It is far past time to get MAD and MEAN.

From the IMMORTAL Mr. Howard Beale, as played by the IMMORTAL Mr. Peter Finch:
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 work, 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, Goddamnit! 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!"

From the Outlaw, Mr. Josie Wales
Now remember, things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is.


I'll be honest: I don't see it being said any clearer than that. In 1968-1972 WE GOT MAD and the fucking war ENDED. I don't feel like being polite anymore, Because I feel MAD and I feel MEAN.
FUCK the opposition. You want WAR? I'll give you WAR. We need to give them WAR. We need to give them WAR until they have had enough, and it is GENERATIONS until they resort to it as a remedy.


"My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom."
"If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking."
"War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want."
William Tecumseh Sherman

But, what form should it take? That is always the question.

We've tried demonstrating in the streets. Used to work sometimes; nowadays, though, the media blacks it out as far as possible, and spins it the rest of the way. Many -- including many young people -- see demonstrations as somewhat quaint, but useless. And as long as the media refuses to report on them even to the level of simple accuracy, they are not so useful as they used to be.

We've written to our congresspeople, called, worked for political causes, written letters to the editor, all of it. And we have made a few inroads -- 2006 elections, anyone? -- but now with a paper-thin majority, the Democrats are reverting to the scared rabbit style of governance. Anytime the big bad Republics threaten them, they cave, at least that's what it looks like to a lot of us rubes out hear in the hinterlands.

Most of us would stop short of violent revolution. I know I would, unless it became a lot more extreme than it is right now. We still have a system of laws that allows other alternatives in theory, such as impeachment. Right? Right???

Dang. What to do, what to do...