Need a Little Refresher Course?

I was just listening to an NPR story about the Interior Department and the recently revealed scandal in its Minerals Management Service. You know, our own government employees who are managing the rights and income derived from minerals and mining on US property. (Read http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_10491395 for the latest.) Turns out there's a contagious bad-behavior bug running rampant through the place, causing our employees to have sex, snort cocaine and party with the oil and minerals company people they're supposed to be managing. Well, that's some kind of management, is all I can safely say here. NPR reported that the Interior Department will shortly issue a reminder memo on ethics to the oil companies and others who rip precious resources from our land and pay the government for the pleasure. Here's an idea: how about we take the rights to these resources away from the fine men and women who have had sex, snorted cocaine or partied with the Interior Department team of crack minerals overseers? Hmmm....wouldn't eliminating access to the rights to drill and strip-mine and otherwise remove the valuable booty from our land be slightly more effective than issue a memo reminding them of ethics? Or maybe it's just a time saver: the Interior Department can use the Duke Cunningham memo on ethics, the Ted Stevens memo on corruption, the Sarah Palin memo on firing former brothers-in-law without cause. Yeah. Save time, save paper, send an old memo today. I'm pretty sure everyone involved will put down their cocktails, unroll their dollar bills and read up on ethics right away.

The Peter Finch in Us All

I assiduously avoided writing here during both the Democratic and Republican national conventions because I know myself. I know I'd sound like the partisan I am, and by trying to defend our positions against theirs, I would begin to sound like another party hack who will do anything, say anything, support any position in order to defeat the "other". I'd lay into the liars and pundits, the candidates' mouthpieces and attack dogs, the network executives, etc. But in giving myself time to process the conventions, I've come to realize that I should be excoriating myself and my fellows--not the talking suits and bobble heads and makeup artists--US! We've given the impression that what we want are lies because the truth is too much to take, what we need is pablum because we're too weak for solid food, what we wish for is ignorance because we aren't smart enough to pool our resources, rise up and attack and force change. I'm sick of it all, frankly, and of us, and have been wondering when the majority of Americans are going to wake up to the reality of just how bad things are today, and how impossibly bad they'll probably get before anything changes. Which leads, of course, to Peter Finch, and his famous monologue as the character Howard Beale in the movie "Network". The movie was made in 1976 but seems especially prescient, doesn't it? Why aren't we all doing this? Why aren't we all mad as hell and shouting from the rooftops? Banging on doors to register voters? Putting signs in our yards and volunteering? Need a little prompting? Keep on reading...(or click http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMBZDwf9dok&feature=related to watch instead).

"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; shop-keepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street; nobody anywhere 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. We sit watching our TVs whilst 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’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 write, 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 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!"

Today, let's do something that matters--not only to ourselves but to our larger world, to our community. Get mad, and make it mean something.