Here in the USA, for many of us, we wake up everyday and assume more feces has been flung at   the fan. Choas, confusion. Fear and loathing. Who voted for his? Well, we know who did but still…why? As the guy who considers the default setting for the human race to be selfish, greedy and too often deadly in order to secure power over one another, I want to offer a possibly plausible explanation for our behavior.

In the immortal words of Tony Montana, otherwise know as Scarface, first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the woman. That “woman” can be any other object of desire, but I do believe that money is always the catalyst that creates that power. Money–also known variously as cash, coin, bucks, dough, moolah, chips, change, loot, shekels, green, lucre, pelf, wampum, tender, bread, scratch, cabbage, capital–makes the world go round.

That monetary momentum our our spinning sphere started around 3,000 B.C. in Mesopotamia, in the form of clay tablets. In the 7th century  the first standardized coins were minted. Paper money came along in the 8th century, in China. In the 17th century modern banking emerged. Hey, what’s in your wallet?

That poop that is propelled toward the fan blades on a daily–dispiriting–basis has to do with money. It’s a distraction. Pay no attention to man behind that curtain. Look, over there. squirrel! This has been the modus operandi for close to five months now. Our current administration just passed a budget bill that blatantly takes food off some people’s tables, or takes their federal healthcare programs away. Among other cruel parts of the legislation. It literally will kill people. Never mind, as one of the administration’s flunkies recently stated “Well, we’re all going to die.” in response to accusations of the budget bill’s taking away of life-saving programs. Cold, dispassionate, and spewed out of her sewer mouth in defense of the sinister exploitation of the working class while billiionaires get an uneeded bundle of even more MONEY.

Which leads to…

I recently re-watched a scene from a 1976 film named Network. The narrative is a raging satire about the power of the media, and its influence on its viewers/consumers. It focuses on a character named Howard Beale, a network news anchor. Howard, nearing the end of his career at the fictional network, decides to use his last broadcast to denounce what he sees1 as the packaged bullshit being fed to his audience. At first, the network brass wants him fired. Until, that is, they realize his rant garnered millions of additional viewers. Those eyeballs equate to ratings. Ratings eqate to how much a network can charge an advertiser to run an ad. As a result, the network cynically exploits Beal’s popularity. That is, until Howard gets wind of a huge business deal having to do with a Saudi Arabian conglomerate buying the network for which Beal works. It’s not a hostile takeover but a smelly, wink-wink, nod-nod arrangement, as Beale sees it. His ranting to his huge and fawning audience result in the deal being quashed. A lot of money coming our way was thus made to remain in Saudi Arabia. Calling out bullshit. Before it hits the fan, huh?

In the scene I allude to, the boss of the network has Beale delivered to his office. The boss wants to explain why what Beale accomplished was so very wrong from the network’s (and international, monetary wheeling and dealings) point-of-view.

Here is the bulk of that scene, transcribed, which shows Beale at one end of a very long , empty, conference table and the network boss standing at the other end:

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr Beale! You think you have merely stopped a business deal but that is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of our 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 of nations and peoples. There re no nations. There no peoples. There are no Russians or Arabs, there are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast interwoven, interacting, multivariant, multinational dominion of dollars! Petro dollars, electric dollars, reichmarks, rims, 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 sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today!

That screed was written 50 years ago (by the brilliant Paddy Chayefsky). And everyting that The Boss said to Beale back then could easily apply to what is going on in that geo-political monetary system of systems right now.  The blantant differnce is that the worship of money today is not just a matter of a quid-pro-quo, “tidal ebb and flow”. Today it is fully dreanged in its calculus of avarice, not aimed at any kind of “balance” but an absolute winner takes all mentality regardless of any collateral damage incurred in its brutally applied calculus.

Paddy Chayefsky is no longer with us to satirize our sickening descent into authoritarianism and rule by the billionaire class. What is still with us, however, is the possibility of a Howard Beale avatar who can arouse the exploited masses in need of a voice for coalescing their disppointment and siapproval as did Howard: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!

Are you mad enough yet?