Are Americans ‘Mad as Hell’?

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“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” That’s the famous phrase that instantly entered the American lexicon, courtesy of Paddy Chayefsky, the writer of the 1976 Oscar-winning movie, “Network.”

The film, which starred Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and the late Peter Finch as the enraged newscaster, Howard Beale, won four Oscars, including a best actor prize for Finch, whose Beale character was the forerunner of every fuming cable TV pundit from Bill O’Reilly to Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck to Rachel Maddow to, latterly, Tucker Carlson, expatiating on behalf of the American public.

Here’s the speech, which might have been written yesterday by a conservative, but 44 years ago was the authentic voice of a Hollywood liberal:



“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 worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do with us. There’s no end to it.

“We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 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 a house as slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms…

“Well I’m not going to 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 crying in the streets. All I know is first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a human being. God dammit, my life has value.’

“I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’

Fantasy World

Welcome to 2020, the year in which what was once fanciful is now practically reality.

In the movie, things end badly for Beale, the “made prophet of the airwaves,” who has become a quasi-religious leader hosting a segment called “Vox Populi”—he is assassinated on camera at the cynical direction of the network executives by members of Ecumenical Liberation Army, as a kickoff to their new show, “The Mao Tse-Tung Hour” of revolutionary chic.

It’s a win-win all around for the network, which has experienced a ratings bonanza with Beale, but with his usefulness at an end, needed a way to literally kill off his character to make way for something even more outrageous—even if it sends the exact opposite political message.

If the media was driving America crazy in 1976, in the direct aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, Watergate, and the surprising accession of an unelected vice president to the Oval Office in the hapless Gerald Ford, how much nuttier are we now?

We are currently living in a fantasy world in which Howard Beale really is the voice of sanity. Consider what we are being asked to believe:

  • Some lives matter more than other lives, despite our common shared humanity.
  • The mainstream media is an impartial, objective reporter of facts, unaligned with party or ideology.
  • Men can be women, and women can be men, at will.
  • Speech equals violence, but silence equals violence as well.
  • Infection by the CCP virus equals death—even though the death toll in the United States at this writing is about .04 percent of the total population. It is also race-selective in its lethality.
  • The United States was built on a foundation of sub-Saharan African slavery in 1619, and is therefore illegitimate.
  • A “national conversation” means agreeing with the Left in every particular no matter what the subject.
  • The office of the Executive—Article II of the Constitution—is subject to the Supreme Court—Article III—thanks to an 1803 Court decision, Marbury v. Madison.
  • The United States has benefited from outsourcing its crucial bio-medical infrastructure to the Chinese Communist Party, along with a substantial portion of its manufacturing capability, because lower prices are what Adam Smith would have wanted.
  • There is an epidemic of white policemen shooting black street criminals.
  • The Leftist/Fascist gang of street paramilitary thugs called “Antifa” are the equivalent of the American boys who landed at Omaha Beach in 1944, when in fact their “flag” is simply the inversion of the Antifaschiste Aktion of the Weimar Republic Communists.
  • Western civilization, which includes Homer, Cicero, Charlemagne, Mozart, Dickens, Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Mount Rushmore equals “white supremacy.”
  • The highest form of “patriotism” is not simply “dissent” anymore, it’s overt treason.

Time to Rise Up

So perhaps now it’s time for real, patriotic Americans to assert themselves—for if not now, when?

The goal of the Herbert Marcuse-Saul Alinsky–Howard Zinn left has always been the destruction of the country-as-founded and its replacement by a (temporary) nation-state that acknowledges the illegitimacy of its founding—Marcuse’s doctrine of “Repressive Tolerance,” which posits tolerance for Leftist ideas until the Left seizes power, after which “tolerance” is no longer a virtue. (See also Alinsky’s “Rule No. 4,” which posits: “‘Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules’… You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.”)

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Someone drives through a crowd and nothing someone shoots up a crowded School or Bar and the Media Vultures and Sharks are circling

The answer will be revealed in November.

blm supporters flooded a Facebook page belonging to Jessica Doty Whitaker, the young mother who was shot dead for saying “all lives matter,” to celebrate her death. Whitaker was killed after she encountered a group of Black Lives Matter supporters while walking along a canal in Indianapolis after a Fourth of July celebration with her fiance and two friends.
-no media coverage, so balligent lying marxist- black terrorist movement can now kill indiscriminately . NICE! but a black career criminal is allegedly killed by police becomes national headline material.

@Greg: This is the oranization warmly welcomed to the White House by BHO 1 week before 5 Dallas police officers were gunned down. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8384065/Black-Lives-Matter-leader-declares-war-police.html. Now warmly accepted by commies like you. CHOP on steroids murder, rape, robbery, protection money demanded, burning looting rioting.
Well what happens if you get mad as hell and act out? Ask the McCloskeys who were just disarmed by their local government.
More protests in Detroit after Members of Littleton’s family refuted the police department’s report, claiming that the 19-year-old was unarmed and surrendering.

“They murdered him. Shot him in his back walking down the street. Oh they told them to freeze, OK, put your hands up. And they did, and they shot him trying to put his phone in his pocket,” said Deseanae Wells, the victim’s cousin.
Police body cam tells a very very different story.
I just dont think we should allow BLM to turn our fellow American citizens neighborhoods into no go zones.

@Greg: When Trump wins his second term.

Looking at the Alabama results, Jeff Sessions got creamed by the other Republican in his Primary.
https://data.montgomeryadvertiser.com/election-results/
Now, why was that?
I think it is a referendum showing which side the GOP is going toward.
Only a few weeks ago the race was close.
There is the Trump side and there is the Never-Trump side.
When Jeff Sessions let Dems tell him to recuse himself he sided with the Never-Trumpers.
Tommy Tuberville sided with Trump.
His lead has been growing just in recent weeks.
Tells me there is a groundswell for Trump inside the GOP.
These Never-Trumpers and these Never-America dems in the socialist wing of their party are losing.

Well, I’m mad as hell. I am sick and tired of the left not being held accountable for their lies and failures. Trump did not bring the CCP virus to this country; he acted swiftly and decisively to control the spread. He heeded the advice of “science” and shut down the economy to try to help control the spread of the virus and is now blamed for the ensuing recession, even though it has been demonstrated that Trump was responsible for a phenomenal recovery from the Obama regime.

We have suffered almost two months of ongoing violence and protests. First, the protests are, supposedly, over an incident that does not contain the elements the protesters are protesting; systemic racism in police departments. The “protests”, riots, looting, violence and murders are all totally contrived by the left. But, Trump is blamed for the violence and racial strife. Even though every location where the violence has erupted and allowed to spread unimpeded is controlled by Democrats and have refused Trump’s offers of assistance in controlling the violence are refused, the corrupt media has promoted the utter falsehood that Trump is somehow responsible for the violence and collapse of local government.

Hopefully many others are as pissed as I am over the total disregard for facts and truth. If so, this will result in an overwhelming Trump and Republican victory in November.

@Deplorable Me: My friend Trump never shut down anything, the governors(except S. Dakota) using emergency powers shut down the economies of their states. Other than that huge point you are correct. Dumb and random non scientific rules, dog groomers, parks, fabric stores they deemed by edict non essential and therefore dangerous.

@Nathan Blue: Will greggie the rock leave when Trump get re-elected?