The following 16 mm films and videos from the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s are being offered to inspire reflections on how much the values, moods and tenor of the present day have tragically strayed from what they were back in those days. For the most part, the era in which these films and videos take place is dramatically distant from what’s happening today. 

Here we are, in the throes of an absolute, anti-constitutional, authoritarian takeover of this country that could never have been imagined by the folks in ‘Almost Heaven, Grafton, West Virginia’ in 1974. Yes, they were dispirited by Watergate and governmental circumstances far beyond their control, but losing faith in the democratic process? Not yet. That began to fester six years later in 1980 as ‘Small Business My Way’ recorded the cultural atmosphere of a small rural town’s small business community. Ronald Reagan’s candidacy was rising in the polls and the hard working, self-reliant, rugged individualists of the film start to show their hand when, for example, the candidate for county sheriff, in no uncertain terms, tells the federal government to just “go to hell” over the EPA’s strip-mining regulations. 

An abiding faith in our country’s deeply held values and democratic norms were starting to be challenged by an ever-deepening distrust and disillusionment with how things were turning out.

In ‘Natural Capital Speaks!’, the same historic shifts that were lurking in most every other democracy in the 90’s would not be dwelled on by the astute, forward-thinking international scientists featured in these videos. Passionately debating the fate of the earth in Madison, WI; Stockholm, Sweden; Aspen, CO; and San Jose, Costa Rica there was not a peep about the constitutional crises that would soon engulf the free world’s most reliable democracies. ‘Costa Rica Counts the Future’ (1994) comes closest by featuring, among others, an indigenous campesino who articulately speaks truth to power, saying that an economic war is being waged against his people and “we’re not going to take it anymore”. Ironically, this is not unlike what we’re witnessing today in the United States. Vast numbers of white, rural, middle-class Americans are saying the very same thing, for very different reasons – basically, and regrettably, (in no uncertain terms), that the federal government can just go to hell. 

There is a lot of resentment out there. The organizing principles of a not so healthy democracy are fraying at the very core. Our ‘representative’ government is failing to listen to, and to address, where people, of all walks, are at.

On top of this, in every corner of the earth, the climate is changing faster than we are. The values so evident in these films are reassuring and memorable, but they need to move beyond the rugged, if not selfish, individualism of the past into an urgent, united, righteous, and shared recognition that we really are in this together.

That this country could, as this is being written, be dragged into an authoritarian, fascistic upheaval of all that we hold dear is frightening. We bloody well knew how to fight – and defeat – fascism in Europe a generation or so ago, what in God’s name is happening to the body politic now? Climate nihilism? Corporate and billionaire greed? Hate? Wherever you want to point your finger, you gotta believe that the center will hold, that we will get this right, and that even given its deep and troubled soul, the power and robust resilience of our democracy can and will stand and thrive. To be defeated by an ugly, power hungry and treacherous descent into darkness and dictatorship is just downright un-American.

Much is at stake.

Please enjoy this reaffirming look back to the way we were, and then imagine, and work, and vote, for what we can yet become, moving forward.

Peter R Griesinger
Memorial Day 2024