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8.12.2004
God I Love Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, always one of my favorite writers, has another excellent essay in In These Times, I Love You, Madame Librarian
8.6.2004
Nuts! Bunghole
Here is yet another reason why LBJ is my favorite modern president (via)
Lemons! For Everyone!
Harper has a really well-written post up over at Lemons.
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[LEMONS]
6.28.2004
Fahrenheit 911 Critics Hate America
Moore's Fahrenheit 911 is an amazing film, one that everyone in America should see.
Obviously, many have. It is the number one movie in America. It is the first documentary to ever be number one in its opening weekend. It has already become the top-grossing documentary ever (not counting concert films). Hopefully, however, this will not be a movie that just one-half of Americans will go to see.
Many people will not see this movie on principle, which is a shame. If you won't go see F 911, you should ask yourself if you have become so blindly partisan that you would rather have your worldview reinforced than be exposed to facts which would make it difficult to support Bush in good conscience. Ask yourself whom you love more, Bush, or America? The Republican party, or our troops in Iraq? Who is your greater enemy, Osama Bin Laden, or John Kerry? The time has come to make a choice: are you a patriot, or are you a partisan?
Those who refuse to see this movie hate America. They hate our freedoms. They hate open societies. They prefer dogma to truth. They would prefer to drag us back to the dark ages of Empire and Kings and government-controlled media--all those things that American patriots have fought and died to defend us from for two centuries--than to see their chosen one discredited.
This is how the administration and the conservative pundits have framed the argument against those who oppose the president for three years. And although I present such choices in jest, I think they genuinely are representative of a larger truth: by remaining willfully blind to the President's misdeeds, his supporters are inadvertently fostering terrorism.
There's absolutely nothing new in this movie in terms of news. If you've been reading the newspapers (well, perhaps not your local newspaper, but any of the national ones other than USA Today), you will already know all of the facts that Moore presents. However, it does a fantastic job of presenting the litany of complaints that the mainstream media does not present together and at once, but which are all related.
Bush has ignored the war on terror to pursue Iraq. Bush was disingenuous as to why we went to war with Iraq. Bush has screwed over veterans and active-duty soldiers.
And the dominant complaint: Bush had made America less safe, not more so.
"America is under attack."
After hearing these words Bush sat mute in an elementary school classroom for seven minutes. Just before entering, he had been told that a plane had smashed into a World Trade Center tower. He knew nothing more. Nuclear bombs could have been going off in Miami, in Atlanta, in Phoenix and Chicago and Cleveland and Fresno. Planes could have been on the way to deliver a payload of bombs over Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle. Perhaps there were nuclear warheads launching. Perhaps an invasion was already underway. He knew nothing. Yet instead of excusing himself to learn more, he sat for seven critical minutes, dumbfounded. Our war president was shocked and awed; he was clearly out of his element and in over his head. As he remains today.
People will complain about the coverage of Iraq, about the footage of Iraqis who have been made homeless, dismembered, and killed by American bombs. But consider this. During one week last year in Southeast Asia, I saw more footage of the consequences of war in the international press than I have seen in the subsequent year and a half in our domestic media--including that which was presented in F911. Everyone in the rest of the world already sees these images, and then some. Those in the Arab world see little else. Yet we have been blinded to it. I say shine a light on it for all to see.
If you supported this invasion, this feckless war, you have a duty to watch the ugliness which you helped to engineer. Patriots risked their lives to bring you this footage; have the decency to see it. Our actions, whether as individuals or as a nation, have consequences and if we must take responsibility for them. There was no connection between Iraq and the terrorists who attacked Americans. But there is today, and these images largely explain why. How would you react if these were images of Americans? What role do you yourself play in this tragedy? What can you now do to help rectify it?
But more than anything else, this is a damn good movie. Although I found myself teary-eyed during some moments of the LOTR trilogy, I cannot remember the last time I cried at a movie. Yet during F911, I repeatedly had tears rolling down my cheeks. There was one moment--which you will know when you see the movie--when it was all I could do to hold it together. And yet I also laughed so hard that my sides and stomach hurt. I experienced pure joy, and soul-crushing sorrow within seconds of each other. This is a profound credit to Moore as a film-maker. There were, of course, moments that I thought were too Moore-ian. But they were few and far between. The cheap stunts were kept to a minimum. Moore himself was not perpetually in front of the camera this time around.
I watch FoxNews on Sundays. I read The Weekly Standard. I listen to Rush. I read O' Reilly and Brooks and both Kristols. I'm not afraid of the spin. I don't fear what it will make me think, because ultimately I know that the truth is on my side. What about you? Are you afraid to watch?
But of course you already know the answer. You won't see it because it scares you. If you do see it, you'll discredit it, you'll say it's biased (which it is) or that it's inaccurate, which it most certainly is not. You are both a patriot, and a partisan, you maintain. You do not have to choose. But this is false. This November we as Americans will participate in the most important election since 1860.
Again I ask you: are you a patriot, or a partisan?
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