I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

Yesterday afternoon FOXNews ran a promo about a program that would air later that evening at 9:00 PM, a special edition of Geraldo Rivera's program, the first hour of which would be live coverage of Sarah Palin's keynote address at what was billed a National Tea Party Convention being held at a hotel in Nashville. I tuned in at 9:00 to see what Palin had to say, and to whom she was saying it to. Much to my surprise did I discover that C-SPAN was airing the address as well!

Earlier in the day, FOX had interviewed a gentleman from the Volunteer State who apparently felt that this convention had gotten too much ink whereas his own assembly of tea partiers deserved equal recognition or respect or who knows what. Although tea parties have become newsmaking bunches nationwide, evidently there's little or no true national organization. As an armchair observer it appears that the only forces that bind "partiers" nationwide is (1) a dismay at the the lack of influence constituents possess over their elected federal officials, and (2) a looming distaste/fear of mountains of legislation emanating from Congress bringing unprecedented amounts of deficit spending in a stated attempt to address the economic ills of the day. But make no mistake about it: independents and liberals has signed on to join conservatives. If you want to add your voice to those of your fellow Americans who are protesting the ills of Washington today, there are few better opportunities to do it than at a tea party.

The bailouts conducted in the latter half of 2008 under the Bush administration rang in a new era of fiscal irresponsibility in Washington, one that exposed the close ties between members of Congress and certain wealthy and powerful constituents. So far implicated in the private sector are executives of Goldman Sachs, AIG, the Big Three in Detroit; and the bosses of the UAW. Add to that favoritism the egregiously dangerous deficit spending, rising unemployment, and emerging news that the stimulus was an abject failure, and the stage is set for grass-roots protests.

The title of this article for those who don't already know is a line from the from the motion picture film Network, which came out in 1976. Films I'd learned are signs of the times. The most popular films from Hollywood are those written and directed by people who are in tune with the zeitgeist and can crank out a picture that will resonate with the current mood of their vast audience. This five-minute video from Network posted on YouTube captures what is perhaps the heart of the movie. A television newscaster stumbles in from the rain and enters the studio to go on camera as scheduled. Seated at his desk the program begins to air. The words from his mouth though don't come from the producers' script.

"It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job," rants the rain-drenched anchor who remains clothed in his trenchcoat. He soon launches into a tirade, claiming that he has no solutions of his own to the threats of the depression, the inflation, the (Cold War) Russians, and crime in the streets (sound familiar?) . He then tells his television audience with a passionate grimace and tone of voice, "All I know is that first you've got to get mad!" He rises to his feet and with the thunder of a Bible-thumping preacher exhorts viewers to open the window, stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" His producer played by actress Faye Dunaway races from the control room to other offices to find out how many other cities served by her network have citizens yelling out their windows, and after learning the impact of this this evening's program, struts off down a hall gloating, "Son of a bitch! We struck the mother lode!" During the following minute or so the action shifts to a rainy city street in a thunderstorm lined by multi-story apartments. A rising cacophony ensues as apartment dwellers throw open their windows and scream at the tops of their lungs, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Wild stuff, huh? And that wasn't even during a real depression. But Hollywood can sure dress up the drama, and Network delivered in spades in 1976. I saw it myself in a theater back then.

The collective mood of the public shifts, somewhat as a pendulum swings, from joyful to dark and back again, sometimes to mild extremes, at others to ones more severe. In 1976 the mood was rather sour, as one can infer from the litany of social ills that the newscaster was ranting about and his resonance with his audience. During the dot-com boom, the mood was just the opposite, and had a studio released Network then it would have been an abject failure at the box office simply because there was precious little to be angry about and plenty to enjoy and embrace. Beginning with Toy Story, Pixar's 3-D animated bombshells began exploding, charming both children and adults alike. The Internet and the World Wide Web arrived and ushered in a social and high-tech sea change, akin to that of the first commercial radio broadcasts of early in the twentieth century.

As surely as day yields to night, booms yield to busts. The larger the boom, the larger the bust. As booms go, the decades of the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a one of exceptional magnitude, one stoked even further by the easy-credit policies of the Greenspan Fed. After several years of retracement in the early 2000s, the economy raced ahead for its last hurrah. Those nasty bubbles then began to burst one by one, signaling the end of the party and the end of the joyful mood that had endured for over two decades.

The mood of today has the earmarks of one growing ever darker. Its shifts are gradual, so subtle that they're almost imperceptible. The mere presence of tea parties though is evidence of a dark shadow looming. As people collectively feel the squeeze, many band together and spontaneously form events like these.

We've not seen the last of the tea parties, and we've not seen the most forceful. Whereas the ones so far have been principally civil affairs, as anger rises so will numbers and violence. How they will evolve is anyone's guess, and the responses of the Republican and Democrat parties will play key roles. I am not a sociological forecaster so I will make not even a guess here.

In closing I'll merely cheer on the Tea Partiers and epitomize their emotions with a cyber-bellow:

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!