I finally saw Avatar this weekend. I don't plan to get in the habbit of reviewing movies like I do books but it did bring up a few thoughts. First the 3D is pretty cool and when putting on the glasses I was kind of wishing I had not come to the 3D version, at the end however I was glad I did.
James Cameron takes the same old story that white people will kill indiscriminately in the pursuit of natural resources and makes what I think is the central arument of the movie: yes we did it 100 years ago and we will still be doing it in the year 2154.
This reflects the current pessimistic outlook on our ability to govern and projects it as a trend out 150 years. The recent NBC-WSJ poll shows that we are in the double digits for the first time ever on the number of people (11%) who responded "never" to the question: How much of the time do you trust the government to do what is right? An all time low of only 19% answered "Most of the Time" and 4% answered "Just about always" (not a record). Full poll results here:
I sure hope we find some leaders in our government that can actually do something -- and it would be even better if they did something right.