This document was first completed on Thursday, November 1, 2007 and was most recently revised on Tuesday, September 8, 2020.
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Segment 1
Note: Segments shown herein correspond to the original TV presentation.
We must act before Americans begin to understand they have options. None of us anymore believe Americans will resist to the death. But there are other options. They could simply refuse to cooperate. They could unify in spirit.
Sometimes cooperation is more important than talent.
Survival is power without dogma. We manipulate in terms of the ultimate success of our goals, not their meaning.
It [the Russian takeover] worked because you lost your country before we ever got here.
Your young people [are] attacking the symbols of power they can see . . . . They resist in ways that make them feel good, not those that actually accomplish anything. Actually, it's a controlled provocation. Our agents stir them up so that we can let them release their frustrations. At the same time, we keep track of them, give them a scare, arrest some.
Segment 2
The longer we wait, the less likely we'll ever do anything.
When you lose and fail, it is understandable. When you win and fail, that brings madness.
Segment 3
Nobody wanted to risk anything for anybody else. Everybody afraid they were gonna lose what they had. The knew it was bad. They were just afraid it'd get worse. That's all they lived for. For things not to get worse.
Make of an adversary a friend, and together you will plant a field. Make of him a slave, and you cannot bury him enough times.
It may surprise you, but in many ways Russians can be fiercely independent. But our system, 75 years of socialism, has produced a people who wish to be lead, who wish the government to tell them what is right, and what is wrong. They rely on the government to keep in check their baser instincts, their — their selfishness, their greed, so they no longer have to make those judgments themselves . . . . For us, just the simple fact that if we could neutralize America and take our proper place in the world, the Communist Man would emerge. So, now we control most of the world and we don't have enough competent people to run it. We're failing, because our system has produced a people who don't understand the idea of choice. They can't make an independent decision. Always, everything must be — must be checked with the next level and then the next until finally it's safely within the government. You know the only virtue we still have as a people is a kind of madness of, frenzy for living life. We love passionately, we love those we're close to irrationally, we love our country, not the USSR, but — but Russia, our homeland. And uh, of course, this has been very effective in keeping people in line, whether under the Czar or the Politburo . . . . In some ways, it's more than you had. You had political freedom, but you lost your passion. You became embarrassed of passion, of feeling strongly about anything.
Totalitarianism doesn't need armies. It only needs to control a couple of things. The media, and the ability to dispense privilege to some and to withhold it from others. But of course, a weak and divided people helps.
I'm about to become a part of a system which some future generation is going to rebel against. I'll be hated by people I don't even know, who don't understand why something was done, just as all the kids growing up now don't have any idea of the difference between the symbol of Abraham Lincoln and what he actually stood for. You can't look at those eyes and not think of what being an American has meant. Now there's an end to it. Soon, there will be no America. We'll be history, quickly lost and distorted, like Mr. Lincoln himself. I don't know. I think of Jackie and Scott. We wanted to protect them. Maybe we were trying not to infect them with our ideas which seem to have gone so wrong. I suppose there will have to be new revolutions, with new generations who will have to discover the values which our forefathers handed down to us. If those truths stop being real, maybe it's better to let 'em go, to let some new generation discover as though for the first time. Maybe freedom is just one of those things you can't inherit.
Segment 4
You know, this may be the first time in history there's no escape. Jews in Europe, if they were lucky and they had somebody helpin' them, could escape to South America, England, Switzerland, America, even Palestine. Central Americans, Mexicans, boat people from Vietnam, an' Cambodia, Haiti, legally or not, there was always someplace to go. There was always some place of hope, even when it wasn't the U.S., that they could go to. And it was, in part, because of America. The idea. Now, there are no more safe places. In a funny way, it's become one world. Too bad. So, if a safe place is going to exist, I guess it'll have to be built somewhere. Maybe here.
Segment 5
My life's not what's important. What's important is that we need a deeper kind of resistance than anything we've ever thought about. We need to be for somethin', not just against the Russians.
