Fahrenheit 911
Forget “The Passion” and “Spider Man 2,” this is the most important film you will see this year. Sadly, it will also be more polarizing than persuasive, due, in part, to what makes the film entertaining, Michael Moore’s snide sensibility.

As I watched the film I tried to find an argument, some sort of conclusion that would tie together all the images and claims that were flashing in front of me. On one level, Moore’s thesis is obvious: Bush must go. This claim is made explicit in a letter a young serviceman wrote to his mother shortly before he was KIA in Iraq. (He wrote that we needed to vote “that fool,” i.e., Dubya, out.) But there are a number of ways this argument could be made, so I was left wondering what principle was organizing the particular set of images presented in the film. The answer came at the end of the film when Moore quoted an extended passage from George Orwell’s 1984. Hearing that text the film came together for me. Moore is arguing that George W. Bush’s administration is Orwellian. In fact, they almost seem to be intentionally using Orwell’s novel as their playbook.

But, of course, they are not taking their directions of Orwell’s novel. If I were to point to a weakness in this film, it would be Moore’s tendency to simplify. In his story, everyone in the Whitehouse is driven by money. I suspect he is mostly right, but Bush, Cheney, et al are far more complex than that, and so is the war in Iraq, the “war” on terrorism, and the U.S. economy. For example, I have no doubts that the Bush-Cheney profiteering is tinged with a kind of patriotism, buoyed by their belief that they know what is best for us, and for the world, even if, in the end, their utopia seems dystopic to me, what’s good for big business is good for America, maybe even the world. But of course, my optimistic view of Bush is now grounded in any real evidence, but rather in my inability to believe that real people, Americans, elected officials, could, so cynically, hijack the country and murder thousands of Iraqis just to line their already-too-full pockets. I could be wrong. No doubt there were many people just like me living in Germany in 1938, and they were wrong, just as I may be today.

But the film does a lot to bolster its surface-level claim: Bush must go. I believe this wholeheartedly, and I’m no ideologically-driven liberal. In fact, I’m no ideologue at all. I’m the only person I know who voted both for Ronald Reagan and Ralph Nader. I’m the only person I know who voted for George H.W. Bush—twice—but would vote for anyone but Dubya. Truth be told, I hate both the political parties. I don’t think the Democrats can “save” us, and I resent a lot of their proposals. But, and here I repeat, Dubya must go.

After the 2000 “election,” and I now use that term loosely, I wasn’t particularly upset that Bush won. I figured it was a toss-up between having to listen to Gore’s condescending lectures for four years, ot to Bush’s moronic stuttering, and so, we got “President Dumberer,” but who cares? But, after 9-11, it became apparent to me that (a) we could not afford to have an imbecile in the White House, and (b) Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and company were going to use this event to . . . well, to steal our freedoms, line their pockets, and destroy the lower classes in this country.

Come to think of it, I guess Moore wasn’t simplifying after all.