I am quite late in reviewing Zeitgeist, since I have lacked for a very long time both a proper outlet to receive such a review, and the will to stomach the more radical left-wing elements of the film. Nonetheless, I finally forced myself to sit through over 4 grueling hours of the ‘Addendum’ and the ‘Final Edition’, as they were downloaded and given to me. I am sure there are many more versions of this movie, possibly many more 2-hour parts, and I will NOT be watching them.
A Review of Zeitgeist: Final Edition
This episode begins with the traditional assault on organized religion, then on religion in general. The idea being that all religious ideas come from a single source. What that source is, they never say, but they show some pretty impressive evidence for it. The only problem is that most of that “evidence” is totally false. The parts concerning on Egyptian religion in particular, which I have studied extensively, contain not one single fact. Of course, none of the people producing this believe in any faith whatsoever. Still, they might have done better research by watching the History Channel for ten minutes. The information in this segment is generally worthless and deliberately misleading.
Naturally, this moves straight into the 9/11 segment. Now, I know there are those of you who love to believe that everything was planned in detail by our government to usher in a new era of American imperialism-- blah, blah. An argument can be made for the attacks being provoked, but expecting anyone to believe that the same moronic people that run the U.S. Government are capable of planning such a thing and getting away with it is laughable. In fact, I think the Government welcomes these ill-informed conspiracy nuts willing to believe anything they find on the internet. It gives a doubtful public something to believe, other than that their leaders are just plain incompetent. I have friends who were working in the Pentagon that day, and I’ve been through post-9/11 briefings I can in no way disclose here. We dropped the ball on so many levels it should be criminal, but anyone who begins an argument with, “Yeah, well, did you know that…” is not to be taken seriously.
Next comes the only factual part of the film, which concerns the Panic of 1907, the Federal Reserve, and the Income Tax. This is an extremely small part of the movie, since it merely regurgitates facts from other sources. If they had actually stopped to investigate further, they might have produced an interesting film.
They then touch on how banking interests helped get us into the wars of the twentieth century, which they almost get right. They make no mention, naturally, of the wide-spread social programs of the New Deal and the Great Society, even though these have given us more debt than all wars combined and resulted in the massive government bureaucracy that continues to plague us. And even though FDR had more entangling alliances than anyone, he gets about twenty seconds of air time.
The very last part begins with the crisis in education, but once again the movie fails to pinpoint a real cause or give any kind of solution. It instead blames “corporate America”, “consumerism”, and their usual scapegoats. It could have done so much more, but that might have offended the teachers unions, who often push their propaganda in public schools. It goes on to talk about national ID cards and implanted microchips. Though these are things that are actually interesting, there is, once again, no real teeth to the issue.
It concludes with the usual sound-bites from various people, prattling on about peace, when they themselves did nothing to bring it about. If I have a question about astronomy, I will consult Carl Sagan, but on social and political issues, his opinion is worthless to me. I do not consult the brick maker when buying gems.