"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. 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, '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: "I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!" – Howard Beale, Network (1976)Let’s go back to September of 2008. We were heading down the home stretch of the presidential election, it was the month of Black Monday, and Republican candidate, John McCain, had this to say,
"You know, there's been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street and it is -- people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think, still the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times. And I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. We will reform government."
With President Obama echoing these words during the past month, less than six months after he roasted McCain for saying them, do we have a hypocrite on our hands or is this the case of The People vs. The United States of American Manipulation? It wasn’t that long ago that Obama was telling us a tale of the doom and gloom we were sure to face if his economic stimulus package didn’t pass, but with many Americans outraged over the injustices we are seeing happen on a daily basis in our government, on Wall Street, and on Main Street itself, well, when the people get angry, it’s time to change the music. This is a game. You and I are pawns in a game that government and corporations play every day. Obama’s camp knew that they needed to get people pissed off about what was happening with our economy in order to win the election. It worked. They kept the fear machine going long enough to pass the economic stimulus package and then decided they needed to turn off the stove before the pot boiled over. It’s a fucking game.
I voted for Obama, but I’m not stupid enough to think one man is going to change things. I am also not ignorant enough to believe that the President of The United States of America is really in control. I’m not going to go into detail on whom I believe is in control, but this pretty much sums it up,
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've 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, multivariate, multinational 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 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, 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, 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 bylaws 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's 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.” – Arthur Jensen, Network (1976)
A monetary society is doomed to fail for one reason: Greed. How can we ever expect society to do the right thing when so many have only their own interests at heart? As long as profit is the motivation, the gap between those who have and those who have not will continue to widen.
I was a Ron Paul supporter early on. While he is way out there on certain issues and even further out on other issues, I believe that we need to head more in the direction Ron Paul points to than your typical politician believes. I like Obama. I like the trust he puts in the American people. If he continues to preach that change comes from the people and not the government, well, I think we could end up digging ourselves out of this. But first, we have to truly grasp exactly what it means to be the change. There are enough people who are wise to the game being played with our lives. More citizens of this great country of ours, the Stripes and the Stars, are waking up. People are no longer trusting everything they hear. And you can’t. You can’t tune in to anything on TV or read anything in print and expect the truth… it is all run by the very people who have a grip on the world’s economy. You want the truth? You can handle it, but you’ll have to seek it out. The internet is filled with rabbit holes and if you dare step into one you’ll find much more truth than you will almost anywhere else. If you are too lazy or unconcerned to look, then I ask you to at least not swallow the shit you get through the “professional” media.
Back to our monetary society. We will fail. The world will fail. It has to in order for us to evolve. We have to stop thinking in terms of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ because we possess nothing. Nothing belongs to anyone and the sooner we adopt this belief, the sooner we can lead the human race to a time when everyone has everything they need to live. We have the resources to provide for everyone on this planet. No human should be without food, water, shelter, or clothing. No human has to be. The resources are there. The profit is not.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Why we continue to look at money as the solution and not the problem is beyond me. I guess we’ve brainwashed ourselves over the past 100,000 years or so. While we make advancements in so many other areas, for some reason or another we continue to move in the wrong direction with the ideology that money is the answer, that a monetary system is the best way, that every person has a right to profit off of others. Where is the common sense in that, let alone humanity? How does it serve our race, planet, or the common good if we only concern ourselves with our ego? Why do we continue to look at life as a competition?
We have to change. We have to really change. Why wait until it fails? Let’s start taking the steps needed to live in a world where we are all a part of something much greater than ourselves. Because we are.