The film Zeitgeist: Addendum is a detailed explanation of the true functioning of the American government. It covered important yet clandestine topics such as the true power of the monetary system, control over media and public influence, the human mindset, the effect of our government on the world, and the supposed steps we can take to repair this damaged society. I found the film interesting, yet encountered some bias, prompting me to develop this review of sorts.
To begin, they discuss how the government handles money. The government will simply ask for a loan, and the federal reserve will create billions of new bills from nothing to give to the government. This in turn devalues the rest of the money currently in circulation, for the more money added into public supply, the more there is to be had, which is the cause of inflation.
The movie also talked about the ways America has been enslaving other countries for their resources. Their techniques include currency devaluation, large funding costs, privatization, and trade liberalization, which have yet to fail in dredging up resources for the U.S. to take advantage of. To begin, America will allow a country to go bankrupt, and then offer financial help in turn for something like American businesses being allowed to settle in those countries. These businesses proceed to eat up the economy, while local businesses are put out. Along with this, the U.S gives the suffering country alleged peace and prosperity in turn for its resources, such as oil and food. Countries like Bolivia and Guatemala have fallen victim to America’s schemes, and are now in positions of immense poverty, with America siphoning all their resources away. This has led to new movements, with people in those countries fighting for their right to profit off of their own resources. When elected leaders of these places begin to encourage their fights, America sees this as a threat to their profits. Many elected leaders in impoverished countries have been speaking out against the injustice, and America has developed a way to combat this. Their first defense is to send in economic hitmen, who are tasked with bribing the person in power to shut up and surrender power, receiving in turn a peaceful life and a large sum of money. If this fails, and the politician refuses the offer, the jackals are sent in, and their job is to assassinate the person. This has often been the case in the past, with stories of plane crashes and bombs and poisonings occurring to those trying to make a difference. If even this fails them, they will send in the military to take them down. There have been instances in which they went through this cycle twice, but they have always gotten rid of good leaders in the end. The U.S. isn’t a big fan of being shown up in the justice department, and will do whatever it takes to dispose of threats as soon as possible. When the position has been emptied, they will swiftly insert a corrupt leader in place of the former, who will shut down any ideas of an uprising, and only promote the American profits.
The movie also brings attention to the fact that America uses terrorism as an excuse to wage war and invade other countries. An example used was Afghanistan, which America turned into one of the main producers of opium worldwide. When the Taliban took power, they decreased opium production, which was not to the liking of America. The president at the time had been planning an invasion of Afghanistan on September 9th, 2001. Two days later, they had their excuse. And while the video does not explicitly say whether or not the American government was the cause of 9/11, it seems implied. The video then stated that the leading cause of death in America is heart disease, and 450,000 people die each year from it. Then, the video compared that to the number of people killed by terrorists, which was about 68 each year. We then learn that the U.S. government spends trillions of tax dollars each year fighting a for an obscure and pointless cause, and only around 2 billion on one of the biggest problems Americans face. It seems idiotic, and it really is. The fact is that the government only cares about solving problems they can profit from. They wouldn’t earn an obscene amount of money from solving health problems across the country, but causing international conflicts rakes in a lot of bloody cash. To finish off this segment, the narrator states that “the true terrorists wear five thousand dollar suits and hold high places in our government.”
The movie brings a significant amount of attention to the fact that the wellbeing of human beings will always come in second to money. The government cares revolve exclusively around money, and this leads to fascism, capitalism, and ends in a dictatorship. There are American companies who have more monetary wealth than Norway, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. This is concerning on many levels, regardless of explanation. Such big companies are notorious for pollution and are very self-preservative. People don’t need ridiculously large companies ruling the world and only ever looking out for themselves.
While the movie makes many valid points, it began making it more and more evident that they were extreme atheists. Nearing the end, they introduce a concept called the Venus Project, a project working to build a utopia out of this chaotic world. They believe in a communist regime where all religion is obsolete, and money has no purpose anymore, because machines have completely taken over the job force. They claim that all religion will be traded in for a good old-fashioned single secular philosophy based on human knowledge, and resources will somehow be plentiful forever. They plan on using clean sources of energy to power the globe. They frequently label all religions as “made up” and “false”, going so far as to use religious texts to disprove major religions, such as Christianity and Islam.
They believe in human wit, and that we as a species deserve a future, which seems like idiocy. Not only are we as low as society has ever collectively been, but we’ve also already tried all their ideas in the past, only to be met with great failure. Believe it or not, a time before money did exist, and we found that human behavior required a reward of sorts to keep it largely in check, and money was created. We still fell victim to greed before and after the creation of money, simply because of the sinful nature of human beings. We have also tried communism before several times, and we are still suffering from that decision. We tried philosophy for hundreds of years, and it took us nowhere. All these methods crashed and burned, and there’s no reality in which we have any hope of saving our world. You also cannot pressure people into giving up important aspects of their identities or beliefs just to conform into what you think is right. That’s how world wars begin, and that’s how the world ends, not begins.
So yes, there is something to be learned from the movie Zeitgeist: Addendum. Several takeaways could include that the American government is a tyrannical system of greedy old men, or that we have them to blame for causing and not fixing thousands of the problems in our world, or that our species has doomed itself in incomprehensible ways, or how corrupt our society has become. We may not get out of this, but there’s always something a person can do to fight against the odds and free yourself from oppression, it just takes a little fire.
