The actor and director Robert Redford makes some fascinating comments on the miserable state of US politics in today’s issue of one of Germany’s leading newspapers, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a centrist publication. The occasion for the interview with him is his new movie Lions for Lambs, which opens this week throughout Germany, where there is great interest in US politics and foreign affairs.
The prestigious newspaper signals the importance it attaches to the interview by highlighting it in a big green banner on the front page referring readers to the features section. The headline quotes Redford asking, “How could America sink so low?” The interview in the print edition of the newspaper is entitled “The Politicians Today Are an Insult to Our Intelligence.” The editor of the paper’s website preferred a different heading from the same interview, “The Government Manipulates Us with Fear.”
Serious media in Germany have been trying to paint a diversified picture of the United States, Americans and their politics amid concern that people are going to wake up some morning and find that President Bush has unleashed the Third World War. The US has many friends in Germany from Cold War days, but the fears there are real.
Unfortunately, other countries do not start out with the good will towards the US to be generally found in Germany. Looking at the US from the outside provides many a new and useful perspective. Therefore, it's interesting to see the questions Redford was asked. At one point, the German interviewer tells Redford that in comparison with the 1970s it seems much more difficult to be both liberal and patriotic at the same time in America. Redford tries to explain the mood in the United States after September 11, 2001 and the situation from his standpoint:
“After the attacks the country was in a state of shock, confused and scared because we felt so vulnerable. The government told us we had to stick together and put aside all issues, problems and doubts. We did that, but at the same time we also gave up some freedoms like freedom of speech. American flags flew on every house and porch, and everyone suddenly became afraid to voice his doubts, which the government took advantage of. It promoted fear to the point that anyone who raised his voice to ask a question was labeled unpatriotic. Then when our troops marched into Iraq, the word was immediately out that you were unpatriotic if you didn’t support those young men who were fighting for their country. The government did everything in its power to manipulate us with fear, and there were journalist s, certainly not all but enough of them, who were afraid to stand up to the government. Liberal became a curse word.”
With all due respect to Redford, who calls the Vietnam War a “bad war,” he and some others seem to have forgotten a few things. Admittedly, there had never been anything like September 11 or the reaction that followed in the United States, but the attitudes and vocabulary that goes along with them were prevalent long before terror struck at the heart of the United States. For example, criticism of US government actions all during the Cold War met with violent reactions from no small number of Americans who said they were the country’s only true patriots. Some Americans still remember the whole stream of epithets for those who dared criticize the Vietnam War. Harassment of protestors by various US governments with all the infamous steps taken against them have filled books, and using the Freedom of Information Act to read files compiled by various agencies on protestors against the Vietnam War has the feeling of prying into the secrets of a totalitarian regime. If it had not been for the crescendo of protests as opposition to the war swelled to gigantic proportions, there’s no telling what further excesses would have been implemented in the harassment by government agencies of US citizens exercising their freedom of speech.
One of Redford’s main aims in the interview is to take a stand for young Americans to play more of an active role as citizens. He says:
“Participation in elections is ridiculous in America. More people vote in “American Idol” on TV than in a presidential election. Why don’t young people want to have anything to do with politics? They see the people in power and view this as an insult to their intelligence.”
Redford’s movie will again show many movie fans in Germany that Americans are not all bloodthirsty cutthroats, but one Redford doesn’t make a spring for a new outlook on America in other countries that are not old friends like Germany. The Bush administration has damaged good relations with a number of erstwhile friendly foreign countries to the point that it’s going to take years for American diplomats after Bush to put the train back on the tracks, if such an endeavor could indeed ever raise relations back to the levels under previous administrations. For years to come, anytime American officials abroad talk about human rights, personal freedom, rule of law etc. foreign audiences are going to laugh and shout: “Iraq! Guantanamo! Secret prisons! Waterboarding! Torture!
Here’s the original article.