watch out, this is a rant

so we watched this in class today. at first i found it mildly amusing, then interesting, then freakishly annoying, then i just got plain mad.
if you can find it on youtube or something, maybe netflix, you should watch it.
basically it was postulating that terror threats are a neo-conservative fiction based in the philosophy of leo strauss, initiated with the cold war, all in an effort to create fear in the american public so they would rally round the flag and become good moral citizens or something like that.
like, there was no threat from the soviet union, the CIA proved this in the mid 70s, rumsfeld etc knew they were wrong, and decided that since the CIA could find no evidence of weapons, they must have developed ways to avoid the CIAs detection thingys and whatnot. then runsfeld etc convinced the naive and nice president regan that he must DO SOMETHING, because there was this REALLY BAD threat, and regan didnt want to for a while, but eventually was convinced there was this really bad threat, and voila, the neo-cons have achieved their objective, the US was consumed with fear which would unite them as a whole, and turn them from their individualist liberal satanic ways. yipee!

yeah, thats pretty much what it said. terrorism is a fiction created by the US political thinkers because they're psycho, and they use fear to control the public.

for me the brutal irony that no one else was picking up on was that the tenor of the entire piece was cynical and stylized, like this weird music and a narrator thats like cousins with the CSImiami redheaded guy. so when it ended, all these kids are like, "omg! that is so scary, i had no idea the government is so manipulative" etc etc.
so we're leaving and this one girl is like, "ah! arent you so scared right now??"
i just started laughing, and was like "you realize what you're saying dont you? the entire piece was about how freaked out we need to be because we got duped into freaking out by the neocons .... right?"
" ... yeah ..."
"please tell me you see the irony?"
" ... oh ... yeah ... i guess ... but its all true, i mean they were citing evidence and facts"

GAH what is wrong with people? how is it that they dont understand that there is factual evidence for statistics and events? but that when it comes to motivations and theories, everything is based on perception, and this was from the freaking BBC?! of COURSE they're going to have majorly skewed perceptions, and its even more warped because of 30 years of haze building up on their mental lenses.

again. i say GAH.

i basically ended up going on a rant about how pieces like that are exactly why i HATE politics so much. because everyone is out for themselves, its all about self justification or affirmation.
its stupid. its hypocritical. its a waste.

yeah, im feeling bitter and cynical.
i should watch 300 again, get me all going for sparta at least.


towards the end i was mostly just wondering how catherine would react to watching the idiot thing. if she would have been able to watch the entire thing without storming out of the room, or watch it and be able to talk about it coherently with the rest of the wide eyed class.

i mean COMMON. you're going to sit there and listen to what the BBC is telling you and take it without question? if you were going to learn ANYTHING from that thing it should have been to not trust ANYbody, question everything, and quit accepting whats being spoon fed to you by the media and take the time to investigate things yourself if you really care that much.

GAAAAAHHHHH.


yeah, ill calm down later, im just annoyed by how stupid people are.

but then again i was watching it and thinking about how much emotion and personality had been absorbed into the piece, from the people who made it and the people who were watching it.
and i thought about dying and if it would matter at all then, if the USSR really was planning to invade or not, if iran has nukes or not, if iraq ever had wmds or FDR really did know about pearl harbor.
i think not.

i guess we're all just doing the best we can, huh.

when God got ticked off at david, it was for fooling around with bathsheba, not because he was at war with the ammonites in the first place.

i guess in the end im just not interested in the reasons why a country's being run the way its running ... just more concerned that the people running it are good people .... that sounds so lame, but i cant think of another way to phrase it at the moment.

maybe its because i tend to think about things in metaphysical terms ... politics can seem so vapid.

ha, but i guess i do too. oh well. whatchagonna do.