Funny, back during the founding of the United States of America, a standing army was distrusted and for good reason. The Founding Fathers knew that a large standing army would be a temptation to use (against perceived threats both foreign and domestic) and that formal military culture is antithetical to the spirit of independence and liberty upon which this country was founded.

Larry wrote: “Isn’t the fact that the Congress has endorsed those powers a sign that the executive has not significantly abused them? I.e., that government can be trusted to do certain things? Perhaps, objectively, at least for the moment, they are necessary, not to mention effective.”

Or it could be a mark of Congress caving in to executive dominance, to the break down of the checks and balances built into the Constitution.

In the update, since they had left this plot part out completely, they needed to put something in to tell us that Bourne wasn’t your average Standard Assassin, killing on orders without fail. He had a conscience. In the books, he wrestled with his conscience from kill one, which was only self defense from people who thought he was a real bad guy himself.

However, the points you have made are still valid within the arena of today’s culture. Not many have devoured the Bourne books like I did - even Eric van Lustbader’s continuation of the series - so most only know of Damon’s Jason Bourne, not Ludlum’s. Damon’s Bourne also wears the assassin persona uncomfortably, leading to the apology scene. Which is a fine example of screen writing and acting.

And while I have read all the books, the movies are still on my christmas wish list.

Nice work.

Of course, if you go back far enough you come to Len Deighton’s Harry Palmer (about whom three films were made, by the same producer as the Bonds, if I recall), who embodied the idea that spying is a nasty pointless business in pursuit of nebulous aims, though those films weren’t half as violent as today’s action films. But those films featured zithers on the soundtrack, ferchrissakes.

I wonder if you’re right that this whole conception of the American government as Bad Guy is largely a product of Hollywood. The Hollywood types, of course, would just respond by saying that they’re “holding a mirror up to society” and reflecting back who we already are. That just leads us into the whole chicken-and-egg question.

The fact remains that if 9/11 had happened on, say, 9/11/55, the Hollywood reaction would have been to show a decent, square-jawed G-Man played by Jimmy Stewart relentlessly tracking down the enemy. The bad guy would’ve gotten his day in court, giving Jimmy Stewart the chance to make a long, stirring speech about patriotism and the goodness of the American people.

I can’t imagine that scenario playing well on the big screen today. Today that fictional Jimmy Stewart movie scenario seems hopelessly naive.

And what’s with the “white” references?

Dunno, it just came out that way. You’re right, probably an extraneous adjective here.

Hollywood has decided, apparently en masse, that America no longer represents the good guys. The CIA is usually the proxy target of the attack, but the hostility is as relentless as Bourne. Just this week I’ve watched the evil CIA act out on The Unit, Prison Break, and Eureka. I haven’t tried Chuck, but I can guess…I’m sure there are many more examples. And this year’s stream of anti-government films just won’t quit. George Clooney more or less leads the charge, but you’re nobody if you aren’t in one.

As an aside, I did attempt the original novels back in the day, and found them completely unreadable. Ludlum was really big on italics. It makes me shudder.

Your questions fascinate me.

When the hell did these assumptions become so ingrained in our psyche? When did we blithely start accepting this worldview?

I would link it to the 20th century’s shift from national to ideological conflict, combined with the steadily increasing ability (first in Bond films; later in reality) of non-state actors to cause ever greater harm. However, I’m not sure they’re as ingrained as you think, at least in the caricatured form you present.

Who says the United States should behave this way — and, for that matter, when did we all decide that the United States actually does behave this way? As for America: how did we get to this point? When did we get to the point that the assumptions outlined at the top of this article became commonplace?

The origin of the other assumption, that America really is the evil empire, is of equal interest, no? It began, perhaps, with the McCarthy hearings, and metastasized during Vietnam. Desert Storm, a little, Bosnia, 9/11, and Afghanistan detoxified things, but Iraq2 and Bushism in general sent it back the other way.

The end result is that we the people don’t believe in the United States anymore….Oh, sure, we believe in the people of the United States. We believe that our neighbors here in this country are largely honest, decent, hard-working citizens. But all the things the United States is supposed to stand for — the idea that free and open societies work better than closed ones, the idea that we can work out our differences through courts and legislation, the idea that we should live by principles of law and reason rather than mere tribalism — we don’t have faith in those things anymore.

Is that “we the people” or “you the people”? I’d say that we live by those principles as much as we always have. With exceptions, we are still progressing. Isn’t the military America’s most trusted institution, far exceeding say, the press? Isn’t the military more reflective of “us” than the CIA? Shall we compare how we treated Muslim-Americans after 9/11 with how we treated Japanese-Americans during WWII? Our progress in civil rights since the Cold War began?

When a handful of jihadist fanatics murdered three thousand people in 2001, we didn’t trust that we could resolve this through the international cooperation of law enforcement agencies.

Isn’t that because “law enforcement” had been our approach until that day, with disastrous results? Robed, encaved, gun-toting lunatics aren’t able to bring down skyscrapers, actually. And you may remember the outstanding success of legal processes in dealing with Nazis at Nuremburg, or more recently Milosevic and Saddam. Because legal systems can handle most situations doesn’t mean that they can or should be forced to handle them all.

(It’s the same mentality that’s at work with the Bush Administration’s runaround of the FISA limits on wiretapping. This just astounds me. FISA allows secret, anonymous, unaccountable intelligence agents to stretch the bounds of the Constitution by conducting wiretaps on U.S. citizens simply by getting rubber-stamp permission from a secret, anonymous, unaccountable judge — and the Bush Administration doesn’t think that’s enough?)

Isn’t the fact that the Congress has endorsed those powers a sign that the executive has not significantly abused them? I.e., that government can be trusted to do certain things? Perhaps, objectively, at least for the moment, they are necessary, not to mention effective.

Like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart or Irving’s Headless Horseman, these things come back to haunt us.

For the left, isn’t Osama the real Headless one, come to avenge our crimes against the downtrodden?

Interestingly enough, the manifestation of the American subconscious isn’t a bloodthirsty killer…He’s not on a righteous crusade to bring America back to lily-white purity. In fact, he’s almost completely self-absorbed; he doesn’t particularly seem to care about America or the government or international law. Sure, he cares for the various mousy white women who get into trouble because of him, but only insomuch as they intersect his path and get in trouble on his behalf.

Bourne is not the American subconscious; he’s the anti-American subconscious. Of course he doesn’t kill people! Of course he, Clinton-like, apologizes. He isn’t a do-gooder, but he would be if he could get the evil ones to just leave him alone. (And what’s with the “white” references?)