Network

Paddy Chayefsky’s satire “Network,” won an Academy Award for best screenplay in 1976. He was so far ahead of the rest of us in seeing what was happening to this country and the world that much of what was in the play has in fact happened. He saw all this in 1976!

The scenes featuring Peter Finch playing the Howard Beale character are exceptional:

1. BULLSHIT:

“……I just ran out of bullshit. Bullshit is all the reasons we give for living. If we can’t think up reasons of our own, we always have the God bullshit. We don’t know why we go through pointless pain, humiliation, and decay. There better be someone somewhere who does know, that’s the God bullshit. If man is a noble creature who can order his own world, who needs God? Well, if there’s anybody out there who can look around this demented world we live in and tell me that man is a noble creature, believe me, that man is full of bullshit!…..”

If one looks at the excuses that religious extremists use for persecuting others, you can see that much of what they believe is BULLSHIT!

2. MAD AS HELL:

“……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 jobs. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. The banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep guns under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street. Nobody anywhere 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. We sit watching our TV’s while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides, and63 violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be! We know things are bad. They’re 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 were 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, and I don’t want you to riot, and 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, the Russians, and the crime in the streets. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad! You’ve got to say, “I’m a human being godamit! My life has meaning!…..”

The recent slaughterhouse videos indicate that no one can be sure that the food they eat is safe for consumption. Not even considering salmonella or botulism inspections of vegetables and poultry, the FDA/USDA is going to let cloned meat to be sold without the buyer’s knowledge! Food that is being imported from overseas from countries such as China is not inspected nor do we know under what conditions it was manufactured.

There are genetically engineered crops being produced in the U.S. that threatens organically grown produce here and in Mexico. Some of these vegetables have animal DNA inserted to allow the produce to have a longer shelf life in grocery stores. No one knows what the long term ramifications of this will be on our health as the FDA doesn’t care, and is not doing it’s job! It is concerned more about the food industry’s ability to make a profit no matter what, than the health and well being of the U.S. consumer. Not to mention the herbicides and pesticides that end up contaminating our streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans along with nitrates and phosphates.

As our oceans become more polluted, our seafood is becoming more contaminated. Higher concentrations of heavy metals and over-fishing by countries such as Japan, is limiting the edible amount of seafood available. The slaughter of whales off Antarctica shows their total disregard for the rights of animals over their desire to sell and consume them as products. No matter how much they claim it is for scientific research, they are slaughtering these whales for profit and consumption!

Finally, when we feed our kids too many Happy Meals, they end up consuming too much animal Mcfat that can lead to coronary artery disease, cancer, obesity and/or diabetes, not to mention Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Plus the antibiotics fed to cattle end up in our bloodstream, ruining our immune systems ability to fight off more virulent strains of viruses.

Recent reports about our water supply being polluted with pharmaceuticals, is just a tip of the ice burg! The fact is that our well water and ground water is contaminated with MBTE and Perchlorate. Our oceans have become sewers, and our waste has created huge floating trash dumps in the doldrums.

Our air supply is so full of particulate matter from nitrates, tires, and diesel exhaust that a link has been established to asthma, and heart disease.

And when a mother who has been fighting in Iraq and survives, returns home to bury her son who was slaughtered on our streets, you know that things are worse than “CRAZY!”

3. TURN IT OFF!

“…Because you people and 62 million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than 3 % of you people read books. Because less than 15 % 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’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 force in the whole godless world and woe is us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people!….….When the 12th largest company in the world controls the most awesome, goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network! So you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth! Television’s a goddamned 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’re in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that’s the only place you’re ever gonna find any real truth. Man, you’re never gonna get any truth from us. We’ll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We’ll tell you that Kojak always gets the killer, and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker’s house, and no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don’t worry, just look at your watch. At the end of the hour he’ll win! We’ll tell you any shit you want to hear! We deal in illusions man! Non of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds. We’re all you know! You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here. You’re beginning to think 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. This is all mass madness you maniacs! In God’s name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn of your television sets…….”

