First things first
GO VOTE
(Unless, of course, you're a Republican. Then you can stay home.)
Very recently, Kevin and I watched Fahrenheit 9/11. I had put it in our netflix queue some months ago and Kevin moved it up to the top of the list because he wanted to see it before election day. I'm not sure why - Kevin's been screamingly anti-Bush since Bush made the primaries 4 years ago (and McCain didn't. Personally, I think we'd have been better off with either of the two secondary candidates from the 2000 election.) Seeing the film wasn't going to change either of our minds.
What it did do was scare the crap out of me. Some of the facts presented I already knew. What I didn't know about was exactly how cuddlesome the Bush's are with the Saudis. I knew Bush was an elitist snob - not the common Texas rancher like he wishes us to believe he is. And was outraged when he addresses a fund-raising dinner as "the haves... and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base." Or making a "hardline stance against terrorism" and exhorting the cameraman to "watch me make this drive" as he tees off in his golf game.
I have always thought of Bush as being a poor public speaker. Moore goes after that aspect of him with a vengence. The seven minutes he sat reading with the children in Florida while the Trade Towers were under attack were... frightening. On the one hand, would those seven minutes have made a difference to anyone? Probably not. But that he sat there, looking confused and dumbfounded - ON CAMERA because this was a photo-oppotunity - were just... very frustrating.
Moore represents in the second half of his film a point which I have been trying to make with my father for a while - there is a difference between supporting our troops and supporting the war. My father is a Vietnam Vet and he loathes Kerry because he thinks it was treasonous and a betrayal for Kerry to go over as a soldier in Vietnam and then renounce the war as being brutal and senseless. Um... just because I use pots doesn't make them less black. It actually means that I know what I'm talking about when I say the pot is black. I'm pretty damn familiar with it.
We all know - or should know - that the people fighting the war have nothing to do with the decisions about the war. In fact, the closer to making decisions about the war people are, the less personally involved they are. A fact Moore made clear in a painful little episode where he tried to convince congressmen and senators that their children should enlist and go to Iraq. One of the critics of the film I read said "Moore is shocked, shocked that the lower classes are the people who make up the army, a fact that has been true since Hamurabi crossed the mountains on elephants." Which is actually not true. In England, the second sons of the nobility and gentry bought their commissions. The sons of noble lords went to war with the common soldiers - you know, as in "I could get killed out here" war - and for many, many centuries, the British had the finest army.
I hate politics. I hate the news. I hate knowing how bad things are. And I feel like I can do nothing about it. Anyone who tells you "your vote counts" must have missed the 2000 elections where the president of the United States was selected by the Supreme Court and not by the millions of people who voted.
What it boils down to is that I am afraid. I am afraid of what - as a country - we have become in the eyes of the world. I am afraid that my voice doesn't count. And I don't like being afraid. No one does.
I am going to go vote now. I hope it makes a difference.
I really do.
Posted by tisfan at November 02, 2004 10:20 AMThe one question that Fahrenheit 9/11 brought up for me but didn't answer was why no one in the Senate would sign that protest. Thanks to Air America I've discovered that the reason is that a poll of the Senate had indicated that the vote would have been split 50-50 meaning that Gore would have had to break the tie and thus decide who won the election. Gore didn't want to have to be responsible for casting the vote to decide whether or not he won the election, so he asked the Senate not to sign the protest.
::sigh:: We could have had a stateman, instead we got a fascist.
Posted by: Jeff on November 2, 2004 11:54 AMTo be fair, a lot of those "bought commissions"-- meaning, they bought their way into being officers, not grunts-- were all about wearing a pretty red uniform and going to parties with generals and socialites. But yes, the British nobility have a long-standing tradition of service, and that included military service.
What angers me the most about Bush as a person is the cavalier way he belittles learning, and *flaunts* his ignorance. That old saw about "those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it"? Well, no *wonder* Bush has set our country back 50 years....
Posted by: Gris on November 2, 2004 02:10 PMI knew about a lot of the Saudi connections before I read it, but House of Bush, House of Saud is a pretty good book cataloguing the Bush connection to the more expensive (and therefore important) people in Saudi.
Posted by: J.D. on November 2, 2004 03:03 PMDid he actually say Hammurabi? I think he must have meant Hannibal there.
And the bit about war being a lower-class occupation back then is bullshit. In Rome from earliest recorded times until about a century after the elephant thing the lower classes were the only ones exempt from military service. Service was a privilege and obligation of wealth. Soldiers had to supply their own equipment, so the early Roman army organized along class lines, with each income group supplying a different kind of soldier based on the cost of the gear. It wasn't until Marius came along and recruited the poor, supplied their equipment, and promised them land bounties for service that that changed.
Also in the US the wealthy were subject to the draft when we had it. In the Civil War you could hire a substitute or buy a deferral, but in later drafts that loophole didn't exist. We expected our wealthy to fight. The Kennedys took casualties in WWII. Teddy Roosevelt's son died in WWI. Even in Viet Nam the responsible sons of privilege would go in country. John McCain's dad was an admiral and Al Gore's father was a senator but they went.
Now though we're ruled by chickenhawks -- men who never served or did that fake service in state militias to avoid the real thing but who are all for OTHER people fighting. And not having felt any nead to serve themselves they don't see why their friends and families should sacrifice either. Last I heard only one of the 535 people in congress actually had a child serving in the middle east -- and he was a Democrat.
In the US enlistment in the regular army has traditionally been a choice of desperation for people who can't get ahead otherwise (a better choice since those big gummint liberal horrid meanies introduced the GI bill) but when war breaks out the middle and wealthy classes have always been expected to put on a uniform and join the ranks too -- until now, that is.
Posted by: Greg on November 3, 2004 08:29 AM