Freedom of Speech still alive, thankfully!

I happily note that a few folks that check out our blogs live in countries other than the U.S. I don't know if Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has yet reached their shores, but if and when it does, I hope they'll all take a look. This is a remarkable film.

I wasn't going to watch it until the elections were over, mainly because I already have strong feelings against our current administration, but my daughters kept insisting, and one rented it the other night and I couldn't take it back without watching it, so I did.

Earlier Moore documentaries have had a stronger sense of Michael Moore as the star. This one didn't. It has a very clear focus - George W. Bush. This film is a strong propaganda piece for our First Amendment. Moore doesn't pull his punches regarding the President, even though he shows efforts by the administration to curb freedom of speech in this country in the name of Homeland Security. The fact that this film has received the acclaim it deserves while questioning the motives of the country's administration does underscore the fact that freedom of speech does exist in this country, but perhaps only for "name" documentarians who know how to make people look really bad when they want to…

In the same way that Dick Cheney was shown by the networks to have actually met John Edwards on at least three public occasions prior to his false claim on Tuesday night that that was the first time, Moore catches Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld in a number of outright lies regarding Iraq, bin Laden, Halliburton and so on.

Focusing on the age-old story of the young men from poor backgrounds who have little upward mobility opportunities outside of the military, he shows the tactics of military recruiters choosing to eschew the wealthy neighborhoods in favor of the poor neighborhood shopping center where they suggest to one young man in a parking lot that he could possibly save up a milliion dollars from his Marine pay if he's careful…

Focusing on one mother of sons who have joined up over the years, and who has many relatives who have served in the military, and who was extremely proud of that fact and proud of our involvement in Iraq, and proud of the president, he comes back to her later when she receives word that her son has been killed in Iraq, and later again when she visits Washington to lobby for an end to the war and is accosted by a woman in front of the Capitol who points to an Iraqi woman protesting the war and describes her display as a hoax. The mother is stunned by the woman's remarks and lays into her that her own son was killed there, and it's no hoax. "People just don't know. They think they know…I though I knew…but they just don't know!" she laments.

War is no answer to anything except conquest. Conquest is no answer to anything except gain. Gain is no answer to anything if it leaves one group that Bush oh-so-wittily describes at a white-tie fundraiser as "the Have's and the Have More's" and "My Base," and another group that can only be described as the hidden casualties of war, i.e. the ones who ultimately do all the paying for things.