The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by LowLife:

Michael Moore has made an intelligent film, a necessary film, and he should get kudos for being able to set his opposition of the Bush administration within his politic philosophy in a cogent form.

Moore argues that there is a class system in America. That's hardly a stretch, and many here will agree, and so he employs his visual artistry to make the point. On high there are the power and oil brokers of the world. His often criticised inclusion of the Afgani oil pipeline fits comfortably in this worldview. Though his distractors say he's claiming that the pipeline is the reason Bush went to war his strongest point was that the Bush administration was willing to deal with the Taliban to get it. With images, he supports his political understanding of oil money and oil power to deal with anybody and do anything to increase both.

In contrast, he shows the human costs of these exoteric decisions. With images, he shows who they are, how they think and the effects war can have on them. Folks, this is powerful stuff, and good filmmaking.

The dreamy sequence of the 2000 election is a very real version of how people experience the whole election nightmare.

The 911 sequence with dark screen and the NY street chaos sound-over yeilding to the paper storm with the Arvo Part work Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten with Strings and Bell was emotionally compelling.

His dispelling of the myth of Bush the strong and resolute leader, with images, is justice at last.

His clips of actual war wounded was ground breaking (at least within the cocoon of our current political news enviornment).

There is much to laud in Moore's film.

But since we are an argumentative group there is plenty here to take on. Instead of accepting the RNC talking points and nitpicking Moore's points lets talk about Moore's overarching arguments. Does oil money and power make decisions based on their own advancement and trick the poorer classes into fighting their wars? If so, has Moore adequently demostrated it? What did he include that he shouldn't have? What did he leave out that he should have included?

This whole "I don't like Moore, because..." is so RNC. He has set out some pretty cogent arguments, a visual essay, that will convince some and exhort some, to work against Bush this fall. The ambition of that work demands that our efforts to reject or defend his thesis amount to more than a comment on his physique or nitpickery.

When I read the Friedman collumn I had the exact reaction as Sheilds. When I councilled my colleagues at work about why the war might be unwise the comments back were along the line of, "They started it," "They bombed the WTC," and other comments that don't bother to distinquish between Saddam and Osama, Iraqi and islamasist, muslim and mullah. In my small world Friedman's point expresses America's desire to lash out. I'm pretty sure that the best course of action is not to persue one's worst instincts and in doing that aWol has gained favor with the populoi and condemnation from history.

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