Bonjour vagrant souls out there! As you all may know, there comes points in your life that you feel action is required. You don't know what said action is, but you know it's not what you've been doing. We have a struggling economy, a crazy job"less" market, a failing education system, a political landscape that mimics television wrestling, and that's not even getting into the nitty gritty of our everyday lives. There are so many issues that many of us feel like we can't do anything about. Sure you can vote, but the impact of your vote (your opinion) on the U.S. stage is little more than a gag. Let's face the ugly reality of America. This country is no longer the admirable idealists it once was seen to be. We are a corporately influenced, imperialist nation. The market rises and falls by the design of people who manage public knowledge and interest through media, and financial schemes. It crashes when they have taken as much as they desired, and in that crash even more money is made. The television and radio squabbles you hear these politicians get into are not much different than Triple H arguing with Vince McMahon. The general conversation and conflict has been scripted so the actors can ad-lib and embellish the delivery. Unfortunately what happens in this "game" actually effects us. Our school systems are terrible as a whole. Teachers are told to perform a job with two hands tied behind their backs. Children that aren't apart of the wealthy class are under-served, undereducated, and set up for failure by a system that appears to be designed to make the divide between the rich and the rest of America even more massive. This sick twisted game continues while most of this nation sits behind a television getting fatter (and in no shape mentally or physically to fight) waiting to see how the story ends. Come on people wake up!
Martin Niemöller once famously said,
"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
What are you waiting for? They have come for the Indians, the Blacks, the Jews, the Italians, the Irish, the Japanese, and now they've gotten exhausted singling out so many groups. Now they just want all the poor. You've seen this show before. You know how it ends. Go on strike, demand new programming! I will leave you with this clip from the movie "Network"
Mad As Hell! Kinetic Typography from Aaron Leming on Vimeo.
Howard Beale: 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. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. 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 toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials 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 the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad.
[shouting]
You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!' 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,
[shouting]
'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Things have got to change. But first, you've gotta get mad!... You've got to say, 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!' Then we'll 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:
[screaming at the top of his lungs]
"I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
Till next time
~Au revoir
