I've long been pushing for Al Gore to give back his
Nobel and all his money before he freezes to death this winter. Good thing
he wasn't elected and able to turn off all the autos and coal fueled
electric plants.  See how miracles work? And who turned off the sun spots
anyway? Actually, we need some global warming right now. There's money in
faux religions, isn't there?  I'm planning the next religion. I could use
your help in inventing some dogmatic dogma. Quick, everybody, think of a
name for a money-maker. Saint Gore's Church of the Dogma? Make a web site
for donations....

December 25th will be the annual birthday celebration of the greatest
scientist of all time, Isaac Newton. Merry Newton's Day. I deny that Santa
Claus ever existed. No, I deny that he ever should have been invented. He is
bad for the mind. You think he comes every year because it's good for the
economy or something.  That stuff you got every year was free. Right? You
think  all your goods just fell on you. Well, what happened is that you
increased the national debt before you knew there was one. I bring this up
to mention your nagging little worry  that you are leaving the national debt
to your children and grandchildren. It's true; all of a sudden it's your own
fault.  You think you own this planet. The Indians had it right, about
property. Property  belongs to the Great Spirit.  But we are certain the
world belongs to the living, not to the dead or the ones yet to be. Not to
all the living, but only to those roughly the ages of 30 to 60.  And you
thought you were just getting the hang of it. Well by the time you get the
hang of it,  your time is up. The exam is over and you haven't had a chance
to graduate. And now you realize these callow youths below you think they
are running things.   Nobody really seems to be running this train; we are
all on it for a short ride. Have a nice trip. Merry Newton's Day.

Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it!! Is that clear?! You think you've 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 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, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, 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 little twenty-one 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 DuPont, 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 all 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: But why me?

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

Program Director: Take 2, cue 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!!"

I have at least 7 theories about modern medicine:

1. We are in the Medical Dark Ages until the maturity of gene-based dna
therapy.
2. Some of us have never died yet so the odds statistically are against it.
3. All die of something that was their fault. It's Freudian guilt..
4. Smokers I have known got frequent chest x-rays for the cough. The x-rays
caused their fatal lung cancers.
5. Lots of people die in hospitals. If they would stay away from those
places, they would still be alive.
6. I know patients who have died of placebos.
7. We are all pre-terminal.