TAO TE CHING
# 24
He who stands on tiptoe
doesn't stand firm.
He who rushes ahead
doesn't go far.
He who tries to shine
dims his own light.
He who defines himself
can't know who he really is.
He who has power over others
can't empower himself.
He who clings to his work
will create nothing that endures.
If you want to accord with the Tao,
just do your job, then let go.
---tr by Stephen Mitchell
Enjoying documentary films from netflix more and more. Documentary became a genre that has been expanding its horizons over the last several years. Now that corporate newspapers don't have investigative reporting anymore, independent directors are making documentaries investigating a variety of subjects important to our time. Quite a lot of documentaries concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They are all interesting. It seems like movies where the people are not scripted, where what happens is happening out here in the world, not on stage or film. Of course, there is Michael Moore who has had his character assassinated by the corporate republicans, because he asks hard questions. He makes fascists uncomfortable, gives them press that scares them, like exposing what goes in and out the back door.
I've seen several documentaries concerning 9/11, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 among the more interesting ones. It's the one that cracked the shell erected around the truth of the matter. Of course, that makes him a conspiracy theorist. In a documentary viewed today on Exxon, called Out Of Balance, the president and CEO of Exxon, Rex Tillerson, said, "Scientific certainty is an oxymoron." Wow. Sounds like Newt Gingrich, or Alleghany county commissioner Gudrow. The point of science is certainty. This is why every discovery has to pass the test so many times until it's consistent. Only then is it accepted fact. Theory is only the second level of conjecture (looks like, smells like, tastes like, must be), merely a question yet to be tested. I couldn't help but think when the CEO spoke party line for truth that oxymoron explains better Exxon commercials.
Corporate contrarianism has become the rule now that the multi-national corporations have bought our government. In this time when our government only tells lies to we the people, we can count on any information coming out of government being false. That's the only thing we can count on. Another rule of thumb that can be counted on is money makes all decisions in our government. In the year 2000 the Supreme Court let everyone across the breadth and depth of the USA in on the theretofore big top-secret: democracy is dead, we don't do that any more. I hear talk on the news over Lybia and setting up democracy. A corporate police state setting up democracies in African countries doesn't compute. Like colonial missionaries: You have oil, we want it. We kill you and call it making the world safe for democracy.
I saw a cartoon this week by political cartoonist Patrick Chappette of Hilary standing at a Dept of State podium, old glory behind her, saying, "We support the struggle of the people...against the regimes we supported." American history doesn't make sense any more. Grown up, I've become so jaded by our government I have to go to independent documentaries of investigative reporting to find what is hidden by the smokescreen we're told. Like Michael Moore, these investigative reporters by video get their characters assassinated, legal assassination, and they pay the price.
Investigative documentaries such as The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress, uncovered corruption in Congress of Babylonian proportion. It was good to have him removed. But are they going to undo any of the legislation against the poor and children? No. History reading in school never prepared me for a time when our government would be overwhelmed by contemptible people, low-life, disgusting people like Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, John Ashcroft, and a long list of others. Ronnie Earle, the prosecutor in Texas who took DeLay down, stressed the point in his interviews, "the love of money really is the root of all evil." He also said, "Money is the mother's milk of politics. Money is the devil's brew." That about sums up the American government and the American dream. In the land where money is the only value, we the people amount to nothing but problems to be dealt with by deception.
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