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Is Hollywood Trying To Tell Us That America’s Dominant Era Is At An End?

I recently saw the movie “Olympus Has Fallen” and found it very scary.  Not in the scary since of Halloween.  But then I saw that there is another similar movie upcoming with Jamie Foxx called, “White House Down”.  What I find most disturbing about both of these films that they both depict the symbol of our nation’s strength, identity, and greatness being infiltrated by foreign enemies and physically destroyed.  I personally can not recall movies in the past so graphically showing the White House being destroyed.  In the Bruce Willis movie, Live Free or Die Hard, showed the White House being destroyed, but it didn’t actually happen.

Hollywood very often presents things that either actually happened already, is happening, or will happen.  Examples of its futuristic presentations maybe, The Minority Report, the 007 movies, and the Buck Rodgers movies.  We now have “low impact weapons” being used by the military and law enforcement, such as teasers, we have personal GPS devices, and we can ever communicate virtually via computers.  A lot of times Hollywood speaks to the public in metaphoric or non-literal terms, but there is a message that it is trying to communicate to us. Hollywood generally doesn’t roll out a wave of such provocative subject matter, unless it truly feels that we, the public, will be accepting of it.  Remember it’s in the business of making money.

Even Time Magazine asked in an article in March of 2011, Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?” The author makes a couple of interesting and pointed statements in first stating, The decisions that created today’s growth — decisions about education, infrastructure and the like — were made decades ago. What we see today is an American economy that has boomed because of policies and developments of the 1950s and ’60s: the interstate-highway system, massive funding for science and technology, a public-education system that was the envy of the world and generous immigration policies. Look at some underlying measures today, and you will wonder about the future.” and, Many of these changes have taken place not because of America’s missteps but because other countries are now playing the same game we are — and playing to win.”  I dare say that such comments and thoughts would have been unthought of, least than spoken or displayed so front and center in the popular media some 20 or so years ago – or even 8 years.  Not to say that America’s decline just started recently, but what is it that Hollywood sees and maybe is trying to alert us to – or condition us for?

I find it most interesting that these two movies have a couple of intriguing ingredients that are new. One being that the bad guys have intricate knowledge of the inter-workings of the U.S government and it’s people, even at the most protected building in our country, if not the world, the White House; there is a traitor portrayed who is in the inner circles of the government; and that the White House and the Capital Building are physically destroyed unable to be defended by some of the world most technological counter-measure systems.  These all can be taken as metaphors of a nation that was once seen as undefeatable from external forces destroying itself from within by someone who’s disenchanted with our nation’s principles and ideals.


There are many of us who look to the man in the Office as the problem to the nations decline.  But just as the Times article points out, “the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), our 15-year-olds rank 17th in the world in science and 25th in math. We rank 12th among developed countries in college graduation (down from No. 1 for decades). We come in 79th in elementary-school enrollment. Our infrastructure is ranked 23rd in the world, well behind that of every other major advanced economy. American health numbers are stunning for a rich country: based on studies by the OECD and the World Health Organization, we’re 27th in life expectancy, 18th in diabetes and first in obesity. Only a few decades ago, the U.S. stood tall in such rankings.” America has been on the slide for a long time.  And being a representative republic-democracy, the government only reflects the people of the nation.  Either by affirmative actions, i.e., voting, or silent acquiescence, blatant apathy and or political and civic disengagement, we have the government, which includes whosoever occupies the Office, we the people chose and deserve.

When the nation was centered around morality and character the nation’s leaders reflected that.  Because we the people demanded it of ourselves.  There used to be three loves of Americans – love of God, love of family, and love of country [America]. Not necessarily in the order.  But today it is mostly love of me.  To boldly proclaim or profess devotion to America and Americanism is to open one’s self to being called an extremist, anti-immigrant, or racist.  Today to express our nation’s fundamental connections to Christendom and God today is most aggressively shunned and discouraged. This certainly isn’t our grandparent’s America.  What is more alarming is that these characteristics and negative effects are most present in the nation’s next generation. 

