What a Way to Go: Network

This is something I wrote in my mock news blog:
http://sbn_news.livejournal.com
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Formula for a Disaster Movie
The Meanies vs. the Storm

I had a rather comical (though accurate) speculation of how disaster movies are made. It's rather simple, actually. Take your disaster (tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, meteors, global warming, Al Gore's "episodes", Rosie O'Donnell's flatulence, gangster rap, The View, etc.) and insert it into the x, and the basic formula works out:

1) Have a scientist who studies x and is receiving strange readings indicating there are some x on the way right now! Have him/her start trying to warn people about the coming tragedy through unorthodox or unauthorized channels, or in some way that will be destructive to everybody's daily routine.

2) Have big stupid meanie politician telling scientist or x-ologist say that you can't predict x (which they'd be correct about, but we're still supposed to disagree and hate this big meanie) and that they're starting a panic for nothing.

3) Then have x hit, killing a bunch of people, and it's coming their way (or so we're supposed to suspect). Less effective if the x kills big meanie right here, because we need his continuing antagonism.

4) As meanie continues to protest, calling the previous x a fluke, the "big one" hits. Usually meanie's family is in danger, or he is, or both. They can be killed, but here we need to see meanie admit he was wrong, that our x-ologist was right all along, and that panic should always have been the policy.

5) Lengthy struggles through rubble, some heroes die saving lives of others, x-ologist survives (or might sacrifice himself too, but usually not, since s/he has to rescue his/her oh-so-American family.

*) Extra points if everybody looks "the same" and you can get an innocent child to comment so.

Voila, instant lame-ass typical as hell tragedy movie, which is usually more of a disaster than any x ever thought about being. For added laughter, there's only one disaster film that didn't, by any means, follow this recipe. It had a completely and radically different formula, complete with going on the offensive against its x and then some. And the funny part was that it was ridiculed as having no plot whatsoever. That film was Twister. This is the only disaster film I've ever been able to respect because it's the only such film that had any creative plot! But enough about that...

The key point I want to talk about here isn't disasters of that nature. It's a different form of disaster. One nobody believes is coming, though it's already happening all around them. It's not one that's been predicted, but has been in effect for centuries, and those committing it are rarely aware that it's even happening. I'm talking about ecosystem destruction, ecological terrorism from the rich, and spiritual raping of people through media and oppressive religious and political values.

Many conveniently oppose the Jewish Holocaust by the German Reich of WWII. Even more conveniently, they remember so very little, but know who to blame. There's this nice and neat good guys/bad guys separation, so that we can easily see Nazis as bad people and know beyond a shadow of a doubt we'd never been one of them. What we very rarely consider is that they barely knew what they were doing as well. In every step they were tricked into being and doing what they and what they did. Very few of them felt anything more than casual hatred for Jews, and rarely anything for "non-Aryans" as Hitler's regime defined them. When carrying out orders to first start eliminating them using guns, lining them up in pits, and then burying them after they were shot (dead or still clinging onto life). Since this was too stressful and upsetting to carry out, business simply simplified the procedure, creating crematoria and chambers where they could simply be locked in, crystals dropped into the tank, and ventilation closed off. The site looked beautiful to the naked eye, and the ugliness of mass murder was rarely seen by anybody. The majority of the work and money needed for this nasty Holocaust was created by supported from people who simply sat behind desks, pushed papers, and paid taxes. Even if they had some idea, who were they to be able to stop the machine?

With every moment that you go to work, earn money, pay taxes, and increase profits for your bosses like good little worker bees, you don't have any clue that you're probably helping create new things through big businesses or military expenditures that, in effect, are the same as those convenient crematoria, those pleasant-looking death sites, the trucks that carried masses to their death, the chambers they thought were going to be nothing more than showers (as that was what they were told), the crystals that would be dropped to kill them, etc. All you have to know is how much modern day Holocaust is going on in other countries to this day from our own government. How much of it comes from taxes you pay. How much is supported by corporations you work for and help to empower, while you take home the tiniest amount of change that you can barely survive off of.

But that's the part you're probably aware of or care about. The work you do also supports the further destruction, the further ruining, massacring, and extermination of the living nonhuman world--forests, animals, environment, and so forth. This is the Holocaust that will come back to bite us.

So as you can see, the x that we've been discussing is, equally, downplayed, laughed at, and ignored, by all those meanie politicians, but also by all those meanie rich, not-so-meanie workers just trying to get by (like you, most likely), and even most of the poor who should be angry, but think nothing more than wishing they could get a piece of the pie. We are that x, and we're not some hallucinated prediction of a storm. We're already here, and we've been doing it for centuries.

The Day After Tomorrow, Mr. Gore? You already blew through and caused your destruction the administration of yesterday. You're warning us of global warming, from which you richly benefit (not just movie royalties, but also the "solutions" you often propose would line your pockets as well). What we need are real solutions that aren't benign, but devastating to this regime we fuel. We need to take down this machine all together. That is what none of these people will have the guts to say, but every one of them knows full well.

There's meanies up there alright. And not a one of them ever apologizes for the storm they brought on. Not a one of them ever suffer from the damages it does. None of them ever end up in the rubble. Except of course for photo opportunities so they can look like they care. In the end, let's hope these big meanies get sucked up into the air and dropped on their ass from a few thousand feet. That would be a delight to see.