Please, Bash Moore, but Beware

You'll look like an idiot. You can't outreason the truth:

CBS News | Moore Distortions | June 29, 2004�13:21:17

Now, I notice a few problems with this opinion. It rambles into nowhere, takes a point he says Moore does not make, and argues it without any information contrary to Moore's assertations.

"A mainstream liberal consensus on Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has emerged quickly. It goes something like this: Moore's a nutty conspiracy theorist, and parts of the movie -- in which he suggests, among other things, that we invaded Afghanistan not because of 9/11 but because we wanted to build a natural gas pipeline -- showcase Moore at his least responsible."

The mainstream consensus about the film is not that he's a nutty conspiracy theorist. It's that he presents a very one-sided portrait of Bush. The side Bush does not want the American public to see.

As far as the oil pipeline thing, where is your evidence that this pipeline was never conceived of except in Moore's imagination.

"But he's also a talented polemicist and filmmaker; and as a result, the second half of the movie -- in which he uses the story of Lila Lipscomb, a grieving military mother, to examine why it is only the poor and working class who sacrifice in times of war -- is both profound and smart."

There it is there.

"In "The New York Times", A.O. Scott called the interviews with Lipscomb the "most moving sections" of the film. If the folks with whom I saw the movie provide any indication, audiences across the country will leave the theater so moved by Lipscomb's story that they will forgive "Fahrenheit 9/11" its often-incoherent points and poorly supported accusations."

Moore is never incoherent. He is just exploding with information. Imagine the 24 hour long director's cut.

No one has come forward to deny the $billions invested in Bush by the Saudi royal family, or give a complete accounting of the true amount, which sounds low to me.

"That, I suspect, is exactly what Moore wanted: to wrap assertions that can only be described as odd -- such as his insistence that the military is failing to adequately patrol miles of deserted Oregonian coast -- in the heart-breaking story of a mother's loss and the legitimate observation that America's system of military service asks too much of the poor and too little of elites."

He never said the military fails to patrol the coast of Oregon. We don't even want that. Moore's 'hidden' suggestion is that we could spare a paltry percentage of the money flowing into Iraq for even a minimum number of State Police to respond to public safety calls. Hmmm, this guy has reasoning issues. Can't get there from here. We'll continue and see how feeble he really is.

Here's where he gets to the meat of his mad cow. He stipulates a side point to the movie, a point which has been 'out there' for more than thirty years. If you have seen any other of Moore's movies, he ends up in Flint a lot. It has everything to do with him, his views and why he does what he does.

"There's a central -- and dishonest -- trick to what Moore is doing here: He's conflating two questions that have very little to do with each other."

Oh, you want to argue this, eh?

"The question of whether a war is just (Moore's thesis is that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were not) has no logical connection to the question of whether it is fought by a justly selected military."

It has every connection. It seems to Moore that this fact makes it easier for 500+ members of Congress to send these poor devils to get killed. The same thing happened in Vietnam.

"Vietnam was not an unjust war because elites received draft deferments; it was an unjust war in which the burdens of military service happened to be spread unfairly."

Wrong. Vietnam was an unjust war because we had no business poking our noses in there. It served no purpose, seemingly other than to thin the herd.

"Every war the United States has fought since Vietnam has been fought by an unjustly distributed military."

Wow! With that reasoning, we are now on the same side. All war is unjust. You firgure it's because we get the poor killed off, I think it's because all killing is wrong. Good, send your kid to get his arm blown off, if that make it a just war.

"But not every war has been unjust."

Before 'Nam, I should guess.

"The distribution of sacrifice in a democracy is a moral problem all its own."

HUH? Where do you get that? That's the problem with a hierarchical system. Democracy just so happens to be a hierarchical system. So were Soviet Socialism and Hussein despotism. Where ever there is an elite, someone is sacrificing disproportionately. Why does there even have to be sacrifice?

"Moore's argumentative strategy, however, rests on tricking audiences into believing otherwise."

