Disappointment, Oliver Stone and the Neocons

In Oliver Stone (see Selected Articles), I was confronted by the spectacle of the disappointed liberal. Clearly he was struggling to come to terms with the fact that, as a result of the failure of Vietnam and his own cinematic exposes of that failure, the world had not become a better place. America is still futile fighting wars in distant lands. In twenty years or so - if I am still in this game - I shall expect to be interviewing disappointed neocons about how, as a result of their adoption of certain reductive political, strategic and economic positions, the world once again failed to become a better place. It is strange how the big picture always seems to elude the best and the brightest, even when, like Stone, they make a fetish of their study of history. So here it is, the big picture: the world never becomes a better place and all theories and ideologies are equalised in failure.