I’ve been facinated watching the last several months the political discourse in the US. At first when Trump announced his run for the White House he was seen merely as a joke, or PR stunt. Every time a pundant said, “he’ll never pass [insert milestone here]” Trump surprised everyone. Everytime a poll came out saying he would never win this state or that, he has surprised us. (He’s also shamed the pollsters, who are either REALLY bad at their job or just plain LYING about what they SEE happening in order to influence what they WANT to happen.)
I, on the other, hand have just been sitting and watching and I find it really interesting. I don’t know WHAT it means. It could mean that “America wants a dufus in the White House”. It could mean that “America wants a racist in the White House”. Or, it could just mean that America wants someone DIFFERENT in the White House.
It could also mean that “the establishment” is completely out of touch with the American populace and the fact that we’ve been “dumbed down” by watching American Idol and The Bachelor for SO long that we don’t know WHAT is good for us. But one thing that is clear is that Donald Trump is getting people out to vote and he IS creating a ground swell of people that are, like Howard Beale in Network, “Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”.
What will be the outcome? I fear Hillary will win, but that is a whole other set of problems. Ultimately I don’t think it matters who is in the White House. I believe the American government is broken by lobbiest and PACs. Its pretty clear that the people aren’t satisfied.
Meanwhile, enjoy this clip… sort of weird how accurate it is even today, 40 years later.
“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 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, God damn it! 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!”