You made up an unsupported thesis. It has nothing to do with Moore's point. Where are you going with this, anyway?

"Having laid out his mostly unconvincing cases against the Iraq and Afghanistan wars...

Moore's case against the Afghanistan action has to do with the poor timing and incompetent execution from the executive level. On September 11, 12, or 13, 2001, we had carte blanc to act. Pay attention. He showed Bush sitting there for seven minutes with that god-awful dumbass look on his face. He sat in the Oval Office for the next month with that same look. He had no idea what to do.

How about getting up, excusing yourself (They were kidnergardners! They would not have taken offense. Years later, if Bush was not such a dumbass, they would have been able to tell people that they were with the president when it happened and he was so great when he said he had important stuff to do. Then, a week later, Osama was in an American jail and the world became a safer place. Alas, a fantasy.) We could have dropped the hammer on al Quaeda, and no one would have faulted us. We could have

Instead, Bush sat there wondering who did it, when he read a memo a month before that told him this would happen, albeit about the time and place. What if there had been 10 planes? It would have gone off without a hitch.

Moore suggests that we could have nipped this in the bud by going after bin Laden's group IMMEDIATELY. By highlighting Bush's pear paralysis, he emphasizes the point that Bush did nothing. NOTHING. What is unjust is that he acted slowly and strung this out and bungled the whole thing, making the world more dangerous.

The war in Iraq was also a huge boondoggle. We never should have started it. I have been with the peace movement since before the war. I knew Bush was lying about everything. Everything Bush sold the public on Iraq has turned out to be a rotten bill of goods. You had to know this going in. You cannot deny that Hussein is no worse than dozens of other world leaders who have no oil. That is why he was targeted.

The public record contains countless thousands of news articles which support the idea that Bush duped us into this. Those who cannot see this by now are not the kind of people, like George Bush, who let reality get in the way of their lives and beliefs.

"..., and having presented compelling scenes of Lipscomb grieving, military recruiters preying on the ignorance of teenagers, and congressmen fleeing questions about their children's military service, he pulls an intellectual sleight of hand that goes by so quickly -- and indeed, that sounds so logical -- that many viewers won't realize they've been tricked. In a voiceover, he says (and I'm paraphrasing pretty roughly here): "I've always been amazed that in America the poor and working class do most of the fighting.""

Just an observation. A valid one.

""That is their gift to us. And all they ask in return is that we don't send them to war unless we absolutely have to.""

They're certainly asking that now.

"The logical connection between the two thoughts here is patently absurd."

How's that?

"(Is Moore implying that it's okay for the poor and working class to do most of the fighting as long as they are only sent to fight in necessary wars? Would it be okay to fight unnecessary wars if the military burden were properly balanced?)"

That's not his point, but if there was a necessary war, it WOULD be less unjust. Unjust is unjust. And that second question is rhetorical. Of course not. Keep grasping at straws.

"But it's also central to Moore's argument. He needs to be able to place his movie's best point -- the brazen immorality of Lipscomb having to grieve her son while elites make no similar sacrifice -- in the service of his larger argument, which is that Bush's wars have been unjust. So he eloquently conflates them, pumps up his soundtrack, and hopes viewers don't bother to think about what he's actually done."

Not so. It is a story you obviously don't want to hear. Grief you do not want to see. You made up a point that Moore did not make and now where are you going?

"How do we know Moore only wants to use his point about who sacrifices in war as a distraction from his real agenda of indulging conspiracy theories about Bush's foreign policy?"

Its what's called a side point. A tangent. These are his thoughts. I'm sorry you have to think in a straight line. Maybe you should go back to school and learn a few critical reasoning skills.

"Because a serious examination of that issue would have required something very different from what Moore delivers. He could have taken his camera and knocked on the doors of Ivy League presidents who ban ROTC from their campuses, helping to perpetuate the notion that military service is not for our country's young elites."

That's not the point, but a good idea. I hope Michael reads it.

