In Which We Hear from the Ghost of "Mad as Hell" Howard Beale...

Today’s network news broadcast was suddenly interrupted when, lo and behold, the ghost of Howard Beale appeared the studio and started shouting:
 
“I don't have to tell you that things are bad, because the media says things are bad. Every hour now, of every day.
 
“It's a ‘depression.’
 
“Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job and the dollar buys a nickel's worth while big banks and big business are getting rich.
 
“Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it, because the cops who wanted to protect you – not just the bad ones you always knew were there – are now getting fired and defunded and put on trial for murder.
 
“The media tells you that because of Trump, the air's unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our TVs while some local newscaster tells us today we had 4000 new cases of coronavirus because Trump is a racist and incompetent and sold out to the Russians – and you’re not wearing your mask.
 
“They’re showing you violent crimes, and statues being torn down, because you have white privilege, because, in turn, of something Christopher Columbus or the settlers at Jamestown or Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or U.S. Grant and now, by gawd, Teddy Roosevelt or even some abolitionist did – or didn’t do, what do they care? –  500 or 400 or 220 or 160 or even 110 years ago, as if you had something to do with it.
 
“We all know things are bad, because the media tells us and shows us. Worse than bad.  They're crazy. It's like everything's going crazy.  
 
“So we don't go out any more.  We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms, in our businesses, in our playgrounds, in our streets, in our churches, on the beach.  
 
“Let me have my white-privileged job and my house and my Facebook and my Twitter and my Instagram and my Amazon and my 75-inch TV. Don’t ban me or cancel me, or lock up or burn down my business or my boss’s business, don’t break my church’s stained-glass windows because they have a white Jesus, don’t close my kids’ school, and I won't say anything.
 
“In fact, I’ll do better than that. I’ll agree that my life doesn’t matter as much as other people’s, that I don’t deserve what I have, that you should raise my taxes and pay people reparations based on something I didn’t do. You can wreck all the public buildings and tear down all the statues and cancel all the programs and movies and rebrand all the products you want. 
 
“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 riot.  I don't want you to protest.  I don't want you to write your congressmen.  Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write, and they would just email you a ‘woke’ robo-response written by some 23-year-old anyway.
 
“I don't know what to do about the depression and the defense budget and the Russians supposedly colluding with Trump and crime in the street.  
 
“All I know is first you got to get mad.  You've got to say:  
 
“‘I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore.  I'm a human being, dagnabit!  My life matters, too.’
 
“So I want you to get up now.  I want you to pick up your remote, and turn off your TV, and go over to your computer.  Right now.  I want you to go to Facebook and Twitter, and open it, and post in all capital letters:
 
"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!"
 
“Then I want you to go to the Donald Trump website, and I want you to buy your MAGA hat. And I want you to post your picture on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram in it. 
 
“And I want you to go out and wear it, without a mask, anywhere you want to go.
 
“To the store. To work. To church. To a restaurant. To the dagnab playground.
 
“Tell them! Show them! Your life matters, too!”
 
(Falls with thud.)