Money, Everything is about Money Ch. 01

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Our parents had it better in the 70s than we do now.
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Part 1 of the 3 part series

Updated 09/22/2022
Created 01/29/2014
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Chapter 01

Our parents had it better in the 70's than we have it now.

The movie, Network, was one of the all-time great movies that I've ever seen. Written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, the dialogue, character development, description, imagery, and tension is masterfully done. Every screenwriter needs to analyze this movie for them to see what the writer did to bring the characters to life and how the director transposed the written words to the big screen, not an easy thing to do with this screenplay. The late Peter Finch, as Howard Beale in the movie, Network, said it best and said all that people were thinking nearly forty years ago in 1976 and all that they're still thinking today and wanting to say now but don't.

The middle class is worse off now with the wealthiest Americans, less than one half of one percent, only 400 people, owning as much wealth as 150 million people. I can't even wrap my mind around that statistic and that number, can you? It's worth writing again. Only 400 Americans have as much wealth of 150 million people living in this country.

"Wow! Are you kidding me? No wonder why the economy is so lopsided and the rest of us are so fucked."

Believe it or not, the middle class was much better off 40 years ago than they are now. Paid more to do jobs with positions that had paid overtime and benefits, due to inflation and with production going up while salaries remained stagnant, the dollars they earned then went further than the dollars that they earn now. With the power, the influence, and the money that the middle class has, it always amazed me why more people don't stand up, protest, and boycott the things that they don't like, the things that are wrong, and the things that they want changed.

Naively and erroneously, we all think that we can change the things that are wrong by voting one crooked politician out of office only to vote another crooked politician in office. What's wrong with that theory is that all politicians are thieves and are only there to feather their nest and not to help any of us. The system is against us, with everything deregulated, those in power are having a free for all with our tax money. The middle class doesn't stand a chance of getting ahead. With the power, the influence, and the money in the hands of too few people, we follow along as if we're all sheep happy to be slaughtered.

* * * * *

"I don't have to tell you things are bad," said Peter Finch as Howard Beale. "Everyone knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everyone's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar is a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, and 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."

* * * * *

Sound familiar? With the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, what's so different now compared to back then? Flashback from 1976 to today, with too many things remaining the same, some things never change.

So what are you going to do about it? So long as you have your beer, your cigarettes, your cable TV, and your little job, and your fixed routine, everything is okay. Is that it? Yet, you need to see the bigger picture. While you're sitting there drinking, smoking, and watching TV when not working your little job, those politicians you put in power are stealing you blind while stripping away your rights.

* * * * *

"We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat," said Howard Beale, "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. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and what we all say is, 'Please at least leave us alone in our living room. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.'"

* * * * *

For those of you who were around back then, does the above paragraph sound familiar? Thirty-eight years later, what's any different now in 2014 than how it was in 1976, the bicentennial year of the United States of America? If anything, with the government lying to us, with congress getting nothing done, and with still so many people out of work, and those who have jobs being underpaid, things are much worse now than they were then. For so many people to identify with the movie Network in 1976, things were pretty bad back then. Then, as if forgetting all about the movie as soon as they watched it, they forget all about the bad economy as soon as they returned to their little lives while getting ready for work. Instead of the quality of our lives getting any better, the inequalities of our lives have gotten much worse now for most middle class people.

* * * * *

"Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone," said Peter Finch as Howard Beale. "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 (or congresswoman) 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!"

* * * * *

In the way that Howard Beale asked us to protest in the movie, Network, why aren't we mad? Why haven't we protested and why aren't we still protesting. If we weren't protesting then when things were bad back then, why aren't we protesting now when things are even worse? Instead of accepting what little is given us and being grateful for what we have, 'Bless me Lord for the food I eat,' why are we not accepting what little is given to us?

In the same way that Charles Dickens' character Oliver Twist didn't accept what little was given to him so long ago and complained that he wanted more, why aren't we complaining that we want more? We need to complain that we want more now too. We need for those cocksuckers, those thieves who we put in power and sent to Washington to represent us, to hear our discontent and our misery. We need to make a change to the system now. Otherwise, forty years from now, just imagine what will happen. If 'they' know that we took it when it was bad forty years ago and are still taking it now that it's much worse, just imagine the plight of the middle class in 2050.

You don't care about 2050. Most of you will be dead by then. Yet, what about your children and your grandchildren? Don't you care about them? What we all fix now will benefit them later. It's up to us to take the bull by the horns and slay the dragon before it's too late and before we are all eaten.

"Please Sir, I want some more," said Oliver Twist.

