From Network to today, the prophecy is clear: truth has been turned into a commodity, division has been weaponised, and the system won’t save itself.
In 1976, Network warned us - through Howard Beale’s rage - that our institutions were selling a hollow “sizzle,” a scripted reality.
His warning was not fiction.
Today, media, governments, and institutions have turned truth into performance and division into a weapon.
Everything that can go wrong is going wrong. Brush fires are becoming infernos. Pathways to safety are closing before our eyes.
I write as a besieged observer, wondering how this horror show will end.
Sidney Lumet’s Network remains one of the most prophetic films ever made about media, power, and the corrosion of truth. At its core, it’s a blistering satire of television and corporate manipulation of public consciousness.
It tells the story of Howard Beale, an ageing news anchor who suffers a breakdown on live television - but instead of being dismissed, his raw despair is turned into entertainment for ratings.
His famous cry - “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” - becomes a slogan, a spectacle, and, ironically, another product to sell.
Made in 1976. Scary, isn't it? Nearly 50 years ago it was all there for us as a warning of what has now become our reality.
The message runs deeper than media critique. Network warns of:
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The commodification of outrage - how real emotion, protest, and moral fury are turned into entertainment.
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The death of truth and integrity in journalism, replaced by profit-driven sensationalism.
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The dehumanising force of corporate power, where decisions are made not by individuals or nations but by multinational interests.
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The seduction of cynicism, where even those who see the corruption end up participating in it, believing resistance is futile.
By the end, Beale’s “truth-telling” becomes just another format in the broadcast lineup - his message devoured by the very system he condemned.
In essence, Network predicted today’s media landscape: reality blurred with performance, outrage as currency, and audiences both participants in and victims of the spectacle.
I have always loved metaphor and allegory. Analogy helps me make sense of the senseless. Yet these days, the flood of madness is so relentless that it’s hard to find one story big enough to fit it all.
We used to say in real estate: sell the sizzle, not the sausage.
But governments today are selling only the sizzle - and conservatives need to start selling the sausage again. Facts, not feelings. Reality, not “relatable” spin.
Instead, we’re smothered in the touchy-feely nonsense of “good government,” where empathy is weaponised and truth is sidelined.
Youth crime is out of control because the courts have gone soft. Men are ridiculed. Women fight to destroy womanhood. White people are judged for their skin colour.
Citizens are divided by vaccine status, skin colour, political beliefs, religion, and even diet.
Too many of our governments aren’t healing division - they’re feeding it. All to feed the global elites.
Check this out from about the 1 minute 50 mark.... “The world, is a business Mr. Beale”
They want it. They love it. Because a divided populace is easier to conquer.
Let’s face it: politicians are not our servants. They’ve become our overlords - tightening their grip on our pockets, our lives, our freedoms, and now even our words.
Truly, we are living through a man-made hell on earth.
How will this horror show end?
The forces of darkness are circling, gloating, while the world crumbles - not from climate change, nor from a meteor, nor from aliens, but from within. From moral rot and cowardice.
Once, I believed the courts would deliver justice. I no longer do. The judiciary sold out long ago.
All that remains is People Power - a power that’s been dormant for too long.
We were taught to trust the law. But trust, today, must be earned. Our rights are being stripped, our freedoms rationed like privileges, and our votes - once sacred - are now just fractions, counted by machines programmed to deliver the “correct” result.
If our voice goes, we lose.
It’s that simple.
Maybe it’s time we took a page out of Howard Beale’s book. Not to scream into the void - but to wake up.
We don’t need another committee, inquiry, or government taskforce. We need ordinary people - angry, honest, unbought - to stand up and say,
“We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take this anymore.”
Because the truth is, the system won’t fix itself. It feeds on silence, on fatigue, on the belief that “someone else” will step in. But there is no one else. There’s only us - the people who still care enough to see through the lies, who still believe that freedom is sacred, and who still understand that truth, once lost, takes generations to reclaim.
I do hope you watch these videos. " The only film that showed us how the real world works. "
Let them sell the sizzle.
We’ll stand for the sausage - the substance, the truth, the grit that built nations and held them together when the lights went out.
We’ve been spectators for too long. It’s time to step back into the arena, to speak plainly, to defend what’s right - not because it’s fashionable, but because it’s necessary.
And if that makes us mad, then so be it. Maybe a little righteous anger is exactly what the world needs right now.
