saw "Fahrenheit 911" at the Palm theatre in SLO last night.
aside: by the way, that's a pretty cool theatre. they sell hot tea for $1 and it is very small with a cool, mellow atmosphere.it was pretty damn interesting. very one-sided, and i'd like to see a rebuttal made with the same amount of impact as that one. not to say that impact equals truth, but the topics brought forward with the movie were pretty serious, if anything is false, i'd really like to see a serious counter-argument, not just Condi Rice saying "its not true."
so where does one go to find some actual thoughtful commentary on things like this? googling for "Fahrenheit 911 commentary" is useless, i wouldn't want to go to the filmmaker or distribution companies websites if i wanted an impartial discussion. there are thousands of movie comment boards, but it would be nice to have a place that has well-thought, well-written, highly-regarded commentary on things like this. hm. i smell opportunity. or maybe its just the napalm in the air.
anyways, the whole "bush is bad" thing got a little tedious. we get it, mike, you don't like the guy. now get back to the research you've done. i was impressed by the documents he showed (the uncensored military record, for example) and the connections he made between oil companies, Saudis, Cheney, etc. I had heard that there were all of these connections out there, but this was a good way to put them all together in one place.
it was a very well made documentary i think, in a cinematic sense. i mean, the cuts were great, a lot of juxtaposition of greed and poverty, clips of repeated mantras by the government, etc. the scenes of families with members in Iraq were tough, emotional scenes. many in the audience were crying several times throughout the film. the interviews with soldiers were also very good but he could have emphasized the change in spirit of the troops after the whole "mission accomplished" day. initially troops were talking about how they were there to kick some butt and liberate, but by the end, nobody wanted to be there, people were dying, it was real war with no real cause. you saw that transition in the film, but it wasn't really vocalized or shown explicitly.
its stuff like this that makes me want to go into politics. not that i actually do, but i just wish i could make a difference. the scene with a retired Senator (or was he a Federal Judge?) that said "you don't think we read any of the bills we pass, do you?" was pretty scary. helped you understand how easily things like PATRIOT can be passed in the right context, with the right lubrication. bad things happen this way. dictatorships are not always won by military coups in 3rd world countries. Hitler essentially rose to power legitimately (maybe not entirely true, not sure). my point is, the lawmakers are people. they get scared too. they make bad decisions that we all have to deal with. when a group is in control, all their actions are so that they remain in control. put these together and you get a government intimidating its lawmakers (not to mention its people) into accepting rash decisions (eg iraq) that would (and should) normally take plenty of debate and thought. i hate that.
the worst part? when all that "war on terror" was going on (well, it still is), and the idea of invading Iraq was first starting to seem real, did you question it? did you think "why are we doing this?" sure you did. but then did you say "well, they must know what they're doing." kinda takes faith out of government when it turns out so bad, when odd coincidences about who profits, etc turn up later. makes you think. makes you want change.
what's scary to me is how easy it is to talk our country into going to war. It seems like there is blood lust or something operating out there because people seem to WANT war. And if you protest, or question it, you must hate America. It's weird. Did Vietnam actually happen? Did we learn anything?
Posted by: Trix at August 3, 2004 10:26 AM