The Last Movie I Saw

I tend to think that much of the mistrust of government so evident in our society has its roots in the Nixon years, and in fact that we've never shaken the cynicism created by the revelations surrounding Watergate and its related abuses. If anything, that feeling is stronger after seeing The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, a new documentary directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. Even though the Nixon administration itself was not directly implicated in the series of lies that made the Pentagon Papers so explosive, the heavy-handed tactics employed by Nixon to smear Ellsberg and his supporters offer compelling proof of the Tricky one's habitual perfidy. But that's not really the main point of the of the film, which I think legitimately paints Ellsberg as an American hero. There's a strong strain of anti-authoritarianism in American culture, but as often as not as individuals and even collectively we tend to identify with power and even rationalize its assumed prerogatives. I don't know if this was ever more evident than in the 1950s through the early stages of the Vietnam conflict when the consensus seemed to be that our might made us right. The danger in that line of thinking should be self-evident, but at the time we refused to acknowledge how such hubris was blinding us to the dangerous implications of our actions (not just for the people of Vietnam and our troops in the field, but for our collective national psyche). Daniel Ellsberg was one of those who tried to shake us out of those delusions, and even offered us proof of their depth, but for his trouble was harassed and persecuted by the system he was still trying to serve. There's a pretty powerful message in that story, and the filmmakers do a good job of spelling it out-- I just hope enough people see the film and take Ellsberg's example to heart, though I'm not terribly optimistic that will happen.