What made you as you are today politically, part two

Asked this question: (updated)

OT, if anyone would like to suggest movies or books that made a huge impact in their progressive attitudes today, I'm interested in making a list.

Not only to share what resonated with you but also to have as a reference for those who do not know American history, have no clue about WWII, the Geneva Convention, Habeas Corpus and why the Bush administration is so horrifically awful.

http://rantsfromtherookery.blogs...-are- today.html
ellroon |

in a thread over at Eschaton and got some amazing replies. I'm sure I've missed a few, but here are some responses: (I'm not repeating them if they're noted in the first post.)

Movies:
Grand Illusion
Paths of Glory
Forbidden Games
Lawrence of Arabia
Winterset
A Hard Day's Night
Fail Safe

Television:
Star Trek
Twilight Zone
M*A*S*H the series
PBS- The World at War
Have I Got News For You series
Drop the Dead Donkey
Chris Morris: The Day Today, Brass Eye
The commercial with Iron Eyes Cody weeping over pollution

Cartoons or Comics:
Dan O'Neill's Odds Bodkin
Walt Kelly's Pogo
Mad Magazine
Doonesbury

Books:
Johnny Got His Gun
Ken MacLeod: The Star Fraction, The Stone Canal
Richard Morgan: Market Forces
Grapes of Wrath and other works of John Steinbeck
The Octopus
The Jungle
Philip K. Dick: all works
Thoreau's Walden Pond
Simone Weil: all works
Brave New World and other works of Aldous Huxley
1984
Animal Farm and other works of George Orwell
Kurt Vonnegut: all works
Richard Brautigan: all works
A History of teh Arab People: Albert Hourani
Anatomy of Fascism: Robert O. Paxton
Blair's Wars: John Kampfner
Noam Chomsky: all works
The Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace: Margaret Atwood
The Bible: New Testament: Jesus teaching helping the poor and forgiveness
Kevin Carson: all works
John Kenneth Galbraith: all works
Marx
The Golden Notebook: Doris Lessing
Breathing Lessons: Anne Tyler
Catch-22
The Missionary Position: Christopher Hitchens
Mother Country: Marilynne Robinson
The Urantia Book
Woman on the Edge of Time and other works of Marge Piercy
Les Guérillères: Monique Wittig
Welcome to the Desert of the Real: Slavoj Zizek
James Thurber (with other Algonquin stylists)
Add:
"What's the Matter with Kansas" and "Blinded by the Right" (David Brock).
"The Chalice and the Blade" by Rhianne Eisler

Letters, articles:
Letter from Birmingham Jail: Martin Luther King

Events, situations:
Vietnam War
Kennedy's Assassination
Watergate
Fundamentalism
Reagan
The need for girlfriend to have an abortion

And of course music:
To quote Wikipedia:

In the 1960s and 1970s, during the War in Vietnam, many protest songs were written and recorded, most notably "War," (1970) by Edwin Starr, "Ohio" (1970) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young", "Give Peace a Chance" (1969) and ""Imagine"" (1971) by John Lennon. Cat Stevens left his mark on the genre with "Peace Train" in 1971, as did Black Sabbath with "War Pigs" (1971). The Rolling Stones protested against police brutality with "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" (1973).
[snip]

Neil Young continued the theme in the twenty-first century with his song, "Let's Impeach the President" - a stinging rebuke against President George W. Bush and the War in Iraq, as did Pink with her appeal to Bush in "Dear Mr. President". Pearl Jam also included two anti-Bush songs ("World Wide Suicide", "Marker In The Sand") in their 2006 album Pearl Jam. Not to forget the band Dispatch and the anti-war underground hit "The General". Utah Philips, and David Rovics, among many other singers have continued the folk tradition of protest. In John Mayer's 2006 release CONTINUUM, the lead single " Waiting on the World to Change", Mayer is critical of the desensitizing of politics in youths. He goes on to say in "Belief", "What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand? Belief can. What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand? Belief can."

