The Power of Nightmares

"In the past, politicians promised to make a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people. Those dreams failed and today people have lost faith in ideologies ... But now, they have discovered a new role that restores their power and authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians promise to protect us, from nightmares. They say that they will rescue us from dangers that we cannot see and do not understand..."

So I've just spent the past few hours watching a documentary called "The Power of Nightmares" produced by BBC from a few years ago.

The premise of the doc. is to develop understanding of fantastical political promises told in order to gain momentum and power for ideological shifts in national policy. In this film, "nightmares" are referred to political promises of protection from the most feared aspects of life, even if there is no evidence to support the likelihood of those fears coming true. Furthermore, the maintenance of political (ideological) power is established through the non-occurrence of "terror" acts being tauted as proof of promised protection.

The film compares the growth of extreme Islamic and extreme American/British political ideologies and how they have been allowed to emerge and grow to shape both foreign and domestic policy today. This is illustrated through an increasing paranoia that began to thrive after the 9/11 attacks. This emergence is reported in the film to be a reaction to the social and political search for purpose and cause within the nation. The doc. specifically reports on the formation of American, British (neo-Conservatism) and Islamic social and political extremism based off of their perceived failures of liberal "progress".

It also explores the evolution of our policy-making atmosphere due to the "War on Terror" and political extremism. The doc. largely attempts to dispel the myth that is "Al-Qaeda" and the legitimacy of the idea of highly specialized and organized terror networks--also bringing into question the reasoning behind grand national spending and military presence. It questions the efforts of the CIA and intelligence community, shortcutting traditional empirical methods of drawing conclusions based on fact, by first coming to conclusions and then searching for evidence to prove those unsubstantiated conclusions.

...and it covers much more.

Toward the end, a closing message/perspective was shared, and I found it notable and actually a spark to other types of social and political conversations that can be had:

"A society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the agenda. Half of the 20Th century was dominated between a conflict between a free market right and a socialist left. Even though both of those outlooks had their limitations and their problems, at least they believed in something. Whereas what we are seeing now, is a society that believes in nothing. And a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by a society that believes in anything. And therefore, we label those people as fundamentalists or fanatics, and they have much greater purchase in turns of the fear that they instill in society than they truly deserve. But that is a measure of how much we have become isolated and itemized rather than their inherent strength."

Conversation topics/questions that came to mind based on the doc follow:
1) In what ways have "fear" and "paranoia" affected the way that we treat one another within this country?

-Is this a new phenomenon or are these the same ideas that are prevalent in arguments against some of our nation's largest internal struggles? Issues such as:

-The abolition of slavery [argument against: blacks are intellectually subordinate and unable to function in civil society], racial civil rights [minorities are will change the country and will run it to the ground]

-Women's suffrage [argument against: women's power will become greater and greater and will cause the country to lose focus on important issues]

-Gay rights [argument against: gay marriage will reduce the sanctity of heterosexual marriage and will infect children with gayness]

-The growing prominence of multiculturalism within the nation [argument against: Spanish is going to become our national language, there will be too many religions, and the country will change for the worse, and will lose our standing in the world]

-Health Care Reform [arguments against: the government is getting too large, competition is reduced because the government will be taking over the health care industry, old people are going to die, etc.]

-Legalizing medical marijuana [arguments against: legalizing medical marijuana will lead us down a slippery slope of drug use and will therefore encourage more widespread use, rotting the fabric of our society]

2) The social apathy displayed by the public prior to the most recent presidential campaign was a big discussion topic on college campuses and elsewhere for years. The argument was often made that during the eras of MLK, Malcolm X, Black Panthers, Young Lords, etc., people had things to believe in and fight for in this country. Since then "leadership" similar to that era has been few and far in between. Does the statement quoted earlier ["what we are seeing now, is a society that believes in nothing. And a society that believes in nothing is particularly frightened by a society that believes in anything"] describe the reason why revolutionary leadership has become a rarity--because we are a society that no longer believes in anything?

This documentary can spark all kinds of other social and political questions, these were just a few that are ricocheting around my head at the moment.

The doc. has three parts/volumes, each about an hour and a half long. To anyone who decides to check this documentary out on YouTube, pay special attention to the part/volume numbers so that you don't jump back and forth between parts. I definitely recommend checking it out. Once you watch one part, you'll want to watch the other parts. It offers great perspective on our social and political climate in a way that we can all understand.


Check it out:


The Power of Nightmares
[ link: http://bit.ly/ 4qBcYA ]


Closing monologue: Interesting statement about the relevance of politicians...

"This story began 30 years ago, as the dream that politics can bring a better world began to fall apart. Out of that collapse came two groups: the Islamists and the Neo-Conservatives. Looking back, we can now see that these two groups were the last political idealists, who in an age of growing disillusion tried to reassert the inspirational power of political visions that would give means to people's lives. But both have failed in their attempts to transform the world. And instead, together, they have created today's strange fantasy of fear, which politicians have seized on. Because in an age where all of the grand ideas have lost credibility, the fear of a phantom enemy is all the politicians have left to maintain their power.

But the fear will not last. And just as the dreams that politicians once promised turned out to be illusions, so too will the nightmares. And then our politicians will have to face the fact that they don't have the visions, either good or bad, to offer us any longer."

This doc. is just full of other areas to discuss...

--
a.Rias
www.poli-babble.blogspot.com