"He could have seriously considered the arguments for a draft."

Why would he?

"The problem of the military's socioeconomic imbalance, when considered thoughtfully, isn't really a partisan issue."

Sure, there are rich dems, too. He did not say there were. Nor is Moore's a partisan view. If you knew more about him, you'd know that he criticized Clinton, too. I think Moore seems more conservative than liberal. Conservative in the Libertarian sense, but with a lick of common sense, perhaps Green inspired. (He supported Nader last time, remember?)

"But that's exactly how Moore treats it, because embarrassing (presumably liberal) academics or considering proposals with non-ideological appeal just isn't how Moore does business."

Yes, Moore has an ideology. He's sold me. I suppose everything's partisan to you. Peanut or Plain? And why would he go to an academic, looking for a fight? That makes no sense, nor would it sell any tickets. You stipulated earlier he is a talented polemist and filmmaker. Now you criticize?


"His approach to the issue makes clear that he is using it rather than examining it. Surely Moore will concede that whether America's wars are just or unjust -- indeed whether we fight wars at all -- we do need people to serve in our military, and we do need to find them somewhere."

Or do we?

"The logical extension of elite schools shutting their doors to military recruiters is that those same recruiters end up scouring the malls of Flint, Michigan. If Moore really cares about the socioeconomic imbalance of the U.S. military, you wouldn't know it from this movie. "

Now who's trying a sleight of hand? He brought it up, you didn't.

"Which is too bad, because the question of who serves in the American military is an important one, and we ought to be having a national debate about it."

You seem to be having a fine debate with yourself.

"But far from provoking such a debate, "Fahrenheit 9/11" will stymie it."

Now that you mention it, I think we might hear more of that later, after we get rid of George.

"That's because Moore essentially argues that the way to redress our military's socioeconomic imbalance -- the way to stop the Lila Lipscombs of America from bearing an unfair percentage of the burden of our country's defense -- is not to fight unjust wars."

A point Moore does not make. Seems to me there's some creative thinking going on in your head.

"This makes no sense..."

I agree.

"...but it is also a deeply attractive message to Moore's target audience of true believers..."

We're not his target. He targets moderates. Our mind is made up. Why would he try to convince us? You just seem to have a hard time comprehending the truth through the dissonance. I sympathize. It hurts my head, too.

"...because it neatly waves away the guilt of elites who do not want their children to serve in the military."

I am not the elite.

"It tells them that the difficult moral question of how we determine who serves in the military -- a question that should make any parent or young person who really thinks about it deeply uncomfortable -- need not be grappled with, as long as we only wage just wars."

Now you're in the deep end. And doing laps.

"Just as young viewers of "Fahrenheit 9/11" (like me) may be beginning to wonder why it is that the life of Lipscomb's son was worth less than their own, Moore invites us to short-circuit this troubling, important line of reasoning with a glib piece of illogic: No unnecessary wars; no need to spread the sacrifice of military service. It's as if he forgets that people also die, and mothers also grieve, in necessary wars."

So, you agree that Iraq was an unnecessary war?

"There seems to be a growing sentiment among liberals that Moore is a bad guy, but dammit, he's our bad guy."

That's not exactly how I would put it.

"I disagree. Liberalism is as badly served by liberal intellectual dishonesty as it is by conservative intellectual dishonesty."

Nothing dishonest about the truth, buddy.

"Besides, Lila Lipscomb and the young men being funneled directly from Flint malls to Iraq deserve better. That is, they deserve to be more than distractions from the intellectual mess that precedes them in this movie."

You should make that movie. And you are an intellectual mess, not the movie.

"Moore ends "Fahrenheit 9/11" by predicting that American voters will not be fooled into voting again for George W. Bush. I hope he's right. But I also hope they won't be fooled by the bad logic at the center of his film."

I hope he's right, too. And I haven't seen a lick of logic in your argument.

"Richard Just is editor of The New Republic Online."

I guess you're not going to hire me, now.