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

History Speaks for Itself

Is the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" propaganda? "Propaganda" is defined 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 Fahrenheit 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 Fahrenheit 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 "Fahrenheit 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 Fahrenheit
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 "Fahrenheit
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 executive 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-vigilant guard against the tendencies
of society to injustice, oppression and tyranny. 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,
"Fahrenheit 451." Bradbury described a society in which all books are
burned. The temperature of burning paper is 451 degrees Fahrenheit.

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 stadium 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 diatribe 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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