I learn best through a variety of methods. In brushing up on my history/foreign policy, i've been trying to watch pertinent movies. Tonite...well, at 3:00 am, I am watching Breaker Morant This movie takes place during the Boer War of the early 1900's between the Dutch Boer settlers and the British Empire.
It basically is a court-room drama( Law and Order South Africa??) as 3 Austrailian soldiers are accused of War Crimes while they maintained they were only following orders in an unconventional war against guerilla fighters. Wow, does this seem familiar??? I would also compare the "scorched earth" policy that the British employed (similar to Sherman's March To The Sea->bastard dashed my dreams of ever living in a beautiful southern plantation house with a wrap-around porch and slaves quarters->JK JK JK about the last part haha) to what we did in Fallujah:
http://www.juancole.com/2005/03/fallujah-tent-city-awaits-compensation.html
The movie was made in the 80s (as was I-hahaha) but it explores topics and questions that we still are trying to answer today. As I mentioned with the case of Fallujah, how logical is the idea that we implemented during Vietnam that "we have to destroy it to save it." Who are the bad guys in the film? Is there a bias? I think so, but I want other people to watch it and discuss it with me.
The weather has been shitty the past few days so I think ya'll should go out and rent this educational film and have a "history-buff, though not IN the buff, dork-out fest" with me. I'm adding this movie to the list that i'm trying to get my family to watch. I got Blood Diamond off the list(more so for their curiosity at a movie that could make me cry continually for 10mins) but I still need them to watch Why We Fight, which is a movie about the Military Industrial Complex(coined wisely by Eisenhower) ie. the American War Machine. It features the John McCain that I would have voted for...not the guy who ran on the GOP ticket this past election.
Go rent the movie, or pirate it off the internet (as I do haha) and do some thinking-lest we see the events of the movie Idiocracy unfold.(Thank you for telling me to see it David) That movie was pretty entertaining and really may come to be a reality in the future. We see everyday that educated people are not reproducing at the rate of uneducated morons. To me, this is prolly the most realistic dystopia-or utopia, depending on whether or not you think an idiotic, sex-crazed, overly-commercialist society is a good thing?? ...Uhh.. wait...don't we already live in that kind of society already?? haha.
Obv. my rainy day activity is watching movies!!
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