Audio Transcripts
04/25/07
[Start Program]
(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)
Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.
Last week during the whole media goregasm surrounding the Virginia Tech massacre, there were several things brought up that really pissed people off. One of those things was airing the shooter’s video and pictures. People were really pissed off about that. They didn’t want to put a name to the shooter or to know why he did what he did.
The other thing that really pissed some people off was this quick question raised by people like talking head and questionable libertarian Neal Boortz: why didn’t some of the people in harms way try to defend themselves?
Well some people DID try. They DID try to save others. One of the 32 people who were killed was a professor who sacrificed himself to keep a classroom door closed so that others could escape. It was a touching moment of selfless heroism.
And yet, at the same time, to ask THAT question so soon after the tragedy… well that just wasn’t a good thing to do. Boortz obviously got some verbal abuse from the air-fluffed media over asking it, even though they turned around and used it to bring the matter up themselves. Sneaky little bastards!
The TIMING sucked, but the question itself was still a valid one. Why didn’t more people do more to fight back or to save other people?
It’s a good question, but I really don’t think that people will like the answers.
The first answer, obviously, is FEAR. Hey, some nutcase just came in and shot your professor dead at point-blank range! This wasn’t a TV program; this was REALLY happening right in front of these people! Not everyone will suddenly leap into action when faced with a sudden and shocking traumatic moment.
The second answer, equally obvious, is selfishness. Hey, it’s one thing to offer to give the guy next to you a couple of bucks for a cup of coffee… it’s another thing entirely to offer your life to save people that you probably barely even know.
These are college kids! These are young people with futures ahead of them! Places to visit, money to make, drugs to take, beers to drink, and other people to sleep with; and not necessarily in that order. They’ve got their futures ahead of them, and they’re not going to risk any of that because of some lunatic with a couple of handguns. They probably felt that if they didn’t do anything to get this psycho’s attention, then they might live to see another spring break. Yes it is self-centered, but it is also very true and very much human nature.
But then there is the third answer… and it is one that I’m sure will embarrass a whole lot of us.
The third answer as to why more people didn’t try to stand up and do something about this shooter while he was on his killing spree is because they have been CONDITIONED to not take action!
Let’s get brutally honest here… there has been a gradual and deliberate crusade to effectively DESTROY individuality in our Western society and replace it with either a liberal or conservative form of socialism, and it has been going on for well over a CENTURY now! It has been slowly and passively eating away at our will and our ability to stand up for ourselves and to make our own decisions and to carry out our own activities.
Education is one such example. Before public education got started it was the responsibility of every household to make sure that their children would know how to read and write. Now they’re told that they don’t have to worry about it! THE GOVERNMENT will do that for them! The government will make sure that your child is educated… and educated right with standardized tests that emphasizes reading, writing, basic math, but somehow NOT civics.
Think about it! Schools will eagerly tell you to worship sports and how to fix a car or bake a cake, but yet somehow teaching how and why our government works gets treated like the ugly stepchild. Now WHY is that? It really don’t think that it was simply an oversight.
Our government TELLS us that WE DO NOT have to do anything about crime in our neighborhoods! That’s THEIR job! They’ve got the paramilitary forces with the guns and the license to kill. Let THEM handle the bad guys. You don’t have to defend yourself; just let the police – YOUR GOVERNMENT – protect you from the bad guys.
Look at all of the anti-gun message and anti-gun legislation out there today! The continual message is that YOU as an INDIVIDUAL are simply UNABLE to defend yourself or to defend others. You can’t do it! Even if you get the same kind of training as the police, you simply are not capable of doing it! You’re told that it is better to let THE GOVERNMENT carry that burden for you! After all why else do they have that slogan “To Protect And Serve” on their vehicles?
And that message worked. In the early morning of March 13, 1964, a 28-year old woman by the name of Kitty Genovese was murdered outside to her apartment in New York City, much to the view of several of her neighbors. When she screamed for help, those screams were ignored by her very neighbors. One might dare say that they believed that they should not have to do anything. After all, it is THE POLICE that are supposed to handle these things.
Mind you, that was a little over forty years ago.
Now fast-forward to February 19 of this year: a drunk who is cut off from drinking violently assaults the bartender in front of the other patrons. Nobody in the bar does anything to stop this drunk from brutally assaulting the female bartender who is half his size and weight. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that this vicious thug who deserved to be dragged out into the street by his feet and shot in the head like any other mad mongrel was also a Chicago police officer. Or maybe once again the message kicked in to NOT take action, because THE POLICE would handle things… even though the vicious criminal in this case WAS the police.
