"Fifty-one percent of the American people lacked information (in this election), and we want to educate them. There weren't told the truth." [Calgary Sun, Nov. 13, 2004]
This is not a quote from some dangerous "right-wing" nutbar, nor does it come from the writings of some radical Islamic cleric. You can't find it on the pages of an old issue of Pravda, and neither did Fidel Castro's propoganda machine spew this out for public dissemination. These are, infact, the words of Michigan's own Michael Moore, a purported filmmaker-come-propogandist, whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the darling of the Liberal/Hollywood set that was determined to see President George W. Bush defeated in the November presidential election.
Moore failed, and miserably so. Despite this, he has promised a sequel to Fahrenheit, tentatively dubbed "Fahrenheit 9/11 and 1/2" for release prior to the next presidential election in 2008.
"The official mourning period is over today and there is a silver lining--George W. Bush is prohibited by law from running again," he is quoted as saying in the same article. Apparently, Mr. Moore has learned absolutely nothing from the results of this past election and, in what can only be described as a fit of pique, has fired the first broadside in his self-declared war on American democracy.
This, however, is not as surprising as some might believe. Liberals have often been at pains to dress themselves in the garb of "champions of the downtrodden" and "supporters of the oppressed." The problem is that no matter how they adorn themselves, they cannot hide the fact that, to most people, they represent the very effete-elite of wealthy, comfortable, high-living, baboons they (claim) to be campaigning against. As a result, they lack the necessary credibility to make their case as being "for the people" because they, themselves, are clearly not of them.
John Kerry is a perfect example of this. This rich playboy Vietnmam"war hero" (who apparently brought along his own film crew to record his exploits) had/has about as much in common with the "common" people as mice have in common with cats. Although undoubtedly a sincere politician, and perhaps a very honorable one, he was burdened with not only a mouthy rich wife, Theresa, but the billions that her status brought with her. That, along with the support of multi-millionare Hollywood actors and actresses, further tainted (and then isolated) Mr. Kerry from the very constituency he was trying to reach: the average American. In other words, any credibility he had built up in the bank of popular support from among the "common folk" was lost or drowned out by the voices of both his liberal, rich supporters and the sight of their multi-million dollar homes and cars.
President Bush, on the other hand, didn't have that problem. Although endorsed by actor Ron Silver and several other middle-weights in Hollywood (including the tacit support of Governor Schwarzeneggar of California), he never appeared either totally comfortable in their midsts or was one of them. In fact, Hollywood's almost total disapproval of him was perhaps the single greatest "act" of goodwill and political boomeranism there has ever been done.
By virtually isolating President Bush, Hollywood showed that it was, itself, out of the poltical mainstream. And although Mr. Moore had no problem parading around the USA as the local town's beerhall drunk, instead of one of Tinstletown's most talented producer/directors, the sulphurous nature and short-sightedness of his vision (ie. Fahrenheit 9/11) only proved to the American public what it long suspected: that Democrats and Liberals care only for their own agendas, not theirs.
This is a far cry from the "New Deal" Democrats that won five presidential elections under FDR and Harry S. Trueman beginning in 1932. Back then it was the Republicans that appeared to represent the elite corporate interests, and those who wished only to exploit the USA for their own self-centered gains. But a strange thing happened between 1952 and 2004, people began to see that there was a difference between the rubber and the road; that what the Democrats were interested in was not the needs of "the common people" but their own wooly notions of what society should and must be.
This tear in the political fabric caused a new and strange juxtapositioning in the body politic, most siginficantly in the American South. This region, the only part of the continental United States to ever experience military defeat and occupation, switched from its traditional support of the Democrats to the Republicans, a trend which has stayed, mostly solid, since the 1960's. That's because the Democrats, instead of pursuing a gradual approach to social and economic change, turned radical...and then turned ridiculous.
Instead of offering a "New Deal" the Democrats kept offering the old one, warmed over and re-cooked. Instead of appealing to the new reality and desire of the American public for less taxes, less government, and a strong but technoligically-advanced military, the policies espoused by the Liberal-left became more and more intereventionist. Thus Universal Health Care, the mantra of all politicians north of the 49th, although a good "idea," struck more and more people as being a further example of the kind of socialist-minded, interventionist state that they had come to dread.
