“The old lie: Dulce et decorum est /Pro patria mori
(It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one’s country”)
– Wilfred Owen
Yes, it seems fitting that I am writing these words on November 11, Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, a day that began as Armistice Day to celebrate the ending of World War I, the “war to end all wars.”
That phrase has become a sardonic joke in the century that has followed as wars have piled up upon wars to create a permanent condition, and the censorship and propaganda that became acute with WW I have been exacerbated a hundredfold today. The number of dead soldiers and civilians in the century since numbs a mind intent on counting numbers, as courage, love, and innocence wails from skeletons sleeping deep in dirt everywhere. The minds of the living are ravished at the thought of so much death.
Almost a year ago I reviewed a film – Four Died Trying – about four American men who were assassinated by the U.S. government because they opposed the wars upon which their country had come to rely: President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. I wrote of this documentary film, directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, that it was powerful, riveting, and masterful, the opening 58 minute prologue to a film series meant to be released at intervals over a few years. This prologue was released at the end of 2023 to great applause.
I wrote of it:
Today we are living the consequences of the CIA/national security state’s 1960s takeover of the country. Their message then and now: We, the national security state, rule, we have the guns, the media, and the power to dominate you. We control the stories you are meant to hear. If you get uppity, well-known, and dare challenge us, we will buy you off, denigrate you, or, if neither works, we will kill you. You are helpless, they reiterate endlessly. Bang. Bang. Bang.
But they lie, and this series of films, beginning with its first installment, will tell you why. It will show why understanding the past is essential for transforming the present. It will profoundly inspire you to see and hear these four bold and courageous men refuse to back down to the evil forces that shot them down. It will open your eyes to the parallel spiritual paths they walked and the similarity of the messages they talked about – peace, justice, racism, colonialism, human rights, and the need for economic equality – not just in the U.S.A. but across the world, for the fate of all people was then, and is now, linked to the need to transform the U.S. warfare state into a country of peace and human reconciliation, just as these four men radically underwent deep transformations in the last year of their brief lives.
This 58 minute prologue touches on many of themes that will follow in the months ahead. Season One will be divided into chapters that cover the four assassinations together with background material covering “the world as it was” in the 1950s with its Cold War propaganda, McCarthyism, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the CIA, red-baiting, and the ever present fear of nuclear war. Season Two will be devoted to the government and media coverups, citizen investigations, and the intelligence agencies’ and their media mouthpieces’ mind control operations aimed at the American people that continue today.
Then in March of this year I wrote about the second film in the series, The World As It Was, that explores the very disturbing history of the 1950s in the U.S.A., a decade that lay the foundation of fear upon which the horrors of the 1960s were built, and from which we now are reaping the flowers of evil that have sprung up everywhere we look because the evils of those decades have never been adequately addressed.
But I was hopeful that if enough people got see to see these illuminating and brilliantly done films, built on more than one hundred and twenty interviews over six years with key historical figures, including many family members of the four men, change was possible because more people would demand accountability. That the movies were also entertaining, despite their profoundly serious content, boded well for their reaching a wide audience.
Hellbound and Down 