Of course this vicious thug would STILL be a police officer today if not for the fact that the bar had a surveillance camera that caught the whole thing in graphic detail, and someone had the forethought to post it on the Internet for the world to see. No doubt THAT person would be branded as “evil” because he or she did a decidedly INDIVIDUAL thing. Not to mention that it also caught the friends of that officer trying to bribe the still-injured bartender into silence.
But the lack of personal action in both these incidents and many others that you and I have probably encountered in our lives are a direct result of this eternal crusade to banish individuality in the name of collectivism.
We have a government that abbreviates its laws with cute-sounding acronyms that sells something that is the complete opposite of what that law actually does. They write individual laws that are so thick that it makes the complete Encyclopedia Britannica look like a Tijuana comic book in comparison. The annual federal budget is the only federal document that I know of that comes with its own complimentary hand-truck to carry it around. We have a tax system that is so confusing that even so-called “tax experts” can’t come up with the same figures. It can’t bring in the money needed to pay for the promises made, and yet nobody wants to do anything to correct this.
In short, our government is continually telling us that we shouldn’t have to worry about the things that we are paying for! Just read their cute little summary statements and leave everything to “the experts” to deal with. Cripes, most members of Congress don’t even bother reading what they hell they are putting into law anyway!
They don’t even want us to VOTE! Both the Democrats and the Republicans have deliberately run dirty campaigns to thoroughly disgust enough voters so they won’t bother showing up at the polls! This is considered standard operating procedure for both parties now. They intentionally block third-party candidates from running so the voters think that they don’t have alternatives. Not only that, but the AARP – the old-farts lobbying group – even kicked off a campaign in the 2006 mid-term election telling voters specifically “DON’T VOTE!” I’m serious! They stick critical government issues into the primary ballots because they know that the only people who care enough about the primaries are the diehard party wonks and they can count on those votes.
Our government is also telling us that THEY know what’s best for us in terms of what we see and hear. The FCC’s baby-faced chairman Kevin Martin told America that parents COULD do their jobs and keep track of what their children watch on TV, but he said, and this is an exact quote now, “why should they have to?”
“Why should they have to?”
Yes, yes, why should parents engage in INDEPENDENT thought about what their own flesh and blood should be watching and hearing when they have THE GOVERNMENT willing and eager to do all of that thinking for them? If it was good for the U.S.S.R. and is still good in Russia, then it should be equally good for the U.S. of A. It makes you wonder why they even bothered to shove those TV ratings and the V-chip down our throats in the first place.
We have organized religion doing everything possible to make sure that THEIR beliefs are codified into law by any means necessary. They are quick to tell you that YOUR interpretations of the religious texts are irrelevant. THEIR interpretations are the only ones that matter, just like THEIR interpretations of the First Amendment – which gets boiled down to just the freedom of THEIR religion – are the only ones that matter. THEY will tell you what to believe, YOU just have to believe it and obey.
Put that all together and what do you have? You have a continual barrage of messages that tell you that you are nothing but bipedal sheep. You’re just a cog in the greater societal machine; there to do your job and nothing else. You do whatever the authority figures tell you to do and let THE GOVERNMENT handle the really important things. The most important thing that YOU should concern yourself over is deciding who should win “American Idol”.
So now here’s a lunatic with a gun killing people seemingly for no reason whatsoever. And you’re expecting HEROISM from the masses inside that killing zone?
Well unfortunately HEROISM is one of those little things that gets sacrificed when you’re destroying individuality, because the act of heroism is an INDIVIDUAL activity.
And remember that professor who sacrificed his life so that others could escape? He was a Holocaust survivor. He knew FROM EXPERIENCE what the sheep-like mindset does to people. It is a pity that it is one lesson that his students, and many others, will probably never learn.
(Computer – appropriate stuff)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)
I know I’ve said this before, but like some of the other things I’ve said, it is always worth repeating…
One of the things that I found curious when I was in college was that some of my professors used to chastise us for not being as PASSIONATE about current events as the students before us were. They remembered the 1960’s and all of the people who used to orchestrate protests and rally people around certain issues.
What they didn’t understand, though, was that the very spirit of individuality of those days got diluted by two decades of collectivism from both liberal and conservative sides. Don’t ask questions, don’t question authority, don’t challenge the system, don’t rock the boat… the 1980’s wasn’t about change… it was about conformism.
The sad truth is that people who have been brought up to be collectivist sheep really can’t be passionate about a cause. To be passionate about anything requires a sense of self, which means they have to actually SEE themselves as an individual first. As soon as they do that, they set themselves APART from the whole. It defeats the whole purpose of collectivism.
If you want people motivated, then you have to get them OUT of the sheeple mentality! You actually have to ENCOURAGE individuality. Then you can get them fired up enough about an issue or a cause to actually DO something to help it.
(Pause)
Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!
(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)
[End of program]
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