Just Because You're Paranoid

An excerpt from an interview I just watched on terrorism:

INTERVIEWER
Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

MINISTER
On yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

INTERVIEWER
But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year ...

MINISTER
Beginner's luck.

The "minister" in the interview is not Donald Rumsfeld, but rather Deputy Minister of Information Helpman, in the opening scene of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. (If you like, you can read the full text of the "interview", and the rest of the script at http://www.trond.com/brazil/brazil_script.htm.)

As if the news media's fear-mongering isn't enough, I've decided to round out my paranoia by entertaining myself with Brazil, and Gilliam's other homage to paranoid delusions-which-turn-out-to-be-real, 12 Monkeys. Both imagine a "future" (really now a past, since one is set in 1996, and the other "sometime in the 20th century"...) of broken-down machines and institutional information mismanagement — in other words, the United States, maybe ten years from now, after a decade under the Patriot Act and a $5 trillion deficit.

In Brazil, a paperwork error results in the stratosphere abduction of a man named "Buttle" (they were looking for "Tuttle"), and the protagonist, Sam Lowry, struggles through imbecilic, gun-happy bureaucracy as he tries to clear things up. If the movie were made today, perhaps it would be set in Guantanamo Bay, with a soundtrack by Cat Stevens (aka Yusef Islam). In one scene in the movie, Jill asks Sam to justify the state's many invasions of privacy: "How many terrorists have you met, Sam? Actual terrorists?"

When it came out (read: before 9/11), Brazil was considered an odd, if visually-stunning tale. Perhaps now, twenty years later, we're twenty years closer to Mr. Gilliam's vision...