-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Fahrenheit 9/11 -- Sticking the Motorcycle's Irony Guage The Geodesic Economy Robert Hettinga 6/28/04 Roslindale, MA -- I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last weekend -- after extensive promises of good behavior beforehand -- with my wife, who is, as most people know by now, a very liberal Democrat. As a congenital Republican, of course, I felt like a Jew going to see Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will", but, like a Jew going to "Triumph", or Churchill reading "Mein Kampf", or Reagan and Thatcher reading "Das Kapital", I suppose I went there in the spirit of knowing one's enemies, like Sun Tsu says. Knowing most of the scene-by-scene refutations long before I saw them on the screen, the movie quickly became a stupor of anti-climacticism as the usual chestnuts reeled by: Saddam a creature of the CIA, the Bushes creatures of the Awl Bidness and the Saudis. War for Oil, House of Saudi-Bush, and the Afghan Pipeline, oh my... I kept looking for new stuff, but, in requiem for my ability to suspend disbelief, there was nothing there that I hadn't seen on Free Republic, much less on the cypherpunks list, many times before. Michael Moore does make a great buffoon, obviously, or they wouldn't give him money to make his otherwise obtuse epics. Reprising the usual troll through his union-and-government-"program"-decimated -- and, for him, fictional -- "hometown" of Flint, MI, cataloging the evils of capitalism on same, same as it ever was, just didn't do it for me the third time around after "Roger and Me", and "Bowling for Columbine". It's probably why we didn't get so much Mike-jinks in front of the camera this time either. Even in his own editing-room, Michael surely can see himself that he's just not funny anymore, a bit of an old hat, or, in his case, an old UCLA Film School gimmie cap. However, I must say his ritual cinematic abuse of a "conservative democrat" welfare queen turned "job outreach worker" turned fobber-of-one's-firstborn-son's-upbringing-onto-the-Army turned grieving war-mother was considerably above par for his propagandistic oeuvre, and he's to be commended for upping his game so considerably in light of his lofty target. Speaking of which, who's next, one wonders? First a hack Auto-Bureaucrat in the form of Roger Smith, then a pre-Alzheimer Moses-Clutching-a-Brown-Bess in the form of Charleton Heston, now an Andover-Softball-Commissioner stealth-Bonesman fighter-pilot MBA turned aw-shucks Nuke-ular President in the form of George not-Herbert Walker Bush. Should we expect an attack on the Pope next, if he's still alive? Thatcher? Or, better, after they both go, how about a post-mortem Marxist trifecta of John-Paul, Thatcher, and Reagan? I can't wait for the resulting -- with apologies to Limbaugh - -- Moore-Gorebasm: "See, it really *was* Mikhail Gorbachev that ended the Cold War..." Restrained mirth, indeed. Don't bring that Cherry Icee into the theater and plan to drink it there on peril of your sinuses, is all I have to say. Seeing the discussion about this movie and the forthcoming election on the cypherpunks list and elsewhere reminds me of something that occurred to me during the 2000 Florida recount: it's as if, like all political/economic schema, crypto-anarchy, anarchocapitalism, whatever we end up calling it, requires a certain energy state (higher or lower, again-whatever) than existed in its once-and-future status quo ante. In the inverse of the way that gravity overcomes degenerate electron pressure to collapse atoms and molecules into the neutronium of a neutron star, or degenerate neutron pressure is overcome to collapse very atoms themselves into a black hole, when something in the "real" world shows us just how far from our goal of freedom from government we really are, we all get dragged back to our previous political states, grasping for what we used to believe, like a bunch of deathbed-reconverted ex-atheists. I figure if monopolies on force weren't possible, and the state wasn't our sole-source war contractor, then, by very definition, nation-states would hold the same role that religion, or aristocracy, or sports teams or, of course, movie-stars, do today -- a rooting interest, and nothing more. Fix the cause, inefficient markets and excessive transaction cost, and whatever undesired effects, like uninitiated force by kleptocracies, theocracies, whatever, will stop. To be replaced, preferably, by the use of force in free markets, at probably lower gross "transaction costs" in violence, since it costs less to buy in fact. Violence is conserved, it always is, but it would be spread out into more, less violent, events, most of them, hopefully, financial instead of physical. Take your fight to the market, boys, or you'll *really* piss us off, and all that. However, in the short term, I'm *very* realistic. In other words, the state *still* owns the roads. :-). Since someone came over here and proved that they can kill me, personally, because of who I am, and what I believe, because of what I have that they don't have -- or, in