Genevieve Cora Fraser: Moore Turns the Heat Up

If you find yourself humming the Buffalo Springfield 1960s tune, ''Something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear'' these days, Fahrenheit 9/11 is a Must See. The Selected One is exposed in all his vain glory under the incendiary glare of Michael Moore's blockbuster and possible election balloon buster. Not that Senator Kerry's bid for the presidency will be a cakewalk with the release of the film, but what JFK dares not say Moore's film shouts from a bully pulpit then leads us down into the inner recesses of an American Paradise Lost and the hellish state of affairs in which the USA now resides.

Lest we'd forgotten, Moore's cautionary tale starts at the beginning of the end of the succession of duly elected presidents since George Washington. Since 1789, the Electoral College had cast the deciding vote for the President of the United States as reflected by the will of the American people. Flashback to Election 2000 as it played out on the major networks. Gore was the projected winner until Bush's first cousin at the Fox Network determined otherwise. And thus the games began and moved all the way to Dubya's daddy's friends and anointed ones at the Supreme Court who threw the ball Bush's way as the disenfranchised would-be voters of color in Florida cried foul.

We are treated to winsome footage of our malingering Commander-in-Chief as he works at not working and cuts the terrorist budget into ribbons of ineffectiveness despite warnings from those in the know that Bin Laden may be up to no good and very soon. Repulsive behind-the-scenes footage of pre-camera preening by neoconservative, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz sets the tone as the iron fist of his superior Rumsfeld rules. Preparations were made to invade Iraq long before the election, despite admissions that the country posed no threat to the United States.

The Bush family ties to the Saudi Royals and Bin Laden family are fasten so securely by Fahrenheit 9/11 you are left wondering if the father and son work for the Saudis or on behalf of America. We the People pay a pittance of a Presidential salary when weighed against the gains ill-gotten or otherwise by the Bush-Saudi connection. The war profiteering from our country's sojourn into Iraq may insure the wealth of the Bush and Cheney dynasties and their Carlyle Group and Halliburton cohorts into perpetuity. And then there is the matter of OIL being not only the impetus for Shock and Awe in Iraq but the bombing into the stone age of Afghanistan deemed necessary to insure a pipeline to the Caspian Sea oil reserves.

Moore carefully paints a very large picture of the Haves and Have Nots, the real hierarchy of our society with the Haves basking in resplendent self-satisfaction as they snooker the rest of us into believing This Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land. To paraphrase Michael himself, "Yaw, like get real!!"

But the heartbeat of Fahrenheit is not the tragedy of 9/11. That is the setting, the scenario in which we all dwell as a massive hoax is perpetrated against the American people by the Terror Manipulators who seek control deep into the recesses of our All American souls. Fahrenheit 9/11 brings us into the hearth and home and unfolding drama of a Flint Michigan family who take the obligations inherent within American citizenship to heart, by enlisting as proud members of the Armed Services. It is at this point in the narrative that we enter the eerie Never-Never-Land of the Ultimate Killing Machine, the US Military. Soldiers wear headgear that function as boom boxes, listening to rock n' roll as they blow Iraqis to bits in the quest to win the hearts and minds of a newly "liberated" people. Scene by scene the temperature of Fahrenheit 9/11 is raised until the Truth as Michael Moore sees it is illuminated and the audience begins to sweat. You leave the theater as a believer or in a state of disbelief. The results of the poll will be announced on November 2, 2004, Election Day - unless there is a re-play.

ENDS

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