Segment 6
We are the voice of the new generation. We are the voice of the new people. The destructive ways of the past are gone. We will replace them with our vision of the future. The Party will lead us to the new age. There have been those who have tried to stop the new age. They are the corrupt reminder of the past. They have tried to confuse us with the idea that the old America was a good country. We know that lie. History teaches us that lie. We are grateful to our Soviet brothers who saved the world from destruction and we can now join them in a world of socialist brotherhood. Everyone will go to school, everyone will have a job, everyone will be equal. No one will exploit or be exploited, and all those who oppose this wonderful vision will be crushed.
You know, for most people, bein' American never meant that much any way, you know that? We were all just living our own lives doing the best we could. Last time there's any real American spirit was World War 2, 50 years ago, half a damn century. Damn, I'm so tired of this "I'm an American" bull! Where was all that patriotism when it counted? Where was that willingness to sacrifice? Nobody wanted to join the damn army to defend the country unless they got paid well! Nobody wanted to give any time to public service unless they could make a career out of it! An' I didn't notice a lot of us giving up our lives in the last 10 years!
Segment 7
I think I know what difference it makes. I think deep inside we all know. Every person in this barn, in his heart knows. We don't any of us want to be afraid anymore. Those who want to reach for their guns, those who want to keep 'em buried. It's the same thing. Fear's drivin' us away from believin' in ourselves, an' believin' we can still be Americans. That's what fear does. It divides, an' destroys. I've had fears all my life. For a long time, it was that I wouldn't be right. My Dad knows that about me, kept us from being friends for a good part of our lives. An' when I ran for the presidency, I was afraid that if nobody followed my lead, it'd prove I was wrong. When they sent me to prison, I was afraid I'd loose my understanding, my clarity. I was afraid they'd take away what I held in my heart. Then when I was released and came back here, I was afraid somebody'd notice me. Ask me to participate. Ask me to live. Thank God for this town, for you people. Thank God for a black minister I met while I was tryin' to get to my children, an' an Episcopal minister who lost his faith in the church, but not in the people. Thank God for those Americans in Chicago. When I heard their voices, I — I lost my fear when I heard their voices. Thank God for an exile from this town, who saved my life. An' thank God for my sister, who reminded me, by tellin' me about our ancestors, that there's an inevitability to our human effort; the tragedy and nobility are in the same thing. In the survival of the spirit, undiminished by the pain, hardships, even the brutality of existence. She talked about our great-great grandmother when she was a young woman sitting in a dug-out out there, holdin' her dead baby in her arms, singin' the Rock of Ages, with the 40 below wind howling at the trap door. And my son, the miracle is that for the past two days, my son's been in that same dug-out. While I'm pretty sure he wasn't singin' Rock of Ages, he was survivin'. An' his survival is worth any price I have to pay.
I'm not afraid anymore. Look at us. Here we are, who we are because our forefathers struggled through their lives, building a dream. Sacrificin' for it when that was what was called for. Dyin' for it. We're the result. The dream didn't die with them. It lives in us. I can't, I won't abandon that legacy. America's not a flag, or a piece of territory. It's each one of us, in here, around the country. That's what America is. How can we give it up? I can't. Ultimately, I have to be true to my forefathers. I have to be true to my son, who saved my life as sure as I saved his. Because he's here. Because he's alive. Alive and free!
The Funeral Dialog
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| Devin: | I'm not gonna accept the break-up of America. I'll resist with my spirit, I'll resist with my life. | |
| Billy: | My father — my father died, because he believed that what he stood for was more important than his life. My father gave me life. He gave me physical life, and then he gave me a reason for the rest of my life. | |
| Devin: | I can resist because I've found the love for my children, possibilities that their lives are more important than my own. | |
| Billy: | He said that everybody has to die, and so it's not dying that's what's so bad, it's having lived for nothing. | |
| Devin: | I'll live through my children, through whatever good and true things I might have taught them, or the legacy of fear I might have left them. | |
| Billy: | My father lived for something. He lived for himself. He lived for his ideals. He lived for me, and he lived for you. | |
| Devin: | Each of us will find our best selves, or our worst selves, and in finding that, immortality. |