It Blew My Mind

My friend showed me this movie yesterday. We were just sitting around and he suddenly rushes to my computer, demanding to show me something he described to be "pretty cool". I thought it was merely a short YouTube video or something, but I was wrong. He puts on "Zeitgeist: The Movie" on Google Video. The 5 minute introduction was hard to get through. It was just alot of quotes and speeches and nothing. But after the intro came the first part of the movie, which discusses how Christianity and many other early religions all follow the same general pattern that is based off the zodiac. The second part of the movie explains a conspiracy theory that the terrorist attacks on 9/11/01 were planned and executed by the leaders of our nation in order to gain the support they needed to go to war in the Middle East. I have always been against such conspiracy theories, but I found myself questioning everything after I saw the evidence the film had gathered. The third and final portion of the movie is about the Federal Reserve. It explains how the Federal Reserve was founded by a group of elite bankers in the early years of our nation, and that it is not actually a part of the government. It goes into great detail on how all the money that is created by the Federal Reserve is loaned out to the government with a tax associated to it. Therefore, the movie says, the nation will forever be in debt because they will need to get more money from the reserve to pay off the tax they had from their previous money. Overall, the ideas discussed in the movie are incredibly interesting. While watching the film, I constantly found myself thinking back to American Studies. All three parts share strong relationships with what it means to be an American. Millions of Americans are followers of Christianity. One is very hard-pressed to find a person who fully believes in 9/11 conspiracy theories. And of course, every single dollar you have ever spent started in the Federal Reserve. The movie attempts to show Americans that what they believe is sometimes very far from the truth. In American Studies, we are trying to get closer to 'What it means to be an American' and similar ideas. This film is great in helping to research these ideas because it presents a completely new perspective on many ideas that are considered unquestionable facts.