After watching most of the Conyer's hearings yesterday on streaming video, I saw "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" at the funky independent theater a couple blocks from my house. Talk about a one-two punch!
If last year's "Fahrenheit 911" was a political comic book, "The Power of Nightmares" was a sophisticated and brilliant Tom Clancy novel. Rather than the sarcasm and parody that Michael Moore used to such great effect, this 3 hour BBC television production calmly and articulately connects all the dots that have created the mess the world finds itself in today. Along the way this amazing work manages to tie together everything from Reagan, Iran Contra, and the Clinton impeachment to 9/11 and Iraq in a truly breathtaking and irrefutable sweep of historical evidence.
The audience was clapping, cheering and crying with joy. Afterwards, close to a hundred people stood on the sidewalk outside animatedly discussing the film and how those that just saw it couldn't wait to drag their friends and family to see it. These people had been deeply touched and changed.
The point that ties "The Power of Nightmares" to the present Conyer's hearings and the Downing Street Minutes is the foundation of today's neo-con politics in the teaching to Leo Strauss, and the emphasis on creating "national myths" over the free access to the truth that is the basis for liberal democracy.
Simply put, the neo-cons believe that not only is it OK to lie to the people, but that it is NECESSARY to create a "phantom enemy" in order to focus the populace on goals greater than solving the problems in their individual lives. This is the essence of the totalitarianism that was the tragedy of the 20th Century and resulted in the greatest miseries mankind has ever endured under Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other ideological zealots.
Seen in this light. all the actions of the Bush administration, as well as everything else they have influenced, like Iran-contra and the Clinton impeachment, becomes crystal clear. Again and again, we see one neo-con after another cheerfully explain that the means justify the ends at the expense of truth and fairness under the guise of restoring national "morality." These people have no shame or compunction about the harm they are doing because they believe they are serving a greater good, no matter how much corruption they spread or how many lives are ruined.
The neo-cons are repeatedly compared to Lenin's "vanguard," a group of "democratic revolutionaries" who place themselves and their goals above everyone else. Their arrogance and the way they despise and condescend to anyone doesn't share their beliefs is blindingly obvious. In order to broaden their limited appeal, they ally themselves with fundamentalist Christians, a group that heretofore avoided involvement in worldly politics, in Reagan's 1980 campaign to win at the polls.
And even more devastatingly America's neo-cons are shown to be the codependent mirror-image of the Islamic fundamentalists: both groups a tiny minority bent of dominating their societies and the world in the name of rejecting the modernity of liberal democracy and individual choice.
Those of us frequenting lefty blogs probably wouldn't be surprised by some of the facts demonstrated in the film, but even I was blown away by some of the revelations. Like the fact that the term "Al Queda" was created by the FBI in order to prosecute suspected terrorists under American anti-conspiracy law and that Osama bin Laden never used the term until after 9/11. In fact, one of the main points of the film is that there is NO international terror network, and certainly no top-down organization with bin laden in charge, only loosely connected groups, usually only interested in bringing about change in their own countries, not attacking the United States.
In short, hundreds of thousands of people around the world have been killed and millions caused to suffer in our name to support the myth and lies the neo-cons have knowingly created to "return America to the greatness of it's morally superior past." How anyone could NOT see the parallels with these techniques those that were employed to such great effect by the Nazi's, Communists and others is willful ignorance or simple self-delusion.
"The Power of Nightmares" is currently in a very limited theatrical run, and available for download on the net (www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares). We have seen how resistant the corporate media is to sharing the truth with the American people, whether it is "Fahrenheit 911" or the Downing Street Minutes. The press especially is complicit because such work shows to what degree they have not done their job, and have become part of the problem. Therefore it is up to us to help spread the word and create opportunities to share this information with others.
I urge kossacks everywhere to see "the Power of nightmares" and drag along as many people as you can. if it is not playing in your area, contact movie theaters, colleges, and political groups to ask when they will be showing it. If you remember, last year many predicted that "Fahrenheit 911" would never get shown, but word of mouth and focused effort had it playing to record crowds even in small towns in the reddest of Red States.
Download the film, burn a DVD and have a showing in your own home. make copies of the DVD and send it to your family and friends and get them to show it. Take relevant outakes from your copy and make little feature segments to submit to your local TV stations, especially if you can find a local angle, or "hook" into some breaking story, and clearly reference back to "The Power of Nightmares" to create interest and buzz.
Bring it up in classes and in political meetings, and make people realize they are missing something by not having seen this film.
Get it played on local community access television stations and in college closed circuit networks. Write to networks like HBO and Showtime and ask that they show it.
I have no doubt that starting such activity now and persisting will slowly but surely raise this film's devastating message into the national discourse. This is EXACTLY what blogs do best: spread messages and create organized effort where mass media fail.
The impact of this film on the national dialog about Iraq, the influence of religion on politics, and the right-wing smear machine can not be underestimated. This film could be to our present situation what "All the President's Men" was (belatedly) to Watergate: a way to allow ordinary Americans to understand a complex and viscous deception that has been perpetrated on them by the people they trusted, who wrapped themselves in the flag and God, and who aimed to stand for "law and order" and the "American Way of Life."
If nothing else, watch it for yourself, however you can. Watch it, and then tell me how it affect you, cheered you to see that the Truth IS out there. And maybe, that you can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel of "our long national nightmare."