Years ago, when I was too young to appreciate it, I saw Sidney Lumet's 1976 classic "Network," and it had an impact on me.

I saw Howard Beale, the rumpled, disaffected, disgruntled network news anchor, as a hero — someone who had finally sifted through enough of the world's crap and was tired of pretending everything was all right.

He was "mad as hell" and he wasn't going to take it anymore. He began rants on air about rising crime rates and the weakening political system.

And at the time, that was a sentiment I was ready to get behind.

After all, Beale was finally doing what so many others didn't want to do. He was getting angry, he was standing up, he was speaking out. He was pointing out what was wrong with the system in an effort to get people to change it, rather than just sit there, placated and content in oblivion.

It was something I admired.

After all, it really wasn't hard to see where all that righteous indignation and frustration came from. Back when the film was made, you had Watergate, Nixon's resignation, a terrible economy, Vietnam, a nation deeply divided and the sudden, overwhelming feeling that no one — not even your government — could be trusted. There was nowhere to turn and no one to talk to. Beale, I felt, represented the profound feeling of alienation and powerlessness that many people felt at the time.

Now, 31 years later, it's not hard to draw parallels. A war rages on with reckless abandon; the Michigan economy is tanking; the entire executive branch is crumbling under the weight of its own failures; Congress is too afraid of its own shadow to pass any immediate, effective legislation; our auto companies are uniformly failing; and the country is so bitterly divided along partisan lines that nary a presidential election can go by without a recount.

I've had people ask me, "Why bother getting so worked up over this stuff? There's nothing you can do about it." And for just as long, I've responded, with equal parts passion and anger, that there is something that can be done. If you stand up for what you believe in and if you stick up for those who can't (or won't) stick up for themselves, change is possible. But if you give up, if you shrug off or ignore what's going on around you both locally and globally, then nothing will change — and then you have lost.

But as time wears on, as I look around a little bit more and as resistance from unlikely sources mounts, I've been questioning the validity of that outlook.

Maybe they're right. Maybe nothing can be done. Maybe we're just Slim Pickens at the end of "Dr. Strangelove," riding our own grim inevitability straight into the ground — so we might as well just enjoy it while we can.

Why not just ignore that our state is plunging headfirst into economic ruin because our auto companies can barely turn a profit? Why not just look past the fact that our foreign policy is dragging us down into a diplomatic mire that will take decades to clearly extract ourselves from? Why not ignore the fact that, rather than attempting anything to get us out of the troubles we find ourselves in, our elected officials are more interested in petty bickering and revenge — or worse, trying to look neutral and "patriotic" — than actually using the power we've given them to affect change.

For that matter, why bother voting?

I watched "Network" again last week and as I did, something began to dawn on me. In the story, Beale wasn't really a revolutionary; he was just a pawn. For all his bluster and righteous indignation, he was ultimately at the whim of others and in control of very little. And in the end, things don't work out for him.

So why not just give it up?

Because you can't. Giving up, accepting the status quo and sitting back while Rome burns is exactly what got us here. Closing off from current events, keeping yourself in the dark and staying ardently uninvolved in what's going on around you only makes the situation worse.

Indifference leads to a lack of accountability. Our country, and even our state, is screwed now because no one bothered to ask the right questions at the right time. No one questioned authority; everyone just took it. And now we're taking it and will for a long time.

I, for one, am done just taking it. I cannot just accept that there's no way to change what's wrong. Beale may have ended up a puppet, but he started out as someone who had the right idea.

So say it with me:

I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore.

Pete Nichols is the State News opinion writer. Reach him at nicho261@msu.edu.