I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not going to take it any more

Blogging from Bruce
Vonda Keon

October 21, 2008


As I type this, it’s less than 2 weeks till Election Day. Or perhaps its Judgement day. Who knows which way we are headed. Being a moderate conservative, I can only hope and pray that these United States of America will truly be united and not headed blindly toward what smacks of socialism, pure and simple.

I am reminded of a movie that I saw back in 1976. Do you remember 1976? I sure do. Gerald Ford was president. He has the distinction of being the only president that was never elected as either Vice President or President. Gerald Ford was a good man but the Watergate scandal and the Viet Nam War tainted him. He was saddled with a slow and shaky economy so when the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter came onto the political scene with his folksy down home Carter Peanuts, people thought they had seen the light and the messiah. Carter was a new comer to the Washington scene and seen as a reformer. He won by a narrow margin that year. Sound eerily familiar yet?

So, back to the movie I saw in 1976. It was Network; A rather bizarre movie at the time, starring Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch and Ned Beatty. Peter Finch played a character named Howard Beale and he is the main event in this movie which shows how low TV news will go for ratings and how they exploited the poor guys’ madness. There is one memorable piece of rhetoric that has always stuck in my mind.
I now give you ‘Howard Beales’ speech from the 1976 movie Network. You can change a few of the words and this speech or rant is just as relevant today as it was in 1976.


“I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression (recession). 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 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 TVs 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 all know things are bad -- worse than bad -- they're crazy.
It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and 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. Let me have my toaster (microwave) and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."
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 (recession) and the inflation and the Russians (Iranains) and the crime in the street.
All I know is that first, you've got to get mad.
You've gotta say, "I'm a human being! 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!!"


See what I mean? It works doesn’t it? Are you mad yet? Are you ready to get up off your couch and get out and vote? Are you ready to finally take a stand and vote for what is you know is right? Are you ready to stand up for the freedoms that men and women have given their lives to protect for those of us that have never fought in a war? Are you ready to fight for the Pledge of Allegiance and that flag pin on your lapel and Old Glory flying on that pole in your front yard? Are you ready to put your money where your mouth is and reclaim America from the liberals? Well are you? Go vote on November 4th or you won’t have any right to complain if things don’t go your way. Voting is a privilege. It is our right to vote. I have never missed voting in an election since I was 18. Like old Howard Beale, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!! Go vote. It’s your duty to yourself and your country.