...I also highly recommend it. And it is frighteningly relevant today.
The Bush Regime and the Rovian Wurlizer reminded me too of the end of this very prescient movie, Three Days of the Condor. Robert Redford plays the smart, innocent CIA reader (Higgins) who stumbles upon an internal conspiracy within the CIA to destablize the Mideast. Robert Culp plays the establishmentarian CIA (Higgins). In this final scene of the movie Higgins seeks to bring Turner in, most probably to kill him, so that things can proceed as planned. Turner (like a movie Siebel Edmonds) plays his only card as they stand in front of the NY Times building. The dialogue proceeds as follows:
Higgins: Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?
Turner: Are you crazy?
Higgins: Am l? ...Look, Turner -- Do we have plans?
Turner: No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games-- What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do.
Higgins: So Atwood just took the games too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he? A renegade operation.
Turner: Atwood knew the Company would never authorize it, not with the heat on the company.
Higgins: What if there hadn't been any heat? Suppose I hadn't stumbled on their plan?
Turner: Different ballgame. Fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan. The plan was all right. The plan would've worked.
Higgins: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Turner: No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 5 or 10 years -- food, plutonium, and maybe even sooner. What do you think the people are going to want us to do then?
Higgins: Ask them.
Turner: Not now. Then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. Want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll want us to get it for them.
Turner: Boy, have you found a home. There were seven people killed, Higgins.
Higgins: - The company didn't order it. Atwood did.
Turner: Atwood did. And who the hell is Atwood? He's you. He's all you guys. Seven people killed, and you play fucking games!
Higgins: Right. And the other side does, too. That's why we can't let you stay outside.
Turner: Well, go on home, Higgins. Go on. They've got it.
Higgins: - What?
Turner: - You know where we are. Just look around. They've got it. That's where they ship from. (looks around at the NY Times building) They've got all of it.
Higgins: What? What did you do?
Turner: I told them a story. You play games, I told them a story.
Higgins: Oh, you -- You poor, dumb son of a bitch. You've done more damage than you know.
Turner: I hope so.
Higgins: You're about to be a very lonely man. It didn't have to end this way.
Turner: Of course it did.
Higgins: Hey, Turner. How do you know they'll print it? ... You can take a walk, but how far if they don't print it?
Turner: They'll print it.
Higgins: How do you know?
(camera zooms out and both Higgins and Turner are lost in busy NYC sidewalk crowds ... we hear Christmas carols from speakers at retail outlets along the street ...)
Remember Christ, our Savior
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all
from satan's power
When we're gone astray
Higgins speaks to the "willful ignorance" of the general population in that, when resources dwindle, they do not want to hear how its government solves their problems. As Higgins says, "Not now. Then. Ask them when they're running out. ... Want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll want us to get it for them."
The principle of "just take it for them", "what the people will want then", does found USG foreign policy since WWII. Take a look at this quote from one of the founding fathers of post-WWII policy:
The US has about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.
We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford the luxury of altruism and world benefaction. We should cease talks about such vague and unreal objectives as human rights and raising of living standards and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
--George Kennan, PPS 23, 1948
The "they" who will want the "Company" to just "get it for them": If George Bush in 2002 told them that we will invade Iraq in order to build impregnable military garrisons from which we could radiate future imperial power -- and thereby guarantee future flows of oil -- and if Bush said we're invading Iraq to crush the alternate example set by Hussein's pricing of oil in Euros, thereby securing the continued hegemony of the dollar (which allows us to overconsume and overborrow), this "they" would approve (not us, I mean the vast sleepy middle). That Bush ineptly took a different propoganda course causes some discongruent pain now, and puts the entire Bush agenda at risk (proving the extreme incompetence of this administration).
I think there is a great middle majority of the US population that does not care how the USG solves their problems for them, as long as they stay employed, can buy X-Boxes for their children and plasma TV's for themselves, own two or three cars and take vacations, build a McMansion here and there, and put a little away for retirement. This gutless class of hypocrits are all around us.
It's why so many could tolerate the U.S. sponsored atrocities in Central America in the eighties and early nineties. Iran-Contra. The presence of the SOA on American soil. It's why they sit back comfortably when Bush stole the 2000 election. It's why they tolerate the lies that "justified" Iraq -- they want their USG to just "get it for them", no questions asked. And they tell themselves stories about the good intentions of our leadership when on occassion they can't sleep at night.
Meanwhile an even more selfish and rapacious upper class takes advantage of the "willful ignorance" of a fat and sedate middle when furthering their own agenda.
It's the Wiemar middle after the Riechstag fire, just before Kristallnact, just before the Holocaust, just before the second world war erupted...all over again.
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