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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

History Speaks for Itself

Is the movie "Farhenheit 9/11" propaganda? "Propaganda" is definded in the
dictionary as "the propagation of a cause reflecting the views and interests of
those advocating such a cause." Michael Moore's cause is to unseat President
George Bush. In a free society, the truth, whatever that may be, eventually
comes out. Perhaps we shall only know the real truth years from now with the
20/20 vision of historical hindsight.

Is Farhenheit 9/11 unpatriotic? Benjamin Franklin said, "Dissidence is the
highest form of patriotism". Vladimir Nabokov described curiosity as the
highest form of insubordination. It is natural that people such as Michael
Moore, and his audience, who are too curious, will be perceived as dissidents.

Is Farhenheit 9/11 truth or fiction? Pilate said to Jesus, "What is truth?"
Truth in mathematics and science is as objective as one plus one equals two.
Truth in current events and politics and history is very subjective. For some,
Bush is a hero. For others, Bush is a villain. For some, Moore is a prophet and
crusader. For others, Moore is a sensationalist and rabble-rouser bent upon
distorting the truth. Each of us as viewers an participants in "Farhenheit
9/11" must discover our own subjective truth regarding our government and the
Islamic world.

The most important thing one could ever say about the movie Farhenheit 9/11,
apart from any questions of its accuracy or agenda, is that its production and
circulation is a monument to the freedom of expression made possible by our
democratic form of government. There are nations and regimes under which such a
film would earn its producer a prison term or death sentence. If we are
ashamed of the movie or its message, yet we must be proud for living in a
society free enough to produce such a movie and message.

Opponents of Michael Moore might accuse him of doing violence to facticity.
Unfortunately, violence in speech and actions is often a necessary ingredient
to foment change and reform, and, sometimes, it is the only ingredient which is
effective.

One purpose of a book or movie is to make us think. When we watch a movie or
read a book, a second inner movie or narrative begins playing within us, the
audience, composed of our thoughts and feelings as the outer narrative unfolds.
I shall now describe my thoughts and feelings after watching "Farhenheit 9/11."

Moore's movie is a protest of sorts. Is protest good or bad? During the recent
news coverage of Republican National Convention in New York City, a PBS
television channel placed side by side two interviews; one with the youngest
delegate, a man aged twenty, and the other of a young woman protestor in her
late twenty's. The young man, ultra-conservative in his view points, stated
that the protestors should be arrested because they are breaking the laws,
endangering others, and presenting no reasoned arguments in a sociably
acceptable forum. The young woman, by contrast, described protest as, not
violent and as one of the highest and most necessary forms of freedom permitted
by our society. As I pondered the words of these two very different people, I
suddenly received a revelation of insight which convinced me that, though both
people are correct in their own way, the protestor was more correct than the
conservative. My vision was the vision of the years of struggle and march and
protest and demonstration which slowly but inexorably corrected and continues
to correct the injustices which the civil rights movement targeted.

It is the blindness of our government to fail to recognize and admit that our
legislative judicial and excutive branches through due process alone would
NEVER have recognized and corrected the centuries-old civil rights injustices
of our society. It is only the preservation of freedom of speech and assembly
which stands an ever-vigilent guard against the tendencies of society to
injustice, oppression and tyrrany. The history of social injustice in our
country speaks for itself. The shame of slavery, Native American genocide, and
the oppression of women can never be washed away by any amount of apology or
reform. During the Vietnam era, it took years for public outrage to surface to
the streets. Today, it takes months. This is progress.

When Thomas Jefferson first proposed free public education for all as a
necessary condition for the success of a democracy, he was viewed as an
eccentric. In Jefferson's day, the notion of free education for all was unheard of. Today, free media and internet is a vehicle for the ongoing free education of all people to all issues and every side and angle of every issue. In the immortal words of Voltaire, "I may not agree with what you say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."

The tagline for this movie is "The temperature where freedom burns!" When I first heard the name of the documentary, "FARHENHEIT 9/11," I immediately thought of the science fiction novel by Ray Bradbury, "Farhenheit 451." Bradbury described a society in which all books are burned. The temperature of burning paper is 451 degrees Farhenheit.

Bradbury describes a future in which all books are banned and censored in an attempt to keep the human race from thinking for themselves. This frightening world is one in which people are controlled by the government in every way. A number of restrictions are placed upon the people of this society. One of which is the prohibition of the possession and/or reading of literature. The firemen of this time are paid not to protect citizens from the danger of fires, but to burn all books to ashes.

Recently, I was watching one of the many panel discussions which air nowadays on
public educational television analyzing the current climate in the Arab world.
One speaker cited the curious statistic that each year more books are translated
into Spanish than have been translated into Arabic in the past THOUSAND years.
The point he was
trying to make with this statistic is that the Arab world is rather close-minded
to new ideas and isolated from the intellectual life of the rest of the world.

There is no need to burn books which do not exist.

One of the major problems with Islamic ideology and theocracy is that it
attempts to force beliefs and behavior upon society with threats of violence, with acid in the face of a woman unveiled, with public beheadings and amputations, with the honor killing of a sister by her own brother.

I do not believe that one can successfully impose moral codes of behavior with violence and punishment. Such behavior, so disciplined, simply goes underground. Even in Bradbury's novel, the desire for literature goes underground, and people commit books to memory to preserve them from the fire's flames.

Moral and ethical behavior must start from within, from the subjective and
personal sanctum of each person's heart, and flow outward to embrace society as
a whole. Each individual must come of their own free will to "hunger and thirst"
after righteousness, and become a connoisseur of justice and mercy. Decency is
not a spike to be driven into the heart of humanity as it were a vampire.

Michael Moore shows a film clip of a Saudi beheading. The beheading takes place
in a public stadum resembling a football or baseball stadium. I wondered if the
spectators were eating popcorn or hotdogs. One might be certain that if there
were hotdogs, that the were all beef franks (no pork) and that there would be no
alcoholic beer. As I watched the beheading, I thought of how Islam tries to
drive morality as a stake into the vampire heart of society. When government
treats us like monsters, then that government itself becomes monstrous.

The cast of people appearing in the movie as themselves include: Michael Moore,
Ben Affleck, John Ashcroft, George Bush, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill
Clinton, John Conyers, Tom Daschle, Byron Dorgan. Al Gore, Abdul Henderson,
Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Lila Lipscomb, Jim McDermott, Colin Powell,
Condoleezza Rice, Britney Spears and Craig Unger.

Michael Moore did a good job of just holding the camera and letting images speak for themselves. The Cannes Film Festival awarded Moore the Palm d'Or Award for his work.

The movie dwells on the scandalous Florida election controversy and the
inaugural procession pelted by eggs. This film questions Bush's every move in a way that the American audiences are not used to. The movie is a diatrib on American society's ills. The picture painted for us is one of abuse of power, motivated by personal greed and vendetta, cloaked in a coercive rhetoric of fear tactics.

We meet Lila Lipscomb in Flint, Michigan, the mother of two in the armed
services. Mrs. Lipscomb's son is killed in Iraq. She tearfully reads his last
letter aloud: "What are we doing here?" her son asked. She goes to Washington to find out, but never receives an answer which is adequate.

Interview with Noam Chomsky: (visit next link)

http://www.rnw.nl/amsterdamforum/html/030517ch_trans.html

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