I want to start out by apologizing to all two or three of you for writing about politics today. I’m sorry for abandoning my tried and tested technique of sharing a wildly inappropriate colloquial anecdote and following it up with third rate amateur photographs. Political blogging, whether for the left or right is, for lack of a better term, bullshit. Typically, blogging pundits stand on an esoapbox and try to wax poetic about their enonsense about how wonderful their political views are and how stupid other people are for daring to disagree with them. Then, somebody who disagrees with them replies in the comment section, and what you end up with is two or more under informed under qualified twerps spouting out bullshit statistics and loving the brilliance of their own idiotic words. The resulting thread always ends up being a ridiculous masturbatory exchange.

So, before I start writing about politics, if you’re inclined to disagree with me in my comment section, feel free, but understand I have absolutely no interest in masturbating with you. If you want to masturbate while on your computer, do what I do, LOOK AT PORN. It’s all over the internet and it’s free. Young women will dress up like nurses or cheerleaders, they’ll mess around with each other or with guys or whatever floats your boat. I won’t do that for you. So, once again, if you want to masturbate on your computer, I recommend you do it elsewhere because I’m not interested.

I’m fully aware that I’m a partizan liberal tool. I find conservative ideology so profoundly offensive, so utterly manipulative and completely contradictory to every value I possess that there is no chance of me ever voting Republican. I’m sure there are many died in the wool conservatives who believe that my values are unpatriotic and traitorous. I can empathize with their feelings because deep in my heart of hearts, in find conservative’s complete lack of respect and sometimes hidden contempt for the First Amendment to be wholly unpatriotic and traitorous.

Still, I consider myself capable of objective and critical thought; which is why I was so surprised at myself this weekend when I voluntarily, completely under my own free will, walked into the Charles Theater and purchased a ticket to see Fahrenheit 9/11.

For the record, before I say anything about my impressions about Fahrenheit 9/11, I should let you know that Michael Moore really gets on my nerves, and has ever since the last election when he devoted himself so aggressively to the Nader campaign.

Nader’s campaign was Not Safe at Any Speed. He and those who supported him claimed that there was little or no difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Well, the past three years has proven that there is, in fact, quite a few profound differences between the two. It has always been my belief that the true motive of the 2000 Nader Campaign was to split the vote and hand the reigns of government to the GOP, which would force the Democratic Party to be more inclusive of the extreme left in the 2004 election. In their flawed fantasy like logic, this would be all that it would take to cause the tens of millions of disenchanted poor to feel engaged in the workings of government, race to the voter registration offices, and rise up from earth like a modern day proletarian Ghost Army to cast their ballots for socialist reform (or anarchist reform or whatever bullshit nonsense is fun for the cool kiddies to believe in these days) and anti-WTO crap and change the world order.

Obviously, this is not how things happened. The Republicans were given power, and Republicans know power and how to hold on to it. They feed on power like jock itch feeds on a warm moist unwashed crotch, and 9/11 acted like an accelerator towards their ends. The world order has been turned on its head. The leading nation of the free world has been marginalized into a brumbling antidemocratic bully. Sure, they know spin, they squash democracy by supposedly pushing it down the throat of the one nation of the world that least likely to be prepared for it, all the while decrying the pointlessness of “liberal” nation building. If the United Nations had it’s problems before the Republicans took power, now that the world’s most powerful nation acts in open contempt of the very idea of a United Nations, the organization means absolutely nothing.

Now that we live in an era where the European nations have consolidated their economies in a manner that could potentially threaten our own nation’s stature, instead of finding ways to cooperate with the EU in a way that could strengthen both of our economies and positions on the world stage, we’re running around kicking sand in the face of the EU leaders while screaming “you don’t matter! You don’t matter! See, we can still divide you!” Meanwhile, the nations of the European Union continue to vote out their American friendly governments and the straightening Euro continues to kick the Dollar’s ass. Well, Shit-for-brains-that-run-my-administration, maybe they do matter and maybe you should concentrate on why exactly it is that the Dollar continues to shrink while the Euro continues to grow.

Anyway, I’m getting off of point, Nader was wrong, and by association, Moore was wrong too. But we’ve all been wrong before, right? I for one, supported Tsongas in the 1992 Democratic Primary because I thought that because Clinton was sneaky and horny and liked to cheat on his wife that he would make a bad President (Yes, we all knew before we elected him the first time). I was wrong.

