This essay was written before the terrible events in Paris. French President François Hollande has declared the attack an “act of war” and vowed “merciless” retaliation. It seems very clear that we are not close to the end of the cycle of war that was set off at by the downing of the World Trade Center and the attacks aimed at Washington. I have no words to express for the great loss of life and the pain the people of Paris are now enduring except to express my complete and utter heartbreak. I was fortunate enough to visit Paris a long time ago. I saw the city then as a beautiful, almost magical place. Regardless of these events I know it will be that way again.
Jennifer Rubin, in a Washington Post editorial titled, “Is Donald Trump Losing It?” included a short excerpt of the famous Howard Beale Speech from the 1976 movie Network.
We can thank the writer, Paddy Chayefsky, along with the actor, Peter Finch, and the director, Sidney Lumet, for their prescient brilliance.
Chayefsky anticipated a moment in a not too distant future where humanity was hollowed out from what was being broadcast on the public airwaves. His screenplay captured Beale, a rumpled, beaten down, TV anchorman as a product of the culture, and so in ways a reflection of what was available and happening.
Rubin’s recollection from the movie crystalized thoughts that have been meandering in my mind for weeks. In political cycles stretching back decades, there has been conversation that politics is little more than entertainment. Frank Zappa was quoted as saying that politics was the entertainment division of the military industrial complex.
Every cycle the marketing gets slicker and slicker until voters can barely comprehend the difference between what is real and what is not. Everyone complains about the negative ads and campaigns, but then we change our opinion and our vote the second the slime starts to ooze across the airwaves. John Kerry, a Vietnam War Veteran, was swift-boated out of town. Thank you for your service, my ass. Get lost.
The candidate, it seems to me, is the pinnacle of that process. Make no mistake we built him, or at least we acquiesced to the construction. Here we have a man screaming, practically at the top of his lungs, that he is authentic, because that’s what we say we want. Just tell us the goddam truth.
And so here it is…
One scratch of the surface reveals just another slick, insincere, politician. A lot of voters haven’t caught up to him yet, but the candidate is literally just like all the rest. What is more cynically manipulative than to cleverly avoid almost all talk on policy? The reason nothing gets done in Washington is the two sides are polarized on policy. Ironically, in my view, this is because of the extreme influence of cashing supplied by billionaires. The candidate knows that talking about policy is a short cut to challenging poll numbers and has chosen instead to dwell on anger. With each passing day he swerves closer and closer to the edge, but with few exceptions never too near to policy.
In Alabama he tells the audience the Bible is his favorite book. Every other speech it’s nothing but love for the vets. Nor is there anything like policy prescriptions that would fix the broken VA. He’s a “big second amendment guy”. Opposed the Iraq war in 2004, a year after we got into it. That same year a public opinion poll noted that 2/3 of Americans thought the US went to war under “incorrect assumptions”.
I’ll admit he’s taken his chances, painting Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists, and smearing the honor of John McCain, practically calling him a coward.
At every moment the crowd roared the candidate must have wondered, “What would happen if I took it further?” Remind you of anyone?
The cackling hyenas in the mainstream media offered the candidate up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No network has given him more air time than MSNBC. He candidate gets his ass kissed there in the morning, then gets it kicked in the afternoon and evening, and it’s ALL just entertainment.
Meanwhile he is a petty, intensely narcissistic, vindictive little troll, certainly not presidential, barely American in his bitterness and victimhood, at least as far as what we would normally aspire to in a presidential candidate. Except, except he is exactly and precisely American, a perfect amalgam of the worse of what we are and what our corrupted political process has become. The billionaire candidate who decries the corruption of PACS wants to, as someone on the Chris Hayes show said recently just “cut out the middleman”.
Chayefsky’s moment, including the near meltdown, we saw from the candidate a few nights ago, seems to me very near. Not to over exaggerate, as it was said in jest, but to see the candidate for the presidency ask for a knife in the middle of an arm-waving, wild-eyed, tirade in front of thousands was jaw dropping.
Here is 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 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 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 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 gotta say, ‘I'm a human being, goddammit! 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!!’"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/
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