Still being in the midst of a more challenging post, I decided to take this short break.
12 Angry Men was a classic, well-acted 1957 film about a jury deciding the verdict in a murder trial. Because some of my readers won’t have seen it, I’ll leave a link at the bottom to a site where it can be watched for free, and I’ll avoid writing “spoilers.”
This film, which still holds up after 60 years, features many themes that resonate —for me, at least—with relevance to today’s Truth Movement. These include:
- Not caving in to peer pressure, even if it means standing alone. I don’t think I know a Truther who doesn’t identify with this challenge.
- Reaching a verdict based solely on objective evidence, not prejudicial thinking. How many battles have we fought on this basis, not only with others, but with ourselves? Often these prejudices are ones implanted by the mainstream media.
- Having the courage to change one’s mind and admit having been wrong. This is difficult to do, but it’s vital to navigating a path of truth.
- Using critical thinking to establish facts, and going where the evidence leads, instead of simply relying on authorities. In 12 Angry Men, the jury works out many truths about the case, rather than depending on the authority of the judicial system’s paid attorneys—and they do a better job. Likewise, even though we disagree among ourselves on some details, we in 9/11 Truth have labored toward analytically establishing the facts of September 11, 2001, instead of blindly accepting the government’s explanation.
- Caring about others. In the film, one character, played by Jack Warden, is willing to vote either way, just so long as he can make a baseball game he has tickets for. The game is more important to him than the fate of the accused, whose life is hanging in the balance. He reminds me of people we encounter today, who are far more concerned with sports scores than with the growing surveillance state, or the victims and trillion-dollar expense of the contrived wars we are waging in the Middle East.
- Upholding the Constitution. 12 Angry Men specifically cites Constitutional principles. Today, few people seem to know, or care, about their own rapidly eroding Constitutional rights.
- Validating the jury system itself. While I can’t prove it, I suspect that certain inordinately high-profile jury cases, such as the Casey Anthony trial, might have been tampered with in order to outrage the public into concluding that “the jury system doesn’t work” and “we should leave verdicts in the hands of judges (after all, they’re legal experts) instead of laymen.” THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THE DEEP STATE WANTS: POLITICALLY APPOINTED JUDGES, BOUGHT AND PAID FOR, HAVING AUTHORITY TO INCARCERATE ANYONE UPON WHIM OF THE STATE. The jury approach not only ensures that both sides of a case are heard, but that a verdict is decided by individuals with no ulterior motives. This system may not be perfect, but it sure beats whatever’s in second place.
Trivia notes: According to the Internet Movie Database, screenwriter Reginald Rose became inspired to script this film after he himself was a member of a jury that battled for eight hours to reach a verdict.
Of course, not everyone will enjoy 12 Angry Men; younger viewers may consider it too old or talky. Perhaps some of the film’s depictions of prejudice are slightly overdrawn, subtly hinting of political correctness. (Twenty years later, however, Rose wrote the script for one of the most politically incorrect films to fly under Hollywood’s radar screen: The Wild Geese. No one would ever guess the same man wrote both films, since The Wild Geese—on the surface—was a violent action/adventure flick. But the action concealed some geopolitical undercurrents, including a scheming Rothschild-like international banker, who betrays the men attempting to rescue an African leader based on Moise Tshombe, ill-fated Christian president of the breakaway state of Katanga.)
I would love to embed 12 Angry Men right here, but to avoid any copyright issue, I refer my readers to the version which you can click-and-play at archive.org. The sound and image quality are good.