The fact is that the media we have taken for granted for so long to be an unbiased part of our checks and balances in this democracy, has in fact been taken over and centralized. Powerful rich people like Rupert Murdock now control much of the “freedom of speech” in this country. Much of what took place in the play such as the superfluous crap that passes for “news” has taken place. Certainly, the major news networks do not question the actions of the government as in the past. Where was CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, or Fox when Bush was raving about going into Iraq? None of the networks even questioned the idea. When the lies were started, the invasion planned, and the cruise missiles fired, the media responded as if it was on a movie set, and that animation and computer generated special effects were what was needed, not any serious questioning as to why we were invading a country that had nothing to do with 9-11! Rather than reporting an unbiased view, they chose to become imbedded (in bed with) the military, and never reported anything about the total number of civilian casualties. The industrial-military-congressional complex needs to be held accountable as well. Many of the top generals helped fudge intelligence necessary for making the connection to Iraq. Either the civilian elected officials run the military, or else the military (with the help of the CIA) run this country.

4. THE ARABS:

….”We all know that the Arabs control $16 billion dollars in this country. They own a chunk of 5th Avenue, 20 downtown pieces of Boston, a part of the Port of New Orleans, and industrial park in Salt Lake City. They own big chunks 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 Mobile Oil. They’re all over! New Jersey, Louisville, St. Louis, Missouri, and that’s only what we know about. There’s a hell of a lot more we don’t know about, because all of those Arab petrol dollars are washed through Switzerland, and Canada, and the biggest banks in this country….Right now the Arabs have screwed us out of enough American dollars to come right back with our own money, buy General Motors, IBM, ITT, AT&T, DuPont, US Steel, and 20 other American companies. Hell, they already own half of England!…..”

The fact is that Saudi Arabia, and recently China are subsidizing our war debt in Iraq. If they ever decided to pull their investment out of this country, our economy would collapse. It amounts to a strangle hold on our foreign policy and is the main reason we will never go after Al Qaida in Saudi Arabia, nor officially condemn China’s lack of human rights! THERE’S MONEY TO BE MADE IN ILLNESS, AND BODY PARTS!

5. THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE:

Mr. Jensen: “You have meddled with the primal forces of nature Mr. Beale and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you 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 the 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-variant, multinational dominion of dollars! Petrol dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reich Marks, 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 21-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 Du Pont, 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 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.”

Beale: “Why me?”

Jensen: “Because you’re on television, dummy! Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.”

Beale: “I have seen the face of God.”

Jensen: “You just might be right, Mr. Beale.”

Globalization, “The New World Order” (First Bush 1989) has in fact created the situation that the character played by Ned Beatty describes in the scene above. The fact is that international banking, the Trilateral Commission, World Bank, WTO, IMF, G7, GATT, and NAFTA etc. do create foreign policy, even if it goes against democratic principles. The Federal Reserve does create domestic policy, even if it goes against democratic principles. Eisenhower warned us about the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex. The corporations that make weapon systems such as General Dynamics, Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, help create foreign policy. Congressional representatives who have these companies in their States, force the government to buy unneeded and unwanted items for the military that they earmarked in bills.

6. DEMOCRACY, THE DYING GIANT:

“….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 it’s final pain. I don’t mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, most advanced country in the world, light-years ahead of any other country, and the Communists won’t take over the world because the Communists are deader than we are. What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some 200 odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods. Well, the time has come to say is “Dehumanization” such a bad word. Whether it’s good or bad, that’s what is so. The whole world is becoming humanoid. Creatures that look human but aren’t. The whole world, not just us. We’re just the most advanced country, so we’re getting there first. The whole world’s people are becoming mass produced, programmed, numbered……”

The sad fact is that all one needs to do is to see the lack of civil discourse that exists in our society today. It now takes the form of road rage, drive-by shootings, slander, and defamation of character. It permeates our vehement political diatribes on TV and radio with shows that sponsor talking heads such as Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Rielly, Ann Coulter, and Pat Robertson. Much of what these people say lacks logic, deductive reasoning, and ethical thought. Corporations have more rights than individuals do, and the profit motive has taken over as the only way to conduct one’s life. We are being programmed by TV and film, resulting in a more violent society lacking in ethics!