20 years ago, if someone had made a movie about this,

[mtnsnake]

no one would've believed it possible.

20 years from now, when someone DOES make a movie about it, the next generation will wonder if it really happened that way.

Hollywood could never have dreamed up the events that have taken place in the last 4 years....

...a total imbecile brat of a former failed president becoming president of the USA himself.
...an imbecile-turned-madman, becoming responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people...and getting away with it as the world looked on in horror and disbelief.
...a corrupt, sociopathic president garnering unheard-of support by big corporations, all in the cause of greed.
....masses of wild-eyed fools with drool running down their chins, chanting "Praise the Lord" and following their leader over a cliff like a hypnotized cult of zombies.

This has all the makings of Hollywood in it, only it's real.

If you told me 20 years ago that something like this could happen in real life, I would've told you you're nuts, or you've been watching too many D-rated movies.

About all I wonder now is what the title of the movie will be when it's released someday and who will direct it.

[Danger Duck]

1. Sadly

The only movies about W will be a tribute to his greatness. Just like Reagen, he was a two termer, and Americans are not fans of pissing on their own legacy. Remember we don't make mistakes, we're American. W will have his legacy, like it or not.

[babylonsister]

2. I'm totally convinced his

legacy won't be a good one!

[Danger Duck]

4. It won't

but it will.

In America, those who question the legacy of two term presidents are labled dissidents, or "sore-losers", or revisionists.

Every President wh ois re-elected secures his place. It's the American way. But it really isn't a big deal now, is it?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. Two words: Bill Clinton. (nt)

[HughBeaumont]

34. It will be the most brazen revisionist propaganda EVER if they do.

It's bad enough they had to paint several coats over Emperor Ronald Reagan's illegal, death-ridden and treasonous presidency after his regal death . . . how is THIS glossing of a failure run by blatant thieves and thugs going to seriously come off? It would defy parody.

[illflem]

6. bush will be a hero in their eyes

many folks here label bush as the cause of the disease when he is just the symptom. It's the American people who have become mindless and tolerate this brand of government.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Amen.

[clarisse1956]

3. there was one made in 1996

It was called "Under the Bermuda Triangle"...Jeff Fahey starred in it...my husband and i watched it...and couldn't believe how true some of the plots in the movie were..It is about a time warp hole under the bermuda triangle that Jeff Fahey uses to stop a President who stole an election to become president and then invaded Irag and the world went to shit..oh..and the president becomes the world leader and thru medical miracles never dies..we both looked at each other and scrambled to find the remote to see when the movie was made..it was made in 1996..check it out...could be our future...

[Nadienne]

36. Creepy. *shudder* (n/t)

[carnie_sf]

5. Bob Roberts eom

[mtnsnake]

8. Good one. I wonder if Karl Rove

was a fan of this movie.

"If there were a 101 on how fascism manipulates its way into power `Bob Roberts' would be it."

I did a search on it. Check out the plot as written by "MovieAlien" at the bottom. The message board comments are interesting, too, at the bottom of the page. This will be one I'm going to rent over the holidays.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103850/

[indigobusiness]

7. Bloody hell...too true. Nobody would've believed it 5 yrs ago.

For those 20 yrs you mention, I've warned of this day. They forsook the Peace Train, and took the Cadillac into the ditch.

[zbdent]

9. Demolition Man - "The Arnold Sch... Presidential Library"

"Oh, that's from when they repealed the 22nd Amendment . . ."

[spacedog]

10. Shocking parallel:

See "Battle For Algiers" about Muslims figting for their freedom against French occupiers. Here's a nice quote from IMDB.com for y'all:

"The torture of the Muslim prisoners is the most poignant relevance to the recent scandal in Iraq. The Colonel's justification for the practice to gain life-saving information is classic `ends-justify-the-means' logic still being used by great nations. In fact, the Pentagon reportedly had seen this film during the first days of the second Iraq War; some say they learned nothing from the film, which is an unforgettable study of occupation and defeat"

[BrklynLiberal]

15. This was shown on FreeSpeech TV and the analogy was

mentioned in the commentary afterwards....

[signmike]

12. the movies were made 60 years ago

newsreels of Nazi Germany.

When I was a teenybopper in the '50s there were a lot of German immigrants around in the 'hood that had escaped Hitler. They all said "Who knew?"
Funny, they also all had been members of "The Underground" haha

Yes, the reverence awarded to Reagan, of all people, boggles my mind. After screwing California for 8 long years he went on to screw us ALL for 8 more. How is it that Nixon is still regarded as a bad boy, since America is apparently so masochistic?

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Didn't Bush do a great job screwing Texas before he wnet on to screw

the rest of us? The secret was that the media was not doing its job in revealing the truth about what he had done in Texas...but the media coverup of the Bush family's secrets goes back a bit...to when Bush senior was head of the CIA.

[nascarblue]

33. Even further back then that...Grandpa was Hitlers banker...NT

[nascarblue]

28. Nixon isn't so badly talked about anymore...

...as a matter of fact, the case can be made that by today's standards, he was further left than most of today's Dems. After all, he did initiate the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the EPA.

