fear_and_hate_5_22's message : IN AN ALTERNATE UNIVERSE...

Dear Friends,


It sucks. It really sucks. I think you’ll agree 2004 has been a terrible year. Victory was in our hands : for the first time in ages, we had a true Democratic candidate with a clear vision and a bold outlook, and no third party busybody to ruin his chances. Sure enough, we were divided, our country is not wildly left and Dean didn’t appeal to the center, but I’m positive the moderates and the fence sitters could have been talked into voting for him, if not for this wretched French movie.

Now don’t get me wrong : I’m a liberal and I have supported it. I can recall (though only vaguely, it seems so long ago now) witnessing wondrous things – people who were losing their time on hopeless love affairs suddenly taking to politics, people who had buried their heads in the sand becoming activists after seeing it. But in fact I realize now that I was so happy to see something anti-Bush so phenomenally successful in the theaters, that I refused to see all the problems with the film. I swallowed the “changed a lot of minds and woke up a generation” rubbish. I was mistaken like so many others, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Even when I saw Dean slipping down the polls I was the first to defend “Le monde selon Bush”, but now I can’t ignore the obvious any more : it did more damage than help.

Why was it selected at Cannes instead of “Fahrenheit 9/11” in the first place ? The French haven’t made one decent movie since the sixties, their filmmakers are but pseudo-intellectual douchebags and Karel didn’t have a chance until that French cousin of Kerry’s gave his flick a push in the hope that it would help topple Dean. The plot failed, but the movie won and in what country did it happen ? An artistic Palme, uh ? Now can you spell me the word “shenanigans” ?

Don’t get me wrong : I’m a liberal and I’m not xenophobic or anything. But why would the French meddle with our domestic affairs to begin with ? How could the American populace really take a boring lecture from a dude who hates our guts anyway, when we had our own guy, who sure has his views but is not afraid to express them openly and whose courage and honesty could certainly not have been denied ? Whereas the French are not known for their bravery, and this movie just wasn’t frank : no given direction, no evidence of a point of view, nothing clear and straightforward. It made us look timid and tame, disheartened the undecided and caused the Republicans to call us cowards.

Then I read Kop’s 59 Ploys, and I must say I was really impressed. Don’t get me wrong though : I’m a liberal and I never supported Bush in any way. But what’s fair is fair. I’m broad-minded and I can acknowledge manipulation on my side when I’m shown it, especially a thousand times. Kop does have points, for example when he explains Karel didn’t doctor or edit his movie to make believe he was objective, or when he points out that Bush’s grandparents may have been in bed with the nazis but that one of his ancestors once gave ten cents to a beggar on August 20, 1801, or when he wonders why Frank Carlucci, former Reagan’s main man and a mainstay to Carlyle, agreed to meet him and not Moore, if not because Karel really was pro-Republican and made his movie only to cause his side to lose (why he should have done that, this I don’t know, but Kop does show he did it). Now can anyone spell me the words “disingenuous” and “propaganda” ?

And then, one day I had nothing else to do, I went to see “Le monde selon Bush”. Right – I hadn’t watched it yet. Don’t get me wrong : I’m a liberal and I’m too smart to need to play this “must see” game. Besides, I already knew about everything and more, and so, in no way could my appraisal have been influenced by the context, however negative. Well, I saw it and it was plain to me that everything was true : too tame, too divisive, too intellectual, too clueless, too objective, too deceptive and artistically so dull, with no style and no character whatsoever. Manipulative shit is all it was. If anything, I believe that if I had been pro-Bush, watching that would have made me even more so, because Karel's condescending attitude and biased approach would probably have upset me, and I wouldn't have trusted anything he had to say.

I don’t want to know if we needed to wrest the control of the media from Bush supporters, I never really thought about how this could be achieved, so why should I pay homage to those who tried. I don’t wonder if we don’t live in a “might is right” society where the left would still lie in shreds and in ruins for lack of voters, even with the ideal movie and the best of candidates : it’s too depressing. I don’t face the real problem, which is that no movie can ever change anything when the people don't want changes, because then I’d have to deal with it. I just think that Karel should have done this and he should have done that, and this is how he should have done it. I just think that “Le monde selon Bush”’s success was delusional and gave us a bad name, and that we would have been better off without it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a liberal : I don’t blame the message. But I don’t want to have anything to do with the messenger. Who cares if it takes a messenger to deliver a message. My hands are clean. I blame William Karel and Susan Sarandon, I blame Sean Penn and Bruce Springsteen, I blame Bob Woodward and Robert Greenwald, I blame Roseanne Barr and Noam Chomsky, I blame all the people that did something in their own way, I blame the messengers and the whistleblowers.

