It’s about time to review this.
The complete original narration:
My friends, each of you is a single cell in the great body of the State. And today, that great body has purged itself of parasites. We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of facts. The thugs and wreckers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of disinformation have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every cell rejoice! For today we celebrate the first, glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive! We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is a more powerful weapon than any fleet or army on Earth! We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own confusion! We shall prevail!
The original Apple commercial aired during the 1984 Super Bowl, and introduced the world to Macintosh computers. The clever fellow who mashed up the ad took a commercial masterpiece and re-interpreted the images in a powerful new way; but what is almost as important, he did it as an individual. The ad was quickly hailed as proof that anybody can do powerful ads. It also shows that the 21st century broadcast model will no longer necessarily be a top-down candidate message put out by someone in charge at the campaign. It shows that political activists have gone from being mere donors to the cause, to being partners in the fight. And they don’t wait for anyone’s permission.
As Obama continues to emerge as the embodiment of a new hope for American politics and the future of the nation, the cynicism of the old way of doing things will not just silently evaporate from the American psyche like dew before the sun. It will be as we have seen, a wallowing in the mire of the old way, as some cannot learn or genuinely embrace a new way. It will spread as a singular achievement by each individual, as they each grow into a personal awareness that a new way of doing politics actually transcends the old divides, by replacing them with new vision and insight into the truest and highest values that may come to guide us as a people.
As the original narration intones, “We are one people. With one will. One resolve. One cause.” But the horrible mantel of a dictator could never effect such unity in a free people; only a forced uniformity; see lock-stepped Republicans under Bush. Still, there is every hope that some day every one of us might freely embrace unity as a people, and finally transcend the stultifying uniformity of today’s political parties.