Similarly, if Michael Moore (and everyone else who supported Nader) admitted that he was wrong, and that his actions helped get Bush in office, and that he thus too was partially responsible for this ridiculous pointless destabilizing war that is doomed towards eventual failure (I’m actually quite a big fan of war, I’m no pacifist. American involvement in WW II, good. George Kennan containment theories translating into American involvement in Korea, good. George Kennan containment theories translating into American involvement in Vietnam, ultimately a failure but good in theory, a lost battle in the eventual victory of the Cold War (Reagan didn’t win the Cold War. Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and most importantly Kennan won the Cold War). Iraq War I was brilliant, neccessary and perfectly executed as long as you weren’t a Kurd or a Shiite. But lets face it, they live in Iraq, so by default, they’re fucked and have ZERO chance of living in a stable democracy anyway. Nothing has changed. Iraq War II is just fucking stupid, period), I would say to him “Okay, Mikey. Let’s work on damage control. Put your propagandic and manipulative talents to good use and help get the Republicans out.” But he didn’t. He is still giving that tired old Nader supporting excuse, “In states where it looked like a close call, we in the Nader campaign called our constituents in these states and told them to tell the voters not to vote for Nader and cast their ballots for Gore instead.” (Yes, I heard him on Air America Radio. I actually occasionally listen to Air America Radio, that’s how much of a liberal partizan tool I am) Um ... well ... THOSE FUCKING VOTERS FUCKING VOTED FOR FUCKING NADER FUCKING ANYWAY DIDN’T THEY YOU POMPOUS FUCKING ARROGANT FAT FUCK!!!. When your power base is a bunch of Messiah seeking dreamy eyed children who care less about who is in power than they do about “belonging” to a movement that makes them feel warm and fuzzy and special, they’re going to vote for you whether you tell them to or not (If you want to truly understand a 2000 Nader supporter, watch The Life of Brian). You can’t turn a campaign on and off like a spigot from district to district. Nader played with democracy, Nader won and democracy lost.

Okay, after my couple thousand word lead up, I’m finally getting to my point. I had no intention of seeing fahrenheit 9/11, basically for the reasons I outlined above, but on Sunday afternoon I happened to be strolling past the Charles Theater, I saw the crowds of fellow Libs congregating by the front doors. I wanted to, just for a short time, actually feel happy about being a liberal. I want to commune with the cute hairy pitted coeds, aging hippies, dread locked white boys, humanity professor types and over-the-hill stoners that I were standing before me. So I walked in and bought a ticket.

What I experienced over the next two hours was the most hilarious and entertaining pile of manipulating propagandic bullshit that I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Moore’s connect the dots conspiracy theorizing about the links between the Bush and Bin Laden families was utterly ridiculous. His images of happy well-fed children playing in a utopian prewar Iraq, juxtaposed against images of the suffering Iraqis were experiencing at the hands of an evil and despotic occupying army was downright offensive to anybody who even has half a brain.

Still, the one thing that I do have to give Moore credit for was doing the one thing that is actually the most damaging to the Republican cause, giving Bush enough rope and allowing him to actually speak for himself. None of the clips of Bush speaking were taken out of context, Moore didn’t have to, the man is really that profoundly stupid. The clips of the other assholes were equally hilarious. I almost fell out of my seat with laughter when Rumsfeld, addressing the press corps on the reasons it was necessary to invade Iraq, explained “We’re talking about a government that is willing to lie to the world to push their own agenda.” There was a lot of truth portrayed in the movie, but it was mixed up with so many half-lies and manipulations that it was impossible differentiate between the two.

I think what makes me so upset about this movie is that in today's environment of bullshit manipulating conservative talk radio, with so many liars like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and so many voting zit brains who are willing to listen to their lies, it has become necessary to actually support left wing propagandic bullshit as a counter. As a society, we’ve become so dumbed down that we no longer listen to objective arguments about politics. We prefer to listen to propagandists yelling lies over each other in a attempt to sway the even dumber swing voter. That dumb ass on the street, who one day can listen to conservative radio and think “Duhhhh, Sean Hannity is right, liberals really do hate America” and then turn around the next day, and watch a Michael Moore film and think “Duhhhh, I didn’t know that Bush and Osama Bin Laden were best friends” sadly, is the most powerful person in the world. It is perhaps ironic justice that the dumbest man ever to sit in the executive chair is that dumb-ass’s leader.

interior photographs of the Brown Center, Maryland Institute College of Art. click images to enlarge: