We are creatures of habit, more than many of us would like to admit, and in the realm of the movies and theatre we can be scripted into our orientations sometimes more than we know. Rather than seeking exposure to new material by way of conversation, we often have our opinions dictated to us by the media rather than seek anything that would challenge our views or change our minds. Psychologically speaking, without permitting our emotions to be fluid enough to allow for a necessary jolt to our orientations, we stick pretty much to the same old same old.
When I found out about the movie "Fair Game" dealt with the true story of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, the former CIA operative who was crushed and spitefully outed by Vice President Dick Cheney's armies of unknown proportion, I thought it would be a repetition of what I already knew. I was wrong, and I was blown away. Until now, I have refrained from begging anyone in plain or virtual sight to see it, to meet and discuss it.
I must admit that "Fair Game" gave me back my memory of those events, but even more so, it reminded me of those things I had forgotten in spite of my assumptions. It reminded me of the famous Santayana warning that if we don't learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. It also reminded me of the fact that our emotions play with our thoughts and cover them over whenever the memories are not only painful but controversial. This is the state of America today.
On the surface, this story is about a marriage, a family, a forceful and passionate man who couldn't stay quiet after his wife was defamed and after her covert C.I.A. contacts were burned and even killed as a result of her outing after they had been promised a safe haven by our government if they assisted her on top secret American security information. To my mind, this movie is primarily the story of how we have all allowed a war in Iraq based on lies and the will and wants of one single man and his troops to allow the murder of the reputation of anyone in their path.
The film heads towards closing with a speech by the Ambassador to a group of students where he warns that war has to be the last resort in a democracy, that it is our right to have the truth. Wilson's speech emphasizes our obligation to speak out, to participate.
In our America where a cacophony of causes claim to yell the truth out loud and are in competition with each other rather than collaboration, we remain as distracted by those who fight for justice as we are by those who would render us deaf and blind to any truth at all. And because many of the progressive forces have been led by people praising their own goodness, we are all so very ill equipped to begin to recognize the aggression in ourselves and to begin to tackle the resistance to being taken over, in this case, by the single-handed army of Dick Cheney who got his war, has had it largely forgotten and roams the earth smiling.
We who witnessed Vietnam and did our protesting then were less than kind to recruits, to the voluntary soldiers who heard President John F. Kennedy's cry to give to our country what it asked as a call to battle for our military. We had little respect, compassion or curiosity towards the veterans who came home with their own nightmares and passed those on to generations and remain unhealed. Who were we to protest the first Gulf War when yellow ribbons replaced peace protests? And then September 11th. After that how could we be so egregious as to say out loud that a democracy is compelled not just to "do something," as so many people said. After all, we had to trust the words of John McCain on the Letterman Show (how does that even happen?) that the anthrax being used to kill and scare people, was likely made in Iraq which meant we might have to invade there. How many of us have even followed the anthrax thread to know that in August 2008 the one single suspect was a respected scientist employed by the U.S. military to develop an anti-anthrax vaccine? He was indicted and after eight long years committed suicide. The case quietly closed except for a few stubborn seekers who insist on loyalty to the truth.
Memory, when amputated, equates to odes to authority, nostalgia or fairy tales that become the fuel running most of our lives. We are all complicit, not just because Carl Jung said so when he spoke about The Shadow, but because when we agree by commission or omission to sit with lies, we blithely send our kids off to wars where we decimate countries and leave the scene of real crimes. "Fair Game" shows us Wilson's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, of July 3, 2003, called "What I didn't Find in Africa", where he spelled it all out, along with his warning about the dangers in Pakistan. Wilson's points are made even more poignant when one realizes that it was published the week that we celebrated American independence.
I have no illusions about the ease of independence or of even its value in a society where we need the ecology of interdependence and collaboration. To seek for our own authenticity of opinion, we have a need for information. We can no longer afford traditions that tell us to if we dare to question the rule of our nation then we do not love our country, that to honor our parents or children or planet is not to question the accepted procedures.
This means getting off our high and low horses and loving our prejudices too tightly, and seeing a film with Sean Penn even if you are arrogant enough to hate his alleged arrogance. As we find ourselves mired in a decade-long war with no apparent end or design for victory, we don't have the time or the luxury to tear down anyone who gives us a piece of real truth and the inspiration to re-connect with our memory and our sensitivity.