SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 4.16.2024
“Timothy McVeigh was a tragic guy who thought our differences were more important than what we had in common.” President Bill Clinton.
Watching the film Civil War last weekend gave me a look at what might be the future of America.
I need a real life reminder about the birth of the domestic terrorism movement in America. The harsh reality of the birth of contemporary America will soon be available for all the world to view.
The bombed out Federal Building in Oklahoma City – April 1995
It’s been ongoing for nearly three decades. The bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995 was akin to the insurrectionist attack on Ft. Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina on April 12, 1861. That assault began the first American Civil War (1861-1865).
The second Civil War has been upon us since 1995 with Donald Trump as leader. Commanding violent bands of dangerous well armed insurrectionists hell bent on bringing down the American government.
Excerpted from The Guardian 4.16.2024
Civil War, director Alex Garland’s imagining of a divided states of America, appears to have touched a nerve, topping the weekend box office. For some cinemagoers, it may offer escapism. But for those who remember a spectacular act of domestic terrorism that struck the heartland a generation ago, it may feel more like destiny.
An American Bombing tells the story of the single deadliest act of homegrown terrorism against the government in American history. On 19 April 1995 Timothy McVeigh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh ignited a truck bomb outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children.
“Our documentary will help people understand, how could we even get to a place where a commercial movie like Civil War can be released and it’s not sci-fi?” says Marc Levin, director of An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th, an HBO documentary about the growth of anti-government sentiment through the lens of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
“We’ve always kind of believed in American exceptionalism. ‘That can’t happen here. Oh, no, it could happen in Yugoslavia. It can happen in other places but not in the United States of America.’ Making this film has sobered even us up.”
Executive producer Katie Couric helped secure an interview with Bill Clinton. His previous experience as governor of Arkansas, which saw a rise in extremism, meant that unlike others who initially assumed the Oklahoma City bombing must be the work of Islamic militants, he immediately suspected domestic terrorism.
Clinton offers a chilling conclusion about McVeigh and his relevance to a bitterly divided America in 2024. “It doesn’t matter whether he was right about anything or not,” he says in the film. “What matters is he decided he should kill people he didn’t know including little kids. But the words he used, the arguments he made, literally sound like the mainstream today. Like he won.”
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2024/apr/16/oklahoma-city-bombing-terrorism-documentary
Lee's Perspective 