I finally saw F911 this week and I've had some time to reflect on it so here it goes. The film brought up a number of emotions and when I sat in the theatre watching it, I was supremely uncomfortable. The opening scene about the 2000 presidential election opened up old wounds. I can remember driving home from work on election day. I was driving up the 101 to Burlingame listening to NPR report that Gore had taken Florida. That settled it essentially, the election was over. But by the time I got into my apartment, the situation had changed.

Now I'm not a Democrat or Republican. I'm a independent moderate. I had wanted John McCain to win the election and still think we'd be far better off with the Arizona Senator in the White House than any of the 3 choices that the we had in early November 2000. I wasn't a gigantic Gore fan, but I was decidedly anti-Bush.

Then there's the scene in the movie with all the members of the Congressional Black Caucus offering protests against election fraud in Florida presided over with grace by Al Gore in his role as VP and President of the Senate, and it makes you realize once again what a different country we would be now if the Democrats had won office.

But that's not what bothered me about the movie, it just set the tone. What really disturbed me were two scenes, not about the Saudis or the Bush family connection to the bin Ladens, not the lying about the war in Iraq, not Bush sitting in the Florida classroom not knowing or comprehending what to do, not that members of Congress don’t read bills they vote for, not the lengthy presidential vacations, not anything except Bush speaking in 1992 vis a vis his role with the Harkin Oil company about his access to the White House and the scene where the two Marines are out recruiting in the worst part of one of the worst cities in America.

The interview which Bush gave in 1992 is greatly disturbing because it shows his tendency towards an abuse of power. You could just see this young, immature kid successful only because of his connections to power, taking huge advantage of a situation that very few of us will ever have. Inside the smirk that came with the remark was the sum total of the incurious, won’t take responsibility for anything, lazy individual who is now the President of the United States.

The scene with the Marine recruiters sweeping the poor suburbs of Flint, Michigan for warm bodies was chilling. It would be one thing if we were diligently prosecuting a war against the people who attacked us, but we’re not. We’re engaged in a diversion of questionable expedience to keep the American people on edge in an effort to support a war of indefinite length. This ongoing war requires soldiers. At the same time we’re sending young Americans off to fight, we’re finding soldiers not amongst America’s elite, not even in the families of the Middle Class that politicians like to talk about, but amongst the poor, the destitute, the lowest of the low of American society. There is something fundamentally wrong about that.

My hopes for the movies is that it will get people taking about the issues Moore raises in the film and get people off their asses and register to vote. You can like or dislike the filmmaker, but that shouldn’t stop you from discussing the merits of our special relationship with the Saudis or whether America deserves a president who works hard. I’ve been watching CNN and FOX and MSNBC, and they almost never talk about the issues in the film. What they do is talk about the politics of the filmmaker and the film’s possible impact on the election. The political right, most notably the fiends at Fox and a folks on the conservative side of Crossfire don’t want a discussion on the merits because they know it raises too many questions they can’t answer. Instead they spend their time discrediting Michael Moore. (Scarborough Country had a piece entitled, “Does Michael Moore Hate America?”, for example).

It’s not my job to defend Michael Moore. I have my problems with the man. I think his films would be greatly enhanced were it not for his egotistical need to insert himself into his own documentaries in inflammatory situations such as reading the Patriot Act over the loud speaker of an ice cream truck to the members of Congress. But you have to hand it to him. He is a political provocateur par excellence. And while members of the Fox All-Stars are arguing over whether his film is a documentary or propaganda, they can’t stop hundred of thousands of people from going to see this film, quite the opposite. The more they discuss. The more they rant and rave. The faster the turnstiles flip.

You know that CNN and ABC and Zogby and just about every other news gathering organization on the planet is going to be doing exit polls. I have no doubt that they will be asking voters if F911 had any effect on their vote. I hope people will say that the movie didn’t swing their decision one way or the other, but it was F911 that inspired them to register to vote for the first time.