Hoping to rise up the masses, Howard Beale wasn't going to take it anymore and neither should we. This isn't TV. This isn't a movie. This is our reality. Yet, here we are nearly forty years later not only still taking it but also taking so much more of it. Not only are there no good paying jobs, the jobs that exist are part-time, low paying, and don't have any benefits. How dare we allow them to get away with that? How dare we work for wages too low to support our families while those top one half of one percent of the richest Americans steal, 400 people, continue to steal huge amounts of money from us?

Tell me this, do you know why the top one half of one percent has so very much money? Hands? Anyone? Not because they're smarter than you or better than you, it's because they're thieves. Legally stealing us blind laws are passed by congress in their favor. Lobbyists representing their best interests are there to protect them while our presidents, past and present, close their eyes to and rubber stamp their thievery. The money that they stole and the monies that they are still stealing is your money, my money, and our money.

That top one half of one percent, 400 thieving criminals, should be jailed and have their wealth divided among us. Those 400 criminals have squeezed the middle class so tight that whatever monies we had available to us to spend flowed up to them in the way of higher taxes, along with higher prices for food, housing, healthcare, and energy expenses. The money that we should be earning and our employers paying us, instead is funneled through humongous corporate profits.

Those in power are paying themselves in multi-million dollar salaries, huge yearly bonuses, and stock options while the rest of us get less than we got forty years ago. When you think of millions of people being underpaid by tens of thousands of dollars a year, every year, now you can understand why these thieves are not only multi-millionaires but multi-billionaires. Now that you know they stole your money. What are you going to do about it?

* * * * *

"So I want you to get up now," said Howard Beale. "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 MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!' I want you to get up right now, sit up, and go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell -- 'I'm 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 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 windows, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: 'I'M MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'"

* * * * *

So, with the above in mind, answer me this. Being that the state of the world, the state of the United States of America, and the state of your little lives are so much worse off than when this movie was shown in 1976, why aren't you all mad as Hell now? You all should be mad as Hell. We all should be mad as Hell. I'm mad as Hell.

I'm angry that I'm unemployed. I'm pissed off that there are no jobs. I'm angry that my government is doing nothing to get me back to work. I refuse to take it anymore and you all should refuse to take it anymore too. Only, with my voice one voice alone, I'm powerless to do anything. If anything, I'd be deemed a nut and if I complain my outrage too much, I'll be locked away where I can't hurt myself and/or anyone else.

Truth be told, I hate how my life has been so depressed by the lack of control that I have over anything and everything and the lack of money that I have to live a decent life. I hate how my government lies to me to make me believe that I'm doing okay when I know I'm not. They must think that I'm as stupid as they think I am to believe whatever lies, half-truths, and spun information they tell me and expect to believe. Actually and unfortunately, I do believe all that they tell me, that is, until I find out years later that they lied about all of this and about all of that too. Now, whenever anyone in political office opens their mouth, other than to yawn, I know they're lying.

* * * * *

Billionaire Arthur Jensen, played by Ned Beatty in the movie, Network, said to Howard Beale, "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?"

I just love this part of the movie. Can you just see Ned Beatty in this huge boardroom or conference room that he calls an office? Can you envision him climbing up on his soapbox with his hand held over his head and his finger poised in the air at the ceiling as if he's God? Imagine that son of a bitch in the face of Howard Beale shaking his fat finger at him while yelling at him.

Right then and right there, if someone was to yell at me like that and in the way that he was lambasting Howard Beale, billionaire or not, I wouldn't put up with it. Definitely I'd put an end to it. He'd have the wrath and the rage of Susan in his face. He'd have my high heel shoe hidden in his ass.

Fuck you! All of you greedy billionaires go and fuck yourself! How dare you do what you've done to us? Who do you think you are? You are just a person like me albeit with much more money, power, and influence than me. Yet, why aren't all of you so very tired of seeing the same people on the news yelling at us and point their fingers at us? I don't know about you but I'm sick and tired of seeing the same people drinking and eating at our trough. Unable to beat them away with a stick, we can't pry them away with a crowbar.

We all should put an end to multi-billionaires shaking their greedy fingers at us because they can't squeeze any more money out of us. Why should we support them when they don't support us? Why should we allow them to continue to buy their huge homes, their expensive cars, and to live their lavish lifestyles large when we have nothing? It's time for us all to revolt. In the way they did in Boston during the Tea Party and dumped the English tea in Boston Harbor because of unfair taxation without legal representation, it's time we had a revolution in the way that we had a revolution in 1776.

Tell me. What's changed since 1776? What's changed since 1976? We still have unfair taxation without legal representation. Even though we think we elected a president and senators, none of them work for us. None of them have our best interests at heart. All of them work for corporate America. How do you think they got to public office? They owe Wall Street, not us, for all the money given to them during their campaigns.

