Those Super-Secret Government Agencies

Pam and I saw "The Bourne Ultimatum" on Saturday. It was quite a thrill ride, like the first two movies. Only the first movie made any pretense about being based on the book by the same name. "The Bourne Identity" blew me away when I read it--my first Ludlum book. "Supremacy" and "Ultimatum" were good, too, but have no relation to the movies. But no problem--I loved the movies. It's like getting six plots for the price of three titles (or maybe five-and-a-half plots).

In lots of American-made thrillers, the "villain" is the CIA or some other secret government entity trying to hoodwink the American people or do nasty things in the name of patriotism. That's the general idea, anyway. Such was the case with "Ultimatum." And I got to thinking about how this must play overseas. Foreigners continually see American movies in which we depict our own government as secretive and insidious. Have foreigners come to believe that this must be reality? Well, it seems that they DO believe this, whether or not Hollywood is to blame.

We saw previews for "Rendition," a movie (with Meryl Streep as a villainous spy honcho!) based on our government's practice of sending people to other countries (Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia) to be tortured, if we think they have some information that might be useful to us. They don't have to be actual terrorists, which was the threshhold before Bush took office--just people who we THINK know something that might help us catch actual bad guys. It's a shameful, disgusting practice which has resulted in people dying under torture and innocent people being whisked away. And I'm continually amazed that so many Americans (always Republicans! usually FoxNews fans!) defend the practice. There's no way in the world Jesus would defend it. But what does He know? Jesus is so naive.

Anyway, that's a movie I'm going to see, too. And people around the world will see it. At this point, it's probably just more of the same--evil American secret agency doing things which aren't supposed to be reached by sunlight.

Posted on August 6, 2007 08:32 AM|

Comments

You wrote: "And I'm continually amazed that so many Americans (always Republicans! usually FoxNews fans!) defend the practice. There's no way in the world Jesus would defend it."

And by doing so implicitly separated Republicans from Jesus. Additionally, by implication you connected Democrats with Jesus and thus connected Jesus with abortion and the gay agenda.

I'm pretty confident you don't believe that. However, I am surprised that you would write something so amateurish and simplistic as if you're saying something meaningful. For someone who has been writing for so long as a professing Christian, I would have hoped that you would have grown beyond such childish and petty nonsense.

Bad form, old man.

Posted by: Russel Trojan | August 6, 2007 07:05 PM

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