right-wing review of BBC's The Power of Nightmares, which I started watching last night, is unfortunately mostly borne out by the show's shockingly ahistorical reading of recent history, especially re the Cold War. Like Michael Moore at his worst, the program assumes that you know absolutely nothing and proceeeds from there. So the Soviets get to invade Afghanistan (killing a million and a half people) & still be a helpless giant rotting from within, etc. And the constant wave of wittily assembled and juxtaposed Craig Baldwinesque found footage and the way too loud in the mix music of Eno & Morricone seem like attempts to patch over a thesis it can't sustain otherwise. A case can certainly be made that there is a climate of fear being generated over "terrorism" but so far "The Power of Nightmares" makes a better case for the intellectual vacuity of the institutional left.