Checksum Arcanius

Today after a wonderful day at work in which I ended by successfully generating on-the-fly a control barcode for the Flic barcode scanner using code written from scratch by yours truly, I went with Maneesh
to see Farenheit 9/11.

My first reaction to the release of this movie is that I would not see it. This because Michael Moore is an avowed leftest, and I didn’t want to support him, his propoganda, or his causes. But then, after some reflecting and reading of reviews, I decided that watching it would be useful. I wanted to hear oposing viewpoints, if for no other reason than knowing what they were. While I went in with more than a grain of salt, I also tried to keep an open mind.

First, since it is a movie, I think visuals should be discussed. Large parts of the movie consisted of footage blown up from TV quality images. While it was bearable to watch, anybody who gave it a high score in visuals is retarded. And there were plenty of people that did just that on Yahoo! Movies. ‘Tards.

The attempts to direect the audience emotionally were well done. I’m not terribly emotional to start out with, and I had to grimmace to make it through the emotionally charged parts still keeping my wits about me. The hardest were the mother who lost the son in the war and the Iraqi woman who lost some family members.

The large array of factual evidence presented is the most convincing. For example, the military commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq were oppisite of what it sees they should have been. Fewer troops went to Afghanistan than police patrol the streets of New York. More than ten times the number committed to Afghanistan are in Iraq. It tooks months for US forces to penetrate Afghanistan, and only days for Iraq. Its not to hard to believe Mikey, then, when he suggests that this is the reason Osama got away, and Sadaam got caught. It is also fairly easy to believe, with the other evidence presented, that the Bush administration took on Afghanistan out of neccesity, whereas Iraq was the prize they sought, with 9/11 as the means to that end.

And that became the most disturbing theme in the movie, because of how true it seemed upon personal reflection. September 11th was used as a justification for agendas that existed long before. Take the Patriot Act. It was very telling when Michael Moore was interviewing a congressman who said that members of congress don’t actually read what they turn into law, because to do so would take too long. So Mikey decided to go and read the patriot act to them. If it takes someone whose job is to legislate too long to read a single new law, how in the world are the rest of us, who have real jobs to do, supposed to read all the laws that we are supposed to abide by?

Other interesting tidbits

• the Afghani pipeline for natural gas
• the tactics of Marine recruiters
• Only one member of congress has a child overseas in the service
• Members of congress don’t like the idea of getting their kids to sign up for the Army

Overall, seeing the movie was a good experience. I just wish there were a conservative version of Michael Moore, so we could have an equally skewed version of this sort of commentary from the right. Maybe then people would realize how screwed up the system really is. While the rest of the movie went on to try to paint Bush and Cheney as unique in their ties to Enron and Haliburton, one truth remains. If you filmed anyone in politics for 4 years, you could make them look any way you wanted, because they will certainly provide enough ammunition. Unfortunately, the truth is that most of our government is corrupt and its not getting any better. Sure, its called politics as usual when senators get contracts for their home state and they get campaign contributions in return. But pretending that is somehow different than bribery doesn’t make it any less harmful.

In the end, this movie reaffirmed rather than challeneged my core beliefs. It did shift my perspective on Bush, but it didn’t rule out my voting for him. It certainly didn’t make me any more likely to vote for Kerry, even though an old lady wearing a Kerry for President pin tried to get me to register to vote (I am already registered). But it still seems clear to me that the government which governs least governs best. Government started the War in Iraq for a number of legitimate and probably a number of illegitmate reasons as well. But government also supplied and supported Hussein and Bin Laden in the first place. Imagine the lives and money that could have been put to better use had government just stayed out of it all.

Vote freedom first.

Peace.

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