the case of freedom, apparently, what I have that they don't even appear to want -- they, frankly, deserve to die before I do. If that means hiring a bunch of volunteers to go over and kill them in their beds before they try to kill me in mine, cool. The fact that those volunteers are paid for with money extorted from me at the point of a gun is just a happy coincidence, since most of that extorted money gets used for stuff I could really give a damn about otherwise. Which brings us to Mr. Moore himself. He is, as most people probably know, not really from his putative "home town" of Flint. He's actually from Davison, a richer, lily-white bedroom suburb, raised as "petit-bourgeois" as they come, and raised, go figure, just like most "liberal"/commies have been through the ages, from Lenin to Mao, from Guevara to Castro. I'm sure he fancies himself quite the revolutionary, now, having gone from one-man "alternative" newspaper publisher/editor/reporter/ad-salesman to Cannes Palm d'Or presumptive deca-millionaire in less than two decades. I agree with the idea that most people have already made up their minds even this early, and they aren't going to change their vote because of a so-called "documentary". However, as for Mr. Moore's intended audience, I think the first "coming attractions" trailer that morning in the movie theater said it all. It was for a movie version of, wait for it now... Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318462/. So, there I was, in yet another lily-white suburb, Randolph, Massachusetts, in a stadium-seating megaplex, watching this trailer with more than a few erst-and-proto "revolutionaries" of the Moore stripe, all of us, revolutionary or not, watching this trailer for a sort of Young-Hero-of-the-Revolution-Before-the-Revolution crypto-homo-erotic biopic, the red-diaper-baby of all Road Pictures, all of us with straight faces, as if it were just an ordinary movie trailer. White titles on, I kid you not, comrade, red background, and all. Okay, truth be told, *I* had the most evil grin on *my* face, my mirth being severely constrained from actual outright laughter by the aforementioned promise to my wife about remaining, uh, decorous. And yet, and yet, I *do* consider it a measure of progress that as late as a few years ago, in lily-white, yes, liberal, Randolph, Massachusetts, that trailer might have even gotten a smattering of *cheers* from the odd true believer out there. Maybe they aren't cheering for the revolution this time, because, game-faced, they hated Bush so much, but I'd rather err on the side of common sense, even in Massachusetts, and think that actual, uncut, explicit Marxism isn't fun, much less funny, anymore. Or so one would hope. So, invoking the spirit of cypherpunks gone on to other things, and probably over their objection in light of my congenital political belief anyway, I actually *do* hope Moore & Co. make a *pile* of money on this. The motorcycle's irony gauge will get stuck on "full", and us "Republican" anarcho-capitalists will have a good laugh at the stupendous concatenation of idiocy it represents, what a brave new world it is to have such statist monsters in it, and all that. The only thing that would make me laugh harder, of course, would be if Kerry gets elected because of Moore's logico-cinematic prestidigitation at political three-card monte, further declaring itself some kind of "Uncle Mike's Cabin" in leftist self-congratulation thereof. Then, at least, the "Republican", if you will, anarcho-capitalists out there, like me, will go back to work for a change, after 4-plus years of inattention to the point of it all. No, better, thrall. Thrall to the fact that, thank God, Al Gore's not in charge right now, that we can still, so far, kick the living shit out of anybody who dares mess with our stuff, much less kill our friends and neighbors. Certainly our "Democrat" anarcho-capitalist bretheren haven't gotten much done, either, for all their Bush-hating. At least when a Democrat was president, even the "liberals" wanted to smash the state, in their own fashion, and actually worked on it. And even made money, for a while. So. Let's have a competition, shall we? The blind signature patent is almost defunct. Whatever we need, code-wise, is laying around on the floor to be used. We have *lots* of book-entry internet transaction systems to plug into as as depositories, reserves for issues of bearer certificates on the net. Kerry gets elected, Michael Moore gets all the credit, and starts on his Marxist trifecta of trash-movies. And, with a Democrat in charge, we've got at least four years of financial decontrol for ostensible enemies of the state, like say, hawala, because, of course, that would be racist, not to mention there'd be no way for the Chinese to pay the Democratic Party, otherwise. :-). First one to the most money wins. Ready, set... No? I thought not... Cheers, RAH - ------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQOCcK8PxH8jf3ohaEQJu3ACeOHP1fqembZi5WG412cDnHEsDvfwAn08y CwvcyvgOntaJUfB2qgCaH1eH =0EFe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'