A Patriotic Suggestion

Right before just about every election, America gets at least one moving documentary that comments on the state of political affairs or a particular hotbutton topic. In 2004, for example, we got Fahrenheit 911 and a FANTASTIC doc by the director I'm about to suggest, Errol Morris, named The Fog of War. This year we have several as well, but one is coming out that I plan on seeing and I would hope many of you do too. I love this country. I love that we were founded on ideals like democracy, freedom of expression, and the pursuit of truth and happiness. Overall I think we do a great job of that and we are certainly the most humane and evolved of any superpower the world has seen in centuries, if not ever. I love this country like a member of my own family, but just because we love, say, our kids, it doesn't mean we must always approve of the things they are doing. Sometimes what they do makes us sad or disappointed, not because we don't love them but precisely because we do love them and know they are capable of so much more. I've been feeling that alot since 2001 and, out of a place of hope and love for this country, feel that some of the things we're doing internationally are awful. America is better than this. We can do better and we must. Errol Morris has a new documentary coming out called Standard Operating Procedure and it digs deeper into the Abu Gharib scandal than anything has before. It's not just some diatribe about how awful it is, instead Morris attempts to understand these soldiers. After all, they were young, regular Americans before the story hit the presses. So what happened? Why? What can they say about it that might shed some light on what the heck was going on? It proves to be very interesting and I hope many of you see it. America should be the beacon of light, the city on a hill, that represents the pinnacle of humanity. We do a decent job of that already, but if we want to truly embody it, we gotta cut some of this crap out and get back on the straight and narrow.
For more information, check out Morris' site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/standardoperatingprocedure/