in warzones, from their countries to their families.\u00a0The weight of this will force change because of the consequences related to every other issue of planetary survival of import. How much more agony before our morality, self-interest, or both, successfully become the agents of this change?<\/p>\n
Children first. Its just getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over half of children abused, hungry or sick (c) 1996-2018 Planet Earth Foundation In the Sunday Review of The New York Times last Sunday, there was a double-barreled blast from two of the most well-known and widely-read op-ed columnists on the planet (and two of our favorites as all readers have seen for years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3065"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3688,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3065\/revisions\/3688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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