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Truth Or Scare, 4 September 2005

Author: dunmore_ego from Los Angeles, California

"…nothing is over the line when it finally comes down to winning or losing the presidency of the United States. Nobody is safe and nothing is sacred when the stakes finally get that high. It is the ultimate fast lane, and the people still on their feet in September are usually the meanest of the mean." - Hunter S. Thompson.

Whether you hate Michael Moore or not, you can't deny that his idealism is in the right place, for he embodies an American concept that is fast being stultified by the American Government itself – the Right to Free Speech. Though I question some of Moore's juvenile methods and embarrassing stunts, I do not refute him the right to prise open the government's Pandora's Box of guarded, privileged information in an attempt – misguided or not - to delineate between fact and falsehood.

Would that we were all prepared to go to such lengths to expose what we believe to be truth.

For those who righteously complain about Fahrenheit 9/11's one-sided slant, the same can be said for the government's (and by association, the media's) blinkered dissemination of information to the public at large. The litmus test for democracy is that ALL viewpoints be given equal shrift in the media and in congress; further, that each disparate viewpoint be afforded the same amount of RESPECT as that which each individual holds as truth. The hardest part about SAYING you believe in Freedom is ACTING like you do.

In the words of Henry David Thoreau, Moore "serves the State best by opposing the State most."

With this film, Moore has provided the rejoinder to years of enduring the fascist whims of a government despicable enough to wield the specter of the long-since-razed Twin Towers as collateral. He is not merely a gadfly guerrilla film-maker with an agenda steeped summarily in "opposition" to the reigning Republican Party. He is not perfunctorily anti-President or anti-government; he is ANTI-DUPLICITY.

For this documentary, Moore culled a wealth of disparate strands of information and fashioned them into a cudgel of defamatory data against the smug politicos in power. The message of this film is not that "George Bush is duplicitous" – ALL politicians are duplicitous – the underlying significance is the realization that ANY government would have used the WTC attacks to prey upon the fears of the populace to feather their affluent beds. ANY government would ensure that their business associates were well cared for during periods of civil unrest and that an international incident that bottlenecks the world economy would not quell their rapacious income-earning ability.

The first half of "Fahrenheit 9/11" focuses on arousing the intellect, the second half is drenched in emotive appeal, with Moore shifting the focus from the highest government offices - perpetuating their blood money behind the lies they sell to the public - to the lowest grunts in the trenches, crimson-necked Bubbas to a man, inculcated with those lies, drenched in misplaced patriotic fervor, empowered to "bring the ideal of democracy and freedom to (Iraq)".

Moore fearlessly does what no "news" program has done before him – spotlight American politicians backpedaling, contradicting themselves, talking nonsense - from the transparently furtive Dick Cheney, whose very presence simply oozes Gollum-like underhandedness and scum-trickery; to the awkward warbling of John Ashcroft, who instigated the paradoxically-named Patriot Act; to Donald Rumsfeld mouthing like an automaton about "the humanity" that goes into bombing innocents.

Moore exposes the symbiosis the Bush family shares with the faction responsible for the 9/11 tragedy – the Taliban. Even with known allegiance to the terrorist cells known as Al Qaeda, Taliban officers are still able to saunter more freely through the corridors of the White House than even born-and-bred Americans. Any wonder that the Bush Mafioso – whose business dealings with the Taliban net them ten-figure incomes – are considered co-conspirators in this unethically twisted financial coup. As one of the interviewees in the film comments, "It's about making money. It's about making a LOT of money."

The fact that George Bush Junior comes across as such a vacuous, empty-headed paragon of imbecility is no one's fault but his own. Sure, biased editing and out-of-context statements may be used to contribute to any public figure's denigration, but the plain truth is that any person with a modicum of English appreciation needs simply to hear the stumbling, third-grade elocutionary delivery of this American President to conclude that it was not "smarts" that won him the White House. We don't even need to satirize Bush – that chased-ferret look is a sniggering point to begin with – then he starts speaking... mispronunciations, malapropisms, grammatical obscenities fly out of this mental midget's mouth like a tennis ball launcher set on Wimbledon Pro, coupled with an unwarranted arrogance and condescension (he KNOWS we know who his dad is) and that uninformed, blank-staring mien as cream-whipped topping.

The film closes with yet another Bush synapse-disconnect. Though one imagines he would be aware of his limitations by now, apparently George W. still believes he can successfully venture off-script during speeches and inject profundity like a Kennedy or a Jefferson. In this instance, what he tried to say – and ended up burbling incoherently – was, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me", but even a well-worn axiom in the mouth of this ersatz President turns to mealy-mouth mush:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas - probably Tennessee, that says: Fool me once... shame on... shame on you... If- fool me- can't get fooled again..."

It's appropriate that Dubya's botched aphorism echoes the prophetic Who song, "Won't Get Fooled Again", for that song's final lyric now attains a brutal literalism:

Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.

(Movie Maniacs, read this unabridged article at: www.poffysmoviemania.com/Fahrenheit911.html)

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