Two Great Flicks

Just seen two great flicks, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE and ALL ABOUT EVE. Both of them made me think about very different aspects of modern life.

BFC made me want to get out of this country while I still can. It made me incredibly sad, even as I sat shaking my head in wonder and bemusement at the stupidity that the U.S has at its core. Bush must not be re-elected. Environmentally, politically, economically, he couldn't give a fig about the people of this county -- except to take their money and to keep them in the dark -- and he has proved this time and again. His environmental record is apalling. Terrorists (as S. said) want him in office, he's a convenient figure for them to present as the evil corporate oppressor. His bombing program (a continuation and expansion of Clinton's, I realize) gives them reason to attack us and to keep the people united in a common enemy, and so busy with their program against us that they don't notice that none of these leaders risk their own lives for the country. Is Sadaam helping the Iraqi people? He fled. Threw them to the wolves and left.
Is Bush helping the U.S.? Have you been helped? The tax cut helped the wealthiest only. The work for welfare program brings tragedy. But I digress.

Is the purpose of a president to reflect the will of the people or to do the best thing for this country? It is a philosophical dilemna, one that has human life as its ticket price. Don't believe me? Watch BFC, read between the lines of the corporate and government sponsored newscast, read the articles from Green groups, check out the government's proclamations and boil them down. We are kept in a culture of stupidity and ignorance because it would blow our minds, we couldn't handle the truth? We let our access to information on our own lives be controlled by a faceless bureaucracy, hiding its tracks and denying anything and everything that puts its employees' jobs in jeopardy. How long will we give these rulers, these monarchs, the opportunity to say, you can't handle the truth, you're not mature enough, you don't know enough, that you're happier stupid, that ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is an iron wall that crushes you when you turn your back on it. It is the single united state of America. How long will we let those whose fates are not dependent on law rule ours, make the laws that determine our lives.

We are too busy, we are just surviving, we have worked long and hard for our rest, we deserve respite. What about the billions of other people who worked just as hard, and never got anywhere? What about those who pulled themselves up and then turned around and gave back to the community, to the nation, to the world? What rest do they get? What is their reward? We love them, until we have to be like them. They are not saints. They have no special powers. They just opened their eyes and saw, and realized that to close their eyes again would be ignorant bliss, but a bliss tempered with guilt. WIth memories of wrongs unrighted, of justice usurped by power. With thousands, no, millions of voices crying out in need, day and night, fretful, restless, plaintive, hopeful. And the hope undoes you every time. There should be no false hope. There will be a brighter day, if you have to do it yourself. It hurts to give yourself up, to want to help, to help and to put your own happiness on hold. But there is a peace, a final sense of something is right with the world, a belonging, that comes with helping others. With taking a stand. With saying, I don't believe your culture of stupidity, I don't believe your stereotypes, your way of making us hate one another, of silence and rape, of torture and apathy. I am just a human. Just a mass of flesh and bones, of tendons and muscles, organs and blood, always blood. My veins are open and you are bleeding me dry, bleeding us all dry, you cut open our veins at birth and catch our blood to make soup you sell back to us, tempered with water, misinformation, a veil that helps us take our medicine without question. We are all just humans, the same ratios, the same parts, the same species. None of us is born better or worse than any of the others. But we do not all have the same chances to live, to flourish, to love, to die and live happily. And until we do, we can not call ourselves a wealthy society, a civilization, or even a people.

I have been to two of the places listed in BFC as sites of U.S.-sponsored overthrows of democratically elected presidents. These leaders were not overthrown because their policies were hurting the people, but because the U.S. wanted stronger economies, better friends, because the dictators that the U.S. put in their place smiled at our country and promised huge deals at the cost of thousands of lives. The statistics are startling, but so are the actual places, faces, and even one person who experienced either event. I've been to Santiago, Chile, I've lived there. I've walked down Avda. 11 de Septiembre, the date of Pinochet's 1973 coup. I've heard the stories of those whose family members disappeared. I've seen the footage of executions. I've learned that everything that has been since is a reflected shock, a rebuilding, a deal with Pinochet the lifetime senator, a deal with themselves. I've been to a town in El Salvador where government-sponsored soldiers raped and murdered thousands of women, where people were lined up outside of a church wall and shot with no mercy, no questions asked, all civilians, basically for the fun of it. Where the crater left by an exploded bomb is bigger than some of the refugees' tin or cardboard houses. Where they dropped babies down a well to crack their heads open on the rocks below. Where children wander still, with fleas and bare feet, giving you a tour of the burned-out shell of a house (to earn any small price) and repeating a story that no 8, or 10, or 11 year old should know, should have to know that it was true. These events occurred in the 70s, in the 80s, in the 90s. These are not tales from long ago. There are people, there are children who lived through these U.S. government-sponsored annihilations, the survivors, those who lived and promised to tell their stories.

What would happen if we all left this country in protest? If we fled to Canada, to Africa, to Europe, to Latin America, to Antarctica even? What if we created a gigantic brain drain, labor drain, people drain? What if we just refused to work for money, if we only did charity, or community service, if we all said, we don't believe that paper can make us happy? What if we reinstated a barter system? What if we all laughed at the government and said, we believe in equality, we are going to perform our own marriages, or no marriages at all, no one will be married, you can not track us. We will not report our race, we will not record our sex, our income. We will disappear off of your radar. What if we camped out en masse on the White House lawn? If we stopped working altogether, made it difficult for others to work, to concentrate, to do their useless paperwork until our cries were heard? If we called for impeachment, for full release of their policies, all documents passed by the government, translated by a liberal, unknown lawyer, unbribed and untouchable? What if we took our country back? Because we need to take it back, out of the hands of those who would wish us ill, who would laugh at our funerals and would rather fake a bow to the ignorant masses then help those who need it most.
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Unhelpful song quote of the day: "Let's all take showers in Windex. We all look the same inside, what have we got to hide..." RLS