Opaque Lucidity

Moore Lies

CAUTION: VERY LONG POST AHEAD

I’ve known liberals all my life. They tend to fall into three categories. The first are those who are young and idealistic. They mean well, but they haven’t really seen enough of the world to know what’s going on. These people tend to be easily swayed by college professors who convince them that everyone who isn’t liberal is close-minded. There’s a dangerous irony which we’ll explore some other time, but it’s sufficient to say that most of the young people who are raging liberals mellow with age as they realize what it takes to be successful in a capitalist society. They may not become conservative in their beliefs, but they're not drinking the Kool-Aid with the DNC, either. Most people who vote for Democrats election after election without bothering to think about it fall into this category.

The second category...

...is comprised of people who take advantage of those in the first. Most liberal politicians fall into this category. So do most populists---people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc., who make a living by making one group believe they are owed something by the majority. This doesn’t have to be racial in nature. After all, womens’ “rights” groups have convinced two generations of women (and the Supreme Court in 1973) that abortion is a right that had been withheld from women for some unfathomable reason until the feminists came along and “freed” them to murder babies with abandon.

There is a third group of liberals, a group that is dangerous to both their cause and, in my opinion, to the continued prosperity of this nation. This group is made up of the master propagandists, those few talented people who can bend reality to suit their agendas. This group is headed up by one man; everyone else pales in comparison. That man is Michael Moore.

You may see Moore as just a film maker who is doing, as he sees it, something very, very American: he is asking questions. But when the answers to his questions are edited and sometimes even fabricated to make them prove his point, you can’t help but wonder if he’s not a little less Capra and a little more Goebbels.

I’m going to respond to some indirect accusations Moore made in his open letter to President Bush. Like the spineless windbag he is, all his assertions are made in a style that can only be called “common man”. Moore is one of you, except very, very rich…and a very good liar.

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Also, any idea where all our national guard soldiers are? We could really use them right now for the type of thing they signed up to do like helping with national disasters. How come they weren't there to begin with?

I’m going to give Moore a break because I realize he wrote this on Friday. As of this writing, there are 40,000 National Guard troops on the ground in the areas affected by Katrina. There is and never has been a shortage of helicopters; there was a shortage of local leadership.

It’s time for a civics lesson. The federal government has NO policing power. Police power in the United States resides in local and states authorities. The federal government can only send in active-duty military troops if asked by state authorities and if the area has been declared an emergency area or placed under martial law. The Governors of the states have first call for National Guard troops, NOT the President. Thus, if Moore wants to whine like an unpaid whore about why it took so long to call out the National Guard, he needs to bitch to the Governors of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. But, of course, that wouldn’t get Mikey quite as much attention as he needs.

I especially like how, the day after the hurricane, instead of flying to Louisiana, you flew to San Diego to party with your business peeps. Don't let people criticize you for this -- after all, the hurricane was over and what the heck could you do, put your finger in the dike?

As the head of FEMA stated on Sunday, most of the damage in New Orleans was called by flooding, not from the hurricane itself. If you remember, the first levee did not start to crumble until some time Monday evening. Up to that point, reporters (and this blogger) were saying that the Big Easy had missed the Big One.

And don't listen to those who, in the coming days, will reveal how you specifically reduced the Army Corps of Engineers' budget for New Orleans this summer for the third year in a row. You just tell them that even if you hadn't cut the money to fix those levees, there weren't going to be any Army engineers to fix them anyway because you had a much more important construction job for them -- BUILDING DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ!

Did these levees get reinforced during the Clinton presidency? If not, was New Orleans somehow less vulnerable then? How about in the 1970’s? 1960’s? Were hurricanes invented in January, 2001?

On Day 3, when you finally left your vacation home, I have to say I was moved by how you had your Air Force One pilot descend from the clouds as you flew over New Orleans so you could catch a quick look of the disaster. Hey, I know you couldn't stop and grab a bullhorn and stand on some rubble and act like a commander in chief. Been there done that.

Since FDR became the first President to have an official aircraft, Presidents have toured devastated areas by plane. Truman, Kennedy, Nixon. It’s the way things are done. I guess Mikey ran down there Tuesday morning with a shovel and a hand pump.

And, yes, President Bush did stand at the WTC site and speak through a bullhorn to the crowd. As terrible as that event was, the WTC was ONE site…the hurricane damage covers an area equal to the size of Great Britain.

There will be those who will try to politicize this tragedy and try to use it against you. Just have your people keep pointing that out. Respond to nothing. Even those pesky scientists who predicted this would happen because the water in the Gulf of Mexico is getting hotter and hotter making a storm like this inevitable. Ignore them and all their global warming Chicken Littles. There is nothing unusual about a hurricane that was so wide it would be like having one F-4 tornado that stretched from New York to Cleveland.

The science of global warming aside, there is actually nothing unusual about a large hurricane. In fact, this decade is NOT the most active in history. The 1920’s, 1930’s and 1950’s were more active. Just because a hurricane doesn’t hit the US coastline doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

No, Mr. Bush, you just stay the course. It's not your fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty or that tens of thousands had no transportation to get out of town. C'mon, they're black! I mean, it's not like this happened to Kennebunkport. Can you imagine leaving white people on their roofs for five days? Don't make me laugh! Race has nothing -- NOTHING -- to do with this!

Well, I called this: the race card. Actually, it’s NOT Bush’s fault that 30 percent of New Orleans lives in poverty. That blame falls at the feet of the local school board, parents and a welfare system that has produced generations of dependents who have lost all their self-sufficiency.

If I could call Mr. Moore, I would ask him only one question: what made you like this? There has to be something in his life: some abuse, some harassment, some deprivation, that has made him capable of being such a convincing thief of the truth. Moore is not without talent. In fact, he could probably be successful in any number of fields, so his actions can not solely be about money. I felt anger towards him, then disgust. Now, it’s just pity, like the kids in school who were picked on a little too much.