The Brier Patch - Carefully Nurtured Illusions

05.14.05

Carefully Nurtured Illusions

...The film, a non-competition entry, argues that the fear of terrorism has come to pervade politics in the United States and Britain even though much of that angst is based on carefully nurtured illusions.
It says Bush and U.S. neo-conservatives, as well as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, are exaggerating the terror threat in a manner similar to the way earlier generations of leaders inflated the danger of communism and the Soviet Union...

..."During the Cold War conservatives exaggerated the threat of the Soviet Union," the narrator says. "In reality it was collapsing from within. Now they're doing the same with Islamic extremists because it fits the American vision of an epic battle."...

The American vision of an epic battle? Doing the same with Islamic extremists?

Are these people crazy?

Maybe we should discuss the power of a real nightmare.

This British documentary, arguing U.S. neo-conservatives have exaggerated the terror threat, won a British film and television industry award this year.

Unbelievable!

Posted: 23:34
Category: World
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Comments

Mr. Curtis said: "You'd be hard pushed to tell my politics from watching it."

Let me see... He's a senior BBC producer, he thinks that terrorism is being exaggerated and the product of "carefully nurtured illusions". He compares it to what he alleges were the inflated dangers of communism and the Soviet Union.

Oh, no. There's no chance of discerning his politics. I can't tell if he's still a Communist or if he's just a far left barking moonbat.

Posted by: StinKerr at May 16, 2005 06:37 PM

Interesting . . . I also read an article today on hydrogen cars, and the glorious future of the hydrogen age of energy, blah, blah, blah.

It stated, among other things, that while the auto manufacturers estimated a competively priced hydrogen powered car would be available by 2025, it would never account for more than 5% of the total market.

Why?

Cost of implementation.

The author also addressed the idea that there is some sort of industrial conspiracy to keep hydrogen energy from use.

He said that while we desperately need the visionaries and dreamers to design and create a better world/standard of living, that their view tends to be simplistic. And that simplistic thought process tends to disregard that hard questions, like who is going to pay the billions hydro-conversion would cost. And the simplistic thought process, combined with vast, sweeping vision, too often deludes the credulous population into believing that there must be some sort of conspiracy preventing the glorious visions from coming to fruition.

And that is the same problem that people like the producers of this film suffer from -- simplistic thought processes that does not ask the hard questions. Like why did Iraq's hospitals, under Saddam, have the highest concentration of vaccines per capita of any other country in the world, and precisely how easy is it to convert a vaccine into a biological weapon? (Wish I'd thought of that -- I googled it up on a CIA webpage before the war. It was one of the convincing factors for me.)

We should call the phenomena "Michael Moore-itis."

Sadly, there is no cure. ;)

Posted by: Anne at May 16, 2005 09:14 PM

Believe it. We're in a war for our very survival, and not only are our list of allies few and dwindling, some of our most vicious foes are within the ramparts. *sigh*

Posted by: WillyShake at May 17, 2005 01:51 PM