You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t
have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal? That
is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country,
and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow! Tidal gravity! It is
ecological balance!
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no
nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs!
There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system
of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate,
multinational dominion of dollars: petrodollars, electrodollars, multidollars,
Reichmarks, yens, rubles, pounds, and shekels!
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of
life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the
atomic, and sub-atomic, and galactic structure of things to-day! And YOU have
meddled with the primal forces of nature! AND YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you Mr. Beale?
You get up on your little 21-inch screen and howl about America and
Democracy: There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and
ITT, and AT&T. And DuPont, DOW, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the
nations of the world today!
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl
Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision
theories, min and max solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of
their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a
world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of
corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The
world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the
slime.
And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world, in which
there’s no war, or famine, or oppression, or brutality: One vast and
ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common good.
In which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All
anxieties tranquilized. All boredom…amused.