The Power of Nightmares: Part II

The second part of Adam Curtis' documentary "The Power of Nightmares" takes us through the 80's and 90's, as we see the evolution of both the Neo-Conservative and Islamic Radicalist movements. As I pointed it out in my last post, it is really interesting to see the parallels between the two groups. Both had to deal with major backlash and hardships before getting to the levels of power that they are at now, and both had to rely on scare tactics (although in different ways) to get to those levels as well.

What stood out to me the most during this portion of the documentary was the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement. The film discussed how when attempting to gain followers to the movement through the use of morality and religion, people actually turned away from the ideals and were looking for a different candidate other than the conservative George H.W. Bush to vote for. This surprised me because I didn't realize how the strategy used by the Neo-Conservatives backfired on them. I had assumed that he had his followers and those who believed his ideals, and so he won. I was actually really glad to hear this to, because it gives me some hope that people in this country care about personal rights, which Bush's morality campaign unfortunately attempted to strip away from us. I feel though that this is happening again with this current election, as the republican candidates are focusing a lot on morality issues, and I'm hoping that this won't work out as it didn't for Bush when he ran for re-election. It was also interesting to see how conservatives literally "boo-ed" conservative candidates who didn't want to take away human rights. That really shows the power that he Neo-Conservatives had. One of the commentators in the film even said that America was a myth and it was buying into its myth. America created its own past and stories and we were believing them under the Neo-Conservative rule.

I want to point out that I also liked the section about Bill Clinton and how the Neo-Conservatives failed at getting their smear campaign about him going because "polls showed Americans didn't care about moral issues". I liked hearing that because it bothers me when people try to pull the morality card, seeing as how morality is essentially based off of religion and not everyone has the same beliefs, which we tend to forget in our country.

The portions about the growth of the Islamic Radicalist movement also were interesting to me and provided new information that I wasn't aware of. I had not heard of all the other attacks that the Jihad had done in Africa and that they were shunned and turned against by other Muslims. This honestly made me pretty happy because it shows that not all Muslims are terrorists and support the actions of the extremists. I already knew this, but I think it would be important for a lot of other Americans to see this documentary as well to learn that. Our fear of Muslims is not really a fear of Muslims, but just the most extreme example of a group of them that we have seen. Americans need to realize that.

The idea of terrorists and terrorism always scares me, but the ending of this part of the documentary really sent chills down my spine. The fact that the extremists turned their attention specifically to America and bringing down America's excessiveness really disturbs me. Obviously, I have learned that other countries hate America, but it's really unsettling to see the actual footage of people saying they want to bring death to our country. I don't think I'll ever get used to it. The ending of the film left me nervous for the final installment and I know I'm going to have a hard time sitting through that, as it seems our present is scarier than our past.