Who Is Howard Beale?

By Donald Mohler

Are you still there? I’ve been away for a while. Why? Because I just have not been able to stomach putting down on paper the disgust I feel watching our nation drift closer and closer to a dictatorship every single day. It is exhausting, and I just didn’t have the heart to share my exhaustion. And make no mistake, we are moving toward a dictatorship at warp speed. Donald Trump is not insane. He knows exactly what he is doing, and he will stop at nothing to tear the fabric of our nation to shreds. And millions of Americans simply nod in agreement and pretend as if this is business as usual. It is anything but. So, slowly my exhaustion has turned to rage which I am about to express. I am not sure how often I will air this anger, but if indeed you are still with me, thank you. Here we go.

At first, I thought perhaps I was turning into Howard Beale, the infamous news anchor in the 1976 film, Network. Some of you are old enough to remember when Beale unleashed all of his rage to scream at his viewers reminding them that the world was an out-of-control-dystopian mess, and that they were powerless to do anything about it. Good lord, I feel that way every single day that the Orange Devil is in power. But then, the next scene of the movie hit me like a ton of bricks.

Upon seeing Beale, thousands of Americans ran to open their windows and screamed in unison, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take in anymore.” It was emotional. It was angry. It was irrational, and it was unstoppable. It was MAGA before MAGA. He was them, and they were him. Holy crap, I’m not Howard Beal. Donald Trump is!

My MAGA friends and neighbors are not going to like this, but at this point I just don’t care anymore. At its core, racism is what drives the entire appeal of this man. He’s known it for years, and when America elected its first African American president in 2008, that was all he needed to throw gasoline on the fire. I know in an Instagram and TikTok world, our attention spans are limited to what took place 60 seconds ago. That’s a shame, but in March 2011, a failed real estate developer from New York City first suggested that President Barack Hussein Obama was not born in the United States. Trump knew it was a lie, but he also that knew millions of Americans were racist to the core, and that they would eat it up. And eat it up they did. The Birther Movement was Rosemary and MAGA was her baby.

The lie unleashed the racist tendencies that have always been a part of our nation, but until then had been kept locked behind closed doors. Donald J. Trump unlocked those doors, gave everyone keys,  and all of the ugly came roaring out in full public view. As I’ve said many times, perhaps not all Trump supporters are racist, but every single racist is a Trump supporter. That tells you all that you need to know.

What prompted me to revisit this ugly past? Recently, the President ordered the Smithsonian Museum to clean up its act and not focus so much on the bad part of slavery. You know, focus on the “good” stuff. And if you doubt that millions of Americans like that idea, just check out the reactions from MAGA World on social media when folks step up to criticize Trump for this whitewash. You typically get wisdom like, “You guys hate America.” Or, “The Smithsonian is just another woke joke.”  And then there is my favorite, “You do know that a lot of other countries had slaves right?”  As if that makes our history of slavery justifiable. What the heck, everyone was doing it. The Orange Man bet on our racism, and he is cashing in those chips.

So, for those of you in MAGALAND who haven’t torched this essay yet, here are some pesky little facts that are easily accessible in any Google search:

We fought a civil war to end slavery. No, it was not about state’s rights, it was about slavery. Following the Emancipation Proclamation, the nation then passed volumes of Jim Crow legislation that made sure that our schools, transportation, and our public spaces remained segregated. The nation would be damned if it thought that a little civil war would allow Black folks to stand on equal footing. Heck in 1896, even the Supreme Court got in on the act with its ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, which made “separate, but equal” the law of the land.

But why limit the racism to only Black Americans? The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, barred immigration based on race or nationality. And who could forget those cozy little internment camps during World War II, which housed more than 120,000 Japanese Americans. Two -thirds of those locked up were American citizens. Do we see a pattern here? As for the American Indians, the government forcibly removed them from their land and tried to erase their culture through government run boarding schools.

Do we have a lot to be proud of in this country? Of course, we do, and we should celebrate that. But we also have many, many stains engrained in our past. Great nations learn from those mistakes and strive to do better. Autocratic nations erase their history to deceive their citizens. And that is where we are today.

You know, what? I am Howard Beale, and I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!  Won’t you join me? The clock is ticking.

Don Mohler is the former Baltimore County Executive and President and CEO of Mohler Communication Strategies. He may be reached at don@donmohler.com.