In a 2006 report by CIRCLE [the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement], stated as a consequence of American youths disengaging from politics, “in addition to civic disengagement, contemporary critics have also decried a closely related phenomenon—the excessive individualism of contemporary American culture that has created a society which is increasingly polarized and fragmented, with little sense of being united by shared values, or of participation for the commonwealth. Goals of personal advancement and gratification dominate the younger generations, frequently at the expense of broader social, moral, and spiritual meaning….Today’s young adults are less politically interested and informed than any cohort of young people on record.”   And it said of our societal foundation, “During the past generation, our families have come under intense pressure, and many have crumbled. Neighborhood and community ties have frayed. Many of our streets and public spaces have become unsafe. Our public schools are mediocre for most students, and catastrophic failures for many. Our character-forming institutions are enfeebled. Much of our popular culture is vulgar, violent, and mindless. Much of our public square is coarse and uncivil. Political participation is at depressed levels last seen in the 1920s. Public trust in our leaders and institutions has plunged.” Though the report is more than 10 years old, can you honestly look around and dismiss its fundamental findings?  And all of this came way before Mr. O proclaimed to “fundamentally transform this nation [America]”.  We have been undergoing an incremental silent transformation for some time now.

If we as a nation no longer knows what there is to appreciate and give thanks to about our nation and that we should never settle for mediocrity or stop playing to win; we no longer know our nation’s history, our Constitution and other founding documents; we have no knowledge of the true relationship between the government and the people, have no knowledge or respect to the relevant place that Christian morality and principles has for our nation; nor knows what it is that makes America exceptional or that being an American with our uniquely cherished liberties and freedoms are fragile and delicate blessings, than if our nation is to fall, it will be only our fault.  Just as Ezra Taft Benson stated, “If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers – normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security.”

Just as the government may reflect the people who it serves, the Entertainment Industry reflects what we have been, where we are, and what we may become.  Gone are the days when the U.S was always shown as the unquestionable good guy and indestructible.  Gone are the days when young men and women said yes ma’am and no ma’am. And gone are the days when those in the highest offices of government are expected to be of high moral and ethical character.  And if that is so, we have only to look in the mirror, own it, and make a change for a better future.

Condi’s Convention speech echoes warnings from the past of America’s self-destruction

At the 2012 Republican Convention former U.S Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her speech, “There is no country, no not even a rising China, that can do more harm to us than we can do to ourselves if we fail to accomplish the tasks before us here at home.”  That got me to thinking of some other prophetic statements regarding America’s self-destruction spoken by others in the past such as, “If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers – normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security.”,  Ezra Taft Benson;  “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”, Thomas Jefferson;  “If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.” and “Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.” President Ronald Reagan;  “If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of the public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of the public expenditure. You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.” Benjamin Disraeli;  and “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” , stated by Mr. Alexis de Tocqueville.

What all of these prophetic statements speak of is America’s greatness as well as its curse.  Our nation was established with the greatest of intentions, that is to have codified in our foundation that man is to be governed not by man, but the Creator’s endowed rights to his life, his liberties, and his pursuit of happiness to be limited only by his equal respect to the same of that of the other citizen.  Our nation has an abundance of natural resources, natural gas, oil, coal, and precious minerals.  With our great nation’s unique  freedom to achieve to our wildest dreams and aspirations, we too have freedom to give in to our lowest desires and weaknesses.  We can be the greatest of people who continually look to achieve greatness and not settle for mediocrity, to become the best educated on what responsibilities are borne by our cherished freedoms, to live within our means, and take ownership of our decisions – successes as well as our failures – or we can be a people who celebrate the lowest of ourselves and cherish a life of triviality, be all too willing to exchange our birthrite of individual liberties and freedoms for the promise and illusion of government-provided security and social utopia – whether it is as a nation or globally – to look for others to be the creditors and bearers of our ill-temperance and irresponsibility.   If you take inventory of this nation’s situation today, you would realize that many of the prophetic warnings went unheeded to our detriment.  But it doesn’t have to be our nation’s future.  At the end of the day no one or no nation can defeat us, but ourselves.

Another of my favorite quotes that come to mind was said by Thomas Jefferson, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.”  And nor should it.