Supported and backed by the liberal-educated elite that was only beginning to flex its political and economic muscle in the 1960's-1980's, the American public became very suspicious of their motives. Then, in the 1990's, world-wide Communism collapsed and the ideology that was once seen as intellectual utopia of those very same elites, dealt a fatal blow to their credibility and reconfirmed the Right's view that military strength, tied to Conservative values and a desire for true liberty, was the correct path all along.
This is a blow from which the Democrats have been staggering ever since. Although President Clinton, via the intervention of Ross Perot, may have won election in 1992 and 1996, it was signicant in that both the House and Senate remained Republican. It was, in effect, the Americans saying to the Democrats, "we trust you...but only so far." Yet President Clinton, for all his shenanigans, both in and out of official White House duties, only further proved what many mainstream Americans had come to suspsect of their political left; that Democrats and Liberals, from Clinton to Kerry to Moore, were, in essence, a bunch of well-paid, rich, hypocrites.
This remains the key problem for Democrats and Liberals now. If President Bush comes from a wealthy and well-connected Texas family, Kerry also comes from a wealthy and well-connected New England family. How then can the Left say to the Right "you're the elitist" when multi-millionare actors, actresses, producers and directors, who clearly don't share the same conservative values that most Americans hold too, and probably don't have any problems getting health care and the essentials of life, line up behind Kerry and say that they are really for the "common people?"
They might believe it, even as they scoot past the average "Joe" driving his Chevy, while they listen to music in the half-million dollar BMW's on the LA freeways enroute to some well-vetted "charity" event to help the poor in the Third World. But the same average "Joe" doesn't because he's still in the slow lane paying a good portion of his income in order to fill his rusty old Chevy with $2.00/gallon gas in order to get to work. And while helping the Third World may be an important issue to some, it strikes most as convenient because these same wealthy people, who are so eager to help the "poor," are neither willing to live as modestly as the ones whose support they cherish, nor associate with them to the same degree as President George W. Bush did when he wrapped arms around that fire fighter following 9/11.
It is this "common touch" that truly defines the issue of the last two Presidential elections, along with the last three Congressional ones. The Democrats might say that President Bush is really all about "money" and "power" but his actions and determination reveal him to be a man of the people. Although wealthy himself, his quirky "aww shucks" personality, his down home conservative beliefs, and the air of approachability he possesses gives him an accessibility to the public that most Democrats, with their feined self-importance, simply lack. In otherwords, the very thing that the Michael Moore's of this world despise is what makes President Bush, and other Republicans, so appealing.
By being rejected by Hollywood, the unions, and other bastions of Left-wing hype, President Bush is seen as being outside the circle of elites that purportedly knew what was best for everyone. By embracing those same elites, Kerry, though he managed to convey his message far louder and far wider than any Democrat before him, instead, further alienated himself from the mainstream American voter he wanted to appeal too.
This is the antithesis of what, in my article, "The 2002 Congressional Election/synopsis," I called "The Bush Effect" whereby a sitting president can transform the National Agenda into the local agenda by simply expounding what is "practical and conservative;" allowing his message resonate in the ears of Americans because that is what most Americans are truly believe. The flip-side of this is the "Hollywood Effect" whereby a group of elites can enlist the support of other elites to spread the message that they are not really elites at all but common folk with common values shares by all Americans. But most Americans are not fooled by this fabrication and quietly resent it, thereby isolating themselves from the foolishness of Hollywood in the same manner Hollywood did its best to isolate itself from the President.
Who, then, is the true "elites"? Who, then, is the real champion of the common people? According to Mr. Moore those "elites" are found in the "fifty-one percent of the American people" who "lacked information" and made the terrible decision of voting for President Bush, while presumably the champions of the common people were those forty-nine percent who voted for Kerry. And now he's made it his mission to "educate" those miscreant Republicans who he believes "weren't told the truth," and arouse the spirit of Hollywood and the America in the great cause of electing to Congress and the White House an "educated" Democratic choice.
Such, it seems, is the world of Democrats and Liberals. Like they are in Canada, they are the same in the US. Presuming to be for the common people, they are really for themselves. Claiming to represent mainstream values, they really represent their own self-interests. Claiming to fight against the elites, they reveal only that they are elitist themselves. And while that contradiction may have been lost on the Michael Moore's of this world, I doubt it has been lost on the American public at large. At least, I hope not.
Sincerely,
I.M. Ulysses
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