For those of you who don't know who Ned Beatty is, Google him. A great actor, most notably, he's the fat guy in Deliverance that those mountain hillbillies fucked up the ass and that Burt Reynolds killed with his bow and arrow. He also played a dishonest Senator in Shooter with Mark Wahlberg. Now that I think about it, truth be told, how many senators do we know that are honest? Hands? I can't think of one, can you? Now if I was to ask you how many senators do we know who are rich and who have grown much richer when they took office as a 'public servant', you'd all have your hands in the air.

* * * * *

"You think you've merely stopped a business deal," said Ned Beatty as Arthur Jensen to Peter Finch as Howard Beale. "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 the 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 fast and immune, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, elector-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. This 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?"

* * * * *

Wow! So very powerful, if that dialogue doesn't make you want to watch the movie if you haven't seen it or watch it again if you forgot it, then I don't know what will. If that scene doesn't make you angry, then I don't know what will. So apropos today, it's hard to believe that forty years ago this screenplay was written and the movie made.

* * * * *

Money, money, money, Ned Beatty as Arthur Jenson is telling Peter Finch as Howard Beale what we all now know, that the world is all just about money. Everyone wants money but the cold, harsh reality is that few of us will have enough money in our lives. Either you have money or you don't and the overwhelming majority of us don't have money, real money, the amount of money that can make a real difference in our lives. Even though we all thought that we knew everything back then when we were younger and so full of energy and hope, in bleak reality, as if we were blindfolded living our little lives while trusting our government to have our best interests at stake, we knew nothing.

If you have a lot of money, you are somebody and people will not only listen to you and obey you but also they will follow you. If you don't have money, you are no one and nothing but for a hero or a villain in your own small life. What do you say to that? If the above speech by Ned Beatty as billionaire Arthur Jensen doesn't make you livid and call you from inaction to action, then I don't know what will. Are you angry yet? I sure am.

I'm absolutely horrified that I'm nothing more than an insignificant pawn, only able to make one move and take one step at a time, unless I'm capturing another chess piece. I'm forced to play in a giant chess game with billionaires sitting around a table in some private and exclusive club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston or somewhere secret in a think tank in Cambridge, Massachusetts filled with Harvard and MIT graduates. I can just see them plotting our little lives. I can just hear them planning their next evil move while sitting around a conference table in a boardroom in New York, New York or at the private residence of an old, white haired, mean, and miserable, Caucasian man in Manhattan.

As are you, as we all are, I'm helpless to do anything about anything. Yet, my helplessness doesn't stop me from being mad and from wanting to do something, anything, to change the system of inequality. No one person should have as much money, power, and influence as do these billionaires. No one person should have so little money that they can't put food on their table or keep a roof over their heads. This is America, not India.

I can just hear these titans of industry orchestrating my life, your life, our lives, the lives of our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren with all they have in store to make themselves not only richer but more powerfully influential while the rest of us suffer miserably. In the way that we viewed John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, George Vanderbilt, Marshall Field, Milton Hershey, John Jacob Astor, et al, more than one hundred years ago, we view Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, and the late Sam Walton today. Comparatively speaking, why should so few have everything at the expense of the rest of us having nothing? Surely, I don't want to be a billionaire, I just want a good paying job that has benefits. I just want a job that allows me to support myself and my family. I just want my fair piece of the American pie.

"Please Sir, I want some more."

I don't earn enough working two jobs while my spouse works at a job too. I don't earn money enough to keep my house, to gas up my car, and to put enough food on the table. God forbid any of us should fall sick, I can't afford to take my children to the hospital for medical care. Please Sir, I want some more."

* * * * *

Quiet, please. Listen. I wonder what they're saying behind their closed doors. Go ahead. I dare you. Put your ear up against the door to listen. Can you hear what they are saying? Can you hear what they're plotting and planning next to make our lives even more miserable than they are while they make their lives even grander?"

Actually with actions speaking louder than words, I don't have to hear what they're saying to know what all the said. I just have to wait to see what happens. With Diane Sawyer looking so pretty, albeit getting old and needing to retire, I just have to watch TV to see which lying news story they expect me to believe.

While watching hundreds of drug commercials that are supposedly good for me and will make my life better, when the list of quickly read side effects that appear in small print at the bottom of the TV screen dwarfs the list of benefits, I just have to believe that everything I see on TV is the truth. Flipping from NBC, to ABC, to CBS, and to CNN to get some semblance of news in between drug commercials, which news agency can I really trust? What am I to believe when every media outlet, newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cable, and satellites are owned, operated, and told what to report by six billionaire, old, Caucasian men? In the way I just created and composed this story, I'm better off creating and composing my own news.

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