Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - This is what is wrong with the USA... (Caution adult language and attitude)

roachboy · 03-21-2007, 05:53 AM

well, if you are going to quote "network" then you should also quote this speech, which to my mind is the finest thing in the film--ned beatty's little chat:

Quote:

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, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.

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, just like we do.

It is the international system of currency which determines the vitality 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 21-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.

The world is a business, Mr. Beale; it has been since man crawled out of the slime. 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.

edit: i dont see congress as asking anything outrageous from the administration. i see an arrogant, incompetent president with a truly problematic philosophy of executive power being called to account for one of any number of self-generated problems. and while i think that stalinist-style purging of prosecutors is problematic, it certainly is not the worst crisis these buffoons have created for themselves. maybe the administration sees itself as drawing defensive lines in the sand over this issue as much in anticipation of other, graver scandals to follow. and while this is not the confrontation i would personally prefer to see the administration called out on (from the viewpoint of my armchair), i nonetheless am glad to see these folk--and their legal philosophy concerning executive power--starting--FINALLY--to come under some pressure. i think that legal philosophy dangerous and welcome any and all challenges to it.