Generation Zero

This is a right wing attack ad disguised as a documentary.There are no real facts presented, just the normal right wing rants about how everyone who doesn't agree with their view point is ruining the country.Democrats = communists,all regulations are strangling the business world,social programs are bleeding us dry, etc. At least they could have tried to make this interesting but no the constant attacks on everyone but Wall Street and so self righteous that after less than a quarter of the documentary it starts to grate on your nerves. Hippies, Godlessness, 50's mothers (women), Community Reinvestment Act, ACORN, too much regulation caused the 2008 crash! REALLY?!! If you don't think but follow along and believe all the right wing crap this film will appeal to you, otherwise don't bother watching this.

I usually enjoy documentaries. I want to know what caused the financial crisis of 2008. Books like "When Genius Failed," "The Big Short," and "Liar's Poker," really shed light on Wall St's ugly side and the tricks they used to engineer the collapse of 2008. Unfortunately this garbage of a documentary largely fails at explaining anything but instead injects completely biased opinions ranging from Godlessness, to Saul Alinsky as reasons for our economic despair. REALLY?!! This film covers the usual right wing Kool Aid topics like, Hippies, Godlessness, 50's mothers (women), Community Reinvestment Act, ACORN, too much regulation, you've heard all this garbage before on Youtube commentaries but this movie lumps it them in one long propaganda film. The non stop music starts to grate on your nerves and is a shameless attempt to manipulate your emotions. Unfortunately morons will use this film as an echo chamber to their already warped sense of what is happening in this world.

The best thing I can tell you about this flick is that watching it is a useful exercise, of a sort. It does one welcome thing, which is to exhort us to use our heads, and thereby do honor to a long line of head- using progenitors in western civ.

So: Watch the movie while keeping this in mind: The flick will from time to time try to throw in an inducement to indulge a knee-jerk emotional revulsion to some boogum or other; for example, the "hippies".

Hold back. Follow the better angels of your thoughtful, circumspect self and listen to the welter of "serious" thinkers as the presentation attempts to marshal them toward a larger view of the current "crisis". What I think you'll see (not feel) is that the attempt to deliver a broad, convincing, explanatory perspective falls flat. The individuals spliced into the presentation may each have something interesting to say, but the pageant of this documentary fails to knit them into something cogent and convincing.

There are so, so many ways to interpret economic reality which are much, much more compelling than this rather confused, disparate patchwork.

I watched this for one reason: Bannon (the writer/editor) is now (2017/02) on the NSC. He's the dog who caught the car. I wanted to see if perhaps this documentary would have embedded in it a hint or two as to anything Bannon may be able to claim in the way of praxis: In other words, one would wish that, once the dog catches the car, it turns out to be a magic car that breaks the spell and turns Bannon from a dog into a statesman with a clear, focused perspective; one which contextualizes economic reality in a practical way, suggesting a way forward into what he calls "economic nationalism".

This flick doesn't give me hope. For example, it will not surprise me if his response to the hard economic reality which promises only to continue to rob American futurity is to exercise heavy power. And that's just the old standby/more of the same: Keep us on the hamster wheel, and throw monetary tokens into the pit and torch them--just like in days gone by. He doesn't really have a truly republican vision.

I give this film three stars because that's about how many true statements it contains. But firstly, this director uses the same psychological machinations that the latest president's political consultants used to get him elected - cognitive dissonance (tension which comes from holding two conflicting or unconnected thoughts in the mind at the same time). The images on the screen hold very little or no reinforcement of what the narrator is saying, and usually distracts from the point. They do, however, reinforce multitudinous snide innuendos.

I could only absorb what was said by not watching the screen, but only listening. Listening was made difficult because the music (also distracting and irrelevant) was way too loud. In order to hear the narratives, you have to turn up the volume and put up with ear-splitting music apparently also designed to enhance the dissonance.

The "meat" of the film is that there are cycles in society which lead to war, peace, prosperity and change. Guess which one we're in. This doomsday presentation traces all the blame to a US generation that is easy to make fun of, with no tenable connection, for the debt and inflation explosion at the inevitable disaster. I've not read all the books by the scholars interviewed, but I'm familiar enough with the liberal organizations they associate themselves with. Economics is the result of more than just opinions, but productivity, creativity and policy. They correctly point out the flaws in the recent (post 2008) desperate machinations of the Fed and US Treasury, but offer no solutions, evasive actions we may take, or even useful warnings.

I found tongue-in-cheek humor in the images that flash continuously past the viewer. Some, like a flash of suckling piglets on a sow's abdomen or the many scenes of exploding buildings, appear so ridiculous in view of the narration that if you turned off the sound, this could be an entertaining film.

Expect to be alarmed, depressed and confused by this film, not enlightened or edified.

Cherry picking generality while purposely omitting facts does not make for an accurate documentary. Banks "too big to fail" and the collapse of the housing market came as a result of the deregulation of banking which started in 1978 under Reagan. TARP, while very flawed under Obama, was started by Bush. Bush also cut taxes while opting to take the US to war in Afghanistan & Iraq. More spending with less revenue results is a bigger problem. Plenty of mistakes have been make by both sides. The sad reality is that the primary role of an elected official is to raise funds to get re-elected. Doing what's correct is a career ending move. Instead of spending money on this drivel, give that money to charity (not a PAC).