GeoEcon: Fahrenheit 9/11 -- Sticking the Motorcycle's Irony Gauge

[R. A. Hettinga]

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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
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
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'