[snipped from: PNM’s called to the global stage; I’m called to the Pentagon]
Michael Moore’s movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
Moore’s movie is very funny and it does show Bush in a very bad light, but of course, it’s totally designed to do so. It’s not a documentary by any stretch, but pure propaganda, essentially shaped to prove—yet again—that all political leaders are either dupes (Democrats) or evil money-grubbers (Republicans). Meanwhile, anybody who serves with or works with the military is similarly a dupe (all soldiers are fodder) or evil money-grubbers (all contractors are in it simply to rip off the government). The cynicism of the movie is disturbing and very Marxist: the U.S. military is essentially a tool of the capitalist war machine, and no real good comes from its use overseas.
As someone who’s studied Soviet propaganda for years, it was fairly nostalgic to see America and its government depicted in this manner. Moore is a very skillful propagandist, so the movie was essentially a two-hour political attack commercial designed to get the audience to vote against Bush. Fine and dandy. Free country and you can say what you want. Just don’t call this a documentary and don’t tell me that Moore isn’t abusing that perception he’s fostering that he’s telling the “whole truth.” It is a very skewed (as he admits) rendition of history—basically a classic Marxist conspiratorial view of the post-Cold War era.
It’s sad that so many people will sop this up as the “real story,” like Oliver Stone’s worst movie “JFK” (though I admire him deeply as a filmmaker), because it simply fuels that sort of everyone-connected-to-the-government-is-bad mentality that was so prevalent in the mid-1990s. I believe this is Moore’s real intent, which makes him a decade-later version of Rush Limbaugh. That’s certainly his right to pursue such a career path and meld it with his political beliefs, as Rush so ably did. I just don’t care for that sort of political approach.
I think it was incredibly wrong for the right wing to go after Clinton his entire eight years, so full of personal hatred for the man and so desirous to paint his legacy as completely one defined by his worst characteristics. It maddened me deeply as a Democrat. But I don’t really care for Moore and others trying to do the same with Bush and the Republicans now. If it was wrong to do to Clinton then, it can’t be right to do it with Bush now, even if my personal political beliefs basically agree with the underlying criticisms of how Bush sold this war to the American public and the world.
So I left the theater depressed that this is the level of political discourse today: a wildly skewed conspiratorial rant designed to depict our president as thoroughly corrupt. Gosh, where have I seen this before? And is this all I have to look forward to now with administration after administration?
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