Once again the 24 hour news organizations have made it impossible for me to watch current events. All of them (even those not titled "Fox News") are giving credence to a non-story and sensationalizing the most stupid of those living in our country. As long as there are cameras at these town hall meetings where anyone can spur rants of an uneducated mind, then I am banned from my TV Set and all news about Health Care Reform. I am, like the hopeful survivor of a horror movie classic, boarding up my windows and waiting for the invasion to retreat.
We as a country have seen this before, during the Cold War, when paranoid Americans spread the fear of a Communist invasion. Some good did come out of it back then, when Hollywood sensed this alarm and nourished us with our own panic in the form of Zombie films.
The classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) jump-started the craze. The Zombies- all made equal in death- symbolize the Communists and attack the God-fearing middle class who board up their homes and amass arms to fight the invaders. Back then, Zombies were speed-challenged, just as the Americans viewed the slow-crawling conversion to Communism when countries like China declared it a few years after North Korea made the move.
In the sequel Dawn of the Dead (1978) George Romero chose a mall as the location of the attack. A direct assault on American Capitalism as well as the fears of Socialism. Many have studied the political relevance of the Zombie film genre. Check out the links here to horrrormoviefans.com or American NerdMag.com)
The most frightening aspect of it is the fact that history seems to be repeating itself today- as the Dawn of the Brain-Dead sets upon us. The town hall meetings I am avoiding on the news and the paranoia that is infesting otherwise intelligent minds in our country does not allow for debate nor even education about the very topic they're frothing about. Some of us have obviously not learned from history and have inherited the suspicious minds of our fathers. I cannot change that. I can only amass my own arms in hopes the flesh-eating brainless dead get off my TV and back into theaters where they belong.
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