Michael Moore and the Contest Over the War

There's currently a rift in America that is expanding each time something falters in Iraq. The rift began when Bush made the decision to strike Iraq and did not have a way of gaining peace afterwards in mind. With no peace process following the war, it is difficult to control the area because the Iraqis had thought life would be better immediately after the fall of Saddam. (In some cases, Iraq is worse off but that is debatable.) Our government's failure to have a peace process has strained relations and in fact made it more difficult to handle Iraq. It's so difficult that we've agreed to put on a show without even caring if we are ready for it to happen. The world including America has agreed that elections will solve most of our problems even if that may not be true.

What is this rift exactly? This separation? It is Americans speaking up for what they believe to be true. It is the government feeling like they need to cover up what is happening because they went wrong somewhere in the process. And it is the media either telling Americans to stop speaking up or exposing the government's cover-up strategies.

With Dude, Where's My Country? and Fahrenheit 9/11, one man used his political mind to expose the facts and possibilities. Michael Moore created propaganda that while not entirely true turned out to be accurate in many respects because Americans noticed that it could be true. Americans watched more news and became more interested in politics. And Americans began to question what the government was doing in Iraq in way that caused people to name them as traitors in some cases. You could say, for many it is now conventional wisdom.

Is it unpatriotic to question the government? No, because we are America. And as Thomas Jefferson said, "A government that fears its people is a democracy; a government that is feared by the people is a republic." We can no longer depend on the media to report in a good manner. We can no longer depend on politicians because they tend to be blinded by the corporations that make contributions to their campaigns and become their constituency. Americans can no longer depend on the electoral system considering the fact that the last two elections have not happened without controversy or with a "clear winner". Therefore, we have no choice but to preserve our democracy by questioning and following our government's actions.

With each question, we seek to understand what exactly our government is doing. We think out the possibilities. We come up with facts and reasons to back up actions that occur. If there aren't any facts or reasons, we become angry. In America, we have two options: 1) Question and ask that the action stops now or 2) Modify the action so that we can begin, if possible, to benefit from it. In some cases, we have no choice but to choose to modify it when we would like to just stop altogether. That is the case with Iraq. We need to rethink what we are doing because it isn't working out. But because of our leader who is a true believer, it is definitely hard for government to make the right decisions when they are blinded by the light.

So in closing, you may not like "unpatriots" like Michael Moore, but when you consider what they do for America, you realize they keep America on its feet and ready to handle anything that comes our way.