I don’t blame Trey Parker and Matt Stone though, because “Team America” was hilarious (don’t get me wrong, not my ideas, but smart, broad-minded, etc.) – and I don’t blame Michael Moore either, for he was in no position to do a thing. “Fahrenheit 9/11” had found no distributors, couldn’t reach the theaters and was available only on the Internet, but nobody ever bothered to download it because the filmmaker asked for a small fee since he was broke. Which proves well enough how respectable, uncompromising and aesthetically fulfilling this movie was. Yes, if “Fahrenheit 9/11” had won at Cannes instead of “Le monde selon Bush”, I’m sure I’d whole-heartedly have supported it without the slightest reluctance, and it would have helped us win too. It’s so obvious the problem lies with the movie and not with me. With the filmmaker and not with the left. Blame the film. Love me. After all, I’m a liberal.

And so, it’s hello cruel world and Happy New 2005 everybody ! Everything will be all right now that we’re through with the Karel episode.

Yours,

fear_and_hate_5_22




NOTE : Genuine statements from (genuine ?) liberals have been used in this op-ed piece and conveniently edited and doctored to fit my purpose. No Republican was harmed during the process.

BROTHERHOOD

He was (and still is) a dedicated Zionist Chomsky-hater Mike-disliker Bush voter counter-terrorism freak, and he scarcely posted, always as a very intelligent but just yet another cynical heartless bastard. We had had detailed but cold discussions, and he invariably backed up his points with meticulous care, a weird sense of paradox and more than a slight contempt for his topic and his opponent. I didn’t like him but more than once had he left me holding back feelings of admiration and nostalgia, “if only…”

Then came what must have been one of the worst months of my life, and even though I had only made a discreet, single post on that board, he engaged in dialogue in a blend of curiosity and interest. Now normally I wouldn’t have trusted him, but I was so low I didn’t give a damn and I told him everything. And he took the trouble to hold out his hand to me and to find words both rational and tactful to bring some peace to my tortured mind. His percipient stance was the only ray of light to reach my heart, for I didn't want to lull myself with false hopes and unlike my friends he was detached enough about what was on my mind to be both lucid and convincing. When I told him “Like it or not, I regard you as a friend”, he said he was glad. And when he told me “We probably disagree on everything”, I said “Probably. Does it matter ?”, and he didn’t reply.

He turned out to be an amazing guy, kind-hearted, delicate and funny as hell. He compels me, he excites me, he cracks me up, I’m hooked, I’m charmed, I’m captivated, I rarely had it so bad for an online moniker, and never at all for a right wing scum. We're as thick as thieves – online or not, we're friends. I’m not sure how long it can last, but as Paul Weller put it :

It doesn't matter if we never meet again,
What we have said will always remain.
If we get through for two minutes only,
It will be a start!

Gotta be honest, the right wingers are another world and it's fascinating when you discover one of them has learned the same language as you at the same school. That's him and me. Not his language, not my language, something that has to do with experience and life. It's very elusive, very fragile. But brotherhood is made of this. Mike is so right you know : it's fear, nothing but fear, instilled into the minds of people otherwise good. It's tragic. Fuck Bush to pieces.

Also, the more someone looks weird to you, the more he's actually you - the self you don't want to see and you try to hide. I think opinions are delusional - who the hell knows why he or she thinks the way he/she does anyway : experience ? learning ? culture ? childhood trauma ? books read ? TV shows seen ? personal thinking ? authority accepted ? some talking head's make-up ? We all have our areas of awareness and our areas of slumber, and we all have truths unbearable to face. I know I have. This guy is a Jew and to me he clearly has a matching neurosis. He's as knee-jerk about Zionism as I am about Mike. Sad difference is, I think he's driven by fear and I'm driven by love. But who knows. May be it's the opposite. What matters in the end is how we relate to honesty and integrity.

And humour…

And so this is Christmas, and what have you done ? Doesn’t look like the orgy of civil disobedience I’ve dreamed of is going to happen, nor anything else until Inauguration Day. Who cares. Silent, every day miracles are not bad either. God bless Moore-dislikers and protect their rare, endangered species. And God bless this one’s Jewish ass. Hanakah is over but there’s still plenty of fun to make of our common bundle of absurdity – hopefully.