The End of America

Right off the bat when you compare just about anything to the Nazis you lose me. There are things comparable to the third Reich, but America in the last 8 years is far from it. This documentary takes a look at 10 issues that exist in America today, and for the last couple of years that point to a trend of a totalitarian society.

Our narrator and the author of a book by the same title (Naomi Wolf) starts off with her worst argument. It is the compare America now to Germany in the 30's road. Right away I'm sure she loses a considerable part of her audience, because nothing is like that. Once she gets into her actual argument it is thought provoking and seriously scary. People being arrested and detained for years only to be released and never charged, no explanation, no apology, just go back to your homes. The most terrifying thing about that is they are doing that to AMERICAN citizens, not the evil brown people hiding out in the desert.

Can you imagine going to the airport to get on a flight to go home, and the next time your heard of is when you return home, beat and sore 2 years later. Appalling. Once she is in her element and she goes through the ten points she had me all the way. Suspending habeas corpus, the patriot act, all of it takes the Constitution and spits on it. Bush and his gang made the office of the President the most powerful its ever been, and that's including the years of Nixon, not even he would be ballsy enough to pull the kind of shit that Bush did. In my opinion he should be arrested and charged for all the laws he broke which he did, a lot. That will never happen, but it should.

Overall its a pretty good documentary, it does show the way our government has traipsed over our right and we for the most part let it happen out of fear. And of course we should fight it tooth and nail, but what I think Ms. Wolf doesn't want to see is that America has a less than perfect past. I mean really, when has this country ever been the shining beacon on a hill that she claims it once was. When the country began white men could vote, and we held slaves, nearly 100 years later did we free the slaves. It more than another half century before women could vote. Hell, even during WWII we put Japanese Americans into camps. I think though that we are constantly moving forward, we take three steps forward and one step back. In the course of our countries existence there has always been someone doing something shitty.

See I think she doesn't want to see that there is a balance of power in our country that will always work to our favor, and its term limits. Bush can stack the deck however he wants, but once those eight years are/were up he has to give that power to someone else. So for as much damage he did and the people it hurt, we can now bounce back.

It was a well made doc. but if I had to complain about something it would be that its 75 minutes, when dealing with such a heavy and complicated issue how can you get that across in barely over an hour. 7/10 stars.

Directors: Ricki Stern, Anne Sundberg

Narrator: Naomi Wolf