Also, Rage Against the Machine have been one of the most popular bands in recent times with songs such as "Bullet In The Head" and "Bulls On Parade". Paris also released the song 'What Would You Do?' referencing everything from false flag operations and the "elite's" grip on the worlds' governments to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Add to the music list: Paul Simon's American Tune from 1973

What made you as you are today politically?

(Note: I'll be updating this as I get suggestions.)

What made you decide war (the Iraq war or all wars) was wrong? What made you decide politics was government for the people rather than people for the institutions? What made you a progressive, a liberal, a Democrat? How would you convey that to others who don't have any history to ground themselves on?

What movies or books or any other teaching material can we recommend to those who have no historical reference to previous wars or political overviews, to those who have believed the Bush administration's propaganda?

In comments, Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat mentioned this:

...I engaged today in a polite debate with ReaganConservative (one of my regular commenters, emphatically not a troll, a GOPer who has come to distrust Bush) about Snow's expressed analogy between Iraq and the Koreas that left us all drop-jawed yesterday. I found that RC was himself young enough to have had no direct or parental connection with W.W. II, and hence no real understanding of Germany's Nazis and what they did.

Our educational task is tougher than at first I imagined: first we have to get younger folks to understand what happened; only then can we urge them to avoid it. American aversion to tyranny is not, after all, inborn.

I want to collect a list of movies, books and anything else that is not daunting for an easily distracted generation. We are awash with information, so to find items with the clearest message will be hard.

An example: my husband watches WWII movies where captured American soldiers cite the Geneva Convention. And I think: that won't work anymore thanks to Bush. Torture? We are now the bad guys. Disappearing people? We do that, too.

What items would you recommend to people that would teach them why the Bush administration's actions have been so egregious?

Movies I have seen off of Wikipedia's list of anti-war films:
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Coming Home (1978)
Das Boot (1981)
The Deer Hunter (1978)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Gallipoli (1981)
The Great Dictator (1940)
The Killing Fields (1984)
Lord of War (2005)
M*A*S*H (1970)
On the Beach (1957)
Platoon (1986)
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Schindler's List (1993)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1972)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
Two Women (1960)
From the Amazon list:

Born on the Fourth of July
Wag the Dog
The English Patient

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's list:
Breaker Morant
Cold Mountain
Gandhi
King of Hearts

Books I have read from Wikipedia's list of anti-war books:
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
Lysistrata
On the Beach - by Nevil Shute
The Red Badge of Courage - Stephen Crane
The War Prayer - Mark Twain

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation's list:
A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway
Hiroshima (1946)
The Diary of Anne Frank (1947) by Anne Frank
War and Peace (1869)

For the best of what politics and governments could be:
Mr. Smith Goes To Washington
Any of the early West Wing tv series.
Dave
The American President

For the worst or how to fight it:
All The President's Men

For showing the best of human nature:
To Kill a Mockingbird (book and movie)

These are just pulled from lists or from my memory. I know there are more. What ones would you recommend?

Update: from comments here:
Phila: Walt Kelley's "Pogo"
Philip K. Dick (especially his story "Human Is")
Simone Weil's "The Poem of Force" and "Reflections on War"
Marilynne Robinson's "Mother Country"

As far as movies go, "Forbidden Games"

Tengrain:
Pacifica Radio was pre-set on my very first new car and never was turned off, Gore Vidal, and A Peoples History of the US (Howard Zinn)

Morse: Vietnam War, Watergate, Christian Fundamentalism, Reagan.
As for books and media, "All the President's Men", is the one I remember most clearly. Like Tengrain (again, dammit) I discovered Howard Zinn, and it all clicked.

Whig:
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy, Douglas Hofstadter's article, "Dilemmas for superrational thinkers" in his book Metamagical Themas, Albert Jay Nock, Philip K. Dick, Philip Jose Farmer.

Music: especially Peter Gabriel. He is the conscience of the world when he focuses his attention on injustice.