It was disturbing to see how the youth, if given the reigns of power, would potentially lead to a Stalinist type dictatorship. It's funny how those who promise utopia if given the authority will deliver the opposite in trying to achieve their vision. I don't think this flick went down well with the so-called progressives.
Seriously? The one thing that can be said of the leftists who were demonstrating in Chicago and on campuses then was that they respected liberty, freedom, and the Constitution. THAT was what the whole thig was about! Mayor Daley was the authoritarian dictator who thought he could shut down protest, engineer a political convention. Chicago was declared a 1st Amendment-free zone. Had you ever attended any events demonstrating the war or Nixon's policies, you'd know that this movie actually had nothing at all to do with progressive politics! Some people who were always mentioned at antiwar rallies were people like Bobby Kennedy, the Berrigan brothers, and others who fought the war and the Nixon Administration's attempts to subvert the Bill of Rights from INSIDE the government. People inside the government, older people...they got our respect for their devotion and work in support of freedom, liberty. It was Republicans in the form of Nixon, Karl Rove and College Republicans who were trying to defeat the Constitution. Secret wars, enemies' lists, sabotaging and secretly recording political adversaries...and trying to outlaw dissent...those were Republican tactics, not progressive.
We were students--we had dreams of becoming lawyers (law school orientation in 1974, they asked how may of us were there because we wanted to be William Kunstler (defense attorney for the Chicago 8) and half the class raised their hands), holding government positions or working in politics. Tom Hayden from the Chicago 8 was my State Senator for years. We respected people like Justice William O. Douglas--we were not wishing to ignorantly pack up anyone over the age of anything into camps--their memories hold the key to overcoming what is wrong--without repeating the same mistakes again and again. Just because we didn't buy senility packaged as a saint in the 1980s does not mean we'd have supported anything as silly and absurd as this movie! Not once did this film mention a college or a university...or the expertise such places and people offer to help fix things that are wrong! As tho children could accomplish anything without being taught....silly. Dumbest movie I've seen in forever.
This movie was a product of Hollywood! That means there were few geeks involved...there were probably no political science majors or MBAs involved in making this...no farmers or students who had studied the World Bank or UN efforts to feed starving people in developing countries....but for those of us who had taken such classes, we could not ignore the foolishness in the theme of this film that threw out all of the most experienced and most educated of society in favor of letting 15-year-olds run things---right into the ground. From starvation to a GDP of zero, no medical treatment, no manufacturing, no technology, no military protection at a time the Cold War was still being waged...it was all silly! Not leftist! The right has always been the party that has introduced voter suppression bills, "Patriot Acts that simply delete the Bill of Rights....and always the ones projecting their labor camp mentality on to others. Neither the left in the late 60s nor the Dems, Progressives, or left ever suggested limiting any Constitutional rights or freedoms then or now. It's a Repub theme to limit citizenship, eliminate rights, suppress expression and representation.
This movie seems to have been aimed at teenagers--not college students, and guys--not women. At the end, I just thought no woman would give birth to one of these little boys who wanted to rule the world. Poof! They'd be gone. Ten and under...so silly. To use this movie to try to pin some sort of authoritarian motives on the left is such utter bull. But the one thing no one accuses the right of is thinking too much. From lying their way into a war pretending they were saving mankind or the American Way from WMDs, expecting to be greeted in the streets as liberators, not realizing other dictators would take the threats against the supposed "Axis of Evil" personally and devote their entire economies to the manufacture of nuclear weapons to protect themselves from the empire-building neocons....nope, no one would accuse them of thinking too much.
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