pms wrote:
> I don't know. One of the points I take from the movie relates to an idea
> that's been a significant part of my meta-narrative for a long time, in my
> critique of capitalism, authority, that is that the psycohistory of the Big
> Cigars powers the crushing materialism of the masses. Besides, I just like
> seeing people who looked like those people, doing disgusting things,
> especially Kissinger. And I reveled in Watergate, just simple indulgence.
>
> paula
>
> WE'RE ALL BOZOS ON THIS BUS
Yes, it is nice to see at least part of the truth being told for a change and a filmmaker with guts. Its nice to see world leaders portrayed as the power hungry tyrants they really are. Kissinger standing there with a stupid smile on his face while Nixon went on an anti-semitic rant. One of the problems I had with the movie was it shows that events like the bombing of Cambodia are the evil products of evil men operating a basically decent system, not the rational products of an irrational and destructive system. Psychohistory sees history as the products of men's(literally) consciousness and not the interplay of class forces. This was true in Stone's JFK and Platoon as well, less true in Salvador. You know the doves are the good guys who fight the war ethically i.e. no massacres of civilians, they smoke dope and joke around with the infantry. The hawks, the bad guys, drink JD straight out of the bottle, kill civilians, and are covered in scars. In Stone's view, JFK was a good guy, Nixon a bad guy.In the end, the good and the bad guys kill the same amount of people, cause the same amount of destruction and accomplish the same goals viz. the service of privilege and power. If only we had good guys in government everything would be hunky-dory. It's hard to say whether someone in Nixon's place would have done the same thing, but the bombing was done for strategic reasons and not done to give concrete expression to someone's psychosis. Maybe psychology had something to do with it, but only as a matter of degree. Nixon wanted _heavier_ bombing of Cambodia, but like Korea, there was nothing left to bomb. I think Alex Cockburn took Stone to task over these issues in a debate some time ago.
Which bus? The blue bus? The magic bus?
Sam Pawlett
"Franz Ferdinand alive, WW1 a hoax"