[nascarblue]

29. What was the name of the movie the nazi's put out...

..after the Reichstag fire? The nazi's put out some propaganda movie that I've read in a few places very much parrallels what's going on the last three years. It's been said that the Bush administration modeled the whole 9-11 play after the Reichstag Building fire of 1935.

[MaineYooper]

14. try the book Bug Jack Barron

by Norman Spinrad. Written about 1970 or so, it typically makes lists of the best fifty science fiction novels ever written. It's pretty dated in some ways (he thought the hippie culture would last forever), but spot on with how the media would change and influence things. Especially the way images can be manipulated and distorted.

[BrklynLiberal]

17. And there is always "1984" by you-know-who. It pretty well describes

what is going on here perfectly...........

[MadHound]

18. Twenty years ago, many people were predicting this sort of slide

It was obvious that hatred was on the rise, imperialism was on the rise, fascism in this country was on the rise, the rise of the religious right, all of these matters were becoming obvious, if you were paying attention. Margret Atwood summed this up with her book The Handmaid's Tale published in 1985. Many were thinking that we were really starting to careen towards fascism when Reagan won in '80, with scant time left to correct things. Sad to say, when Clinton won in '92, many of us let our guard down, and then watched from the sidelines as Clinton continued to drive us towards a corporate fascist state.

I was predicting that this country would have a major meltdown, civil war/revolution within fifty years. This was in 1980. So far, we seem to be right on track for that timeline, give or take about five years. Things are going to have to get much worse before people wake up and rise up.

[We See All]

19. Attn: Repub Lurkers on DU

EXECUTE PLAN BLUE

EXECUTE PLAN BLUE

VALIDATE AT VRWC HQ AND ACKNOWLEDGE.

34JJ-K

[Nobody]

21. Hey there We See All!

Welcome to DU. And tell the lurkers that Plan Blue is being executed. Details will be available on a need to know basis. Raise the Terra Lert Level to Pink and Green Stripes.

[We See All]

22. Attn: lurkers

Abort!! We've been made.

Fall back to Code 4.

[Nadienne]

37. Civil war/revolution...

I think you're right. I wonder, though: will it be a war of, say, Clinton-apologists against Bush-apologists? Or will it be something more... revolutionary?

[Nobody]

20. Flash Gordon in the 80s

Flash Gordon flies an airplane but doesn't know how to land or take off. Dialog to that effect establishes this during a scene in the airplane near the beginning of the film. It's where he meets Dale Arden, the travel agent who is terrified of airplanes.

Flash also, later on in the same movie, flies something into Ming's palace, destroying it, and liberating Mongo from Emperor Ming. This happens at the end.

Now no one could possibly have envisioned that people would want to fly aircraft without learning taking off or landing, right? And no one would ever have imagined flying planes into buildings deliberately, right? Who was it in the current administration that said that?

I saw this movie with a bunch of friends in early 2002 and I was struck by the parallels just described.

They took the Twin Towers out of Spiderman, I wonder when they'll get around to rewriting Flash Gordon.

I like this movie for the really wild costumes, the campy acting, and it's also the only movie I've ever seen where a woman takes off her high heels to run just like a real woman would.

[VOX]

23. *EVERYTHING* we were taught as kids: play fair, don't fight, be patient,

use common sense, be tolerant and accepting of others who are different, give a helping hand to those who are less fortunate, do what's best for the group and not just for the individual, don't be a spendthrift, don't be greedy, think things through before acting...

All these basic, fundamental lessons of childhood have been turned on their ear. Was it all just a bill of goods? I don't think so.

The right wing is like a bunch of super-bad kids -- mutant schoolyard bullies and brats who now have the power to destroy the world.

[Karenina]

25. The values I learned as a child are almost dead...

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.
These are the things I learned:

* Share everything.
* Play fair.
* Don't hit people.
* Put things back where you found them.
* Clean up your own mess.
* Don't take things that aren't yours.
* Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
* Wash your hands before you eat.
* Flush.
* Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
* Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
* Take a nap every afternoon.
* When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
* Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
* Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
* And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
http://www.robertfulghum.com/ >

[zann725]

24. Actually there WAS a book and movie, "Handmaid's Tale" written 20 yrs ago

by Margaret Atwood, about much of what's going on now...particularly about Police State, and the Religious Right's control of everything, media included. Check it out.

Though I also think the bulk of the population currently NOT responding at all to what's happening, eerily echoes the similar "inaction" by the German population during WWII to just sit quietly, and ignore the atrocities. Denial and comfort zone apparently are alive today too. And that IS what Bushco is counting on.

[mtnsnake]

32. Maybe so, but in their wildest dreams, no science fiction writer could

ever concoct a story that could match what we happen to be witnessing in real life now!

[kerry-is-my-prez]

26. At least we will be the Paul Reveres and the Patrick Henry's of our time.

We will be looked upon as the people who fought the good fight and saw the truth. THAT'S why I will refuse to my dying day to surrender.

[signmike]

30. Revere and Henry...

Remember the only British officer who remained loyal to his cause was and is called a traitor. In fact his very name is synonomous with treason, Benedict Arnold.

Paul Revere was a Frenchman, non? And was Revere not his real name?

[nascarblue]

27. If we're even around in 20 years. NT

[Lerkfish]

31. it already was: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Love the Bomb

[HughBeaumont]

35. Slim Pickens is the Stallion.