Fahrenheit 9/11

It’s been blisteringly hot today. 96’F (36’C). Too hot even to go down to the pool – it would probably be like swimming in gravy anyway. Flags everywhere are flying at half-mast. I’d like to think this has nothing to do with Marlon Brando’s death, but I suspect it has.

I worked this morning, even though it was Saturday, and to reward myself I went to see Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”. The usual multiplex I go to watch movies, on Route 635, wasn’t showing it (I guess it’s controversial, so some will choose to ignore it), but I found it playing at the Grapevine Mills Mall. I understand why it won an award at Cannes – it is candid and revealing, sometimes humorous, sometimes appalling, but always honest. It’s not often that the audience claps to commend a particular scene in a movie, and, in this “movie”, that happened several times.

I came away with a profound sense of sadness, but not for the obvious reasons. I shared the sorrow of the mother who had lost her son – he had joined the army because he thought it was the right thing to do; tears welled up at the sight of young Iraqi children with their limbs or faces torn apart; I sympathized with the soldier (still on active duty, but currently Stateside) who would face jail rather than go back to Iraq to a war he didn’t believe in; and I was angry at the corruption evident within both the government and the directors of the large companies that are growing fat from Iraq’s despair.

Those were not the reasons for my sadness. I feel like I think a drug addict must feel when they finally realize they are addicted – helpless. I didn’t want to come to this party, but it snuck up on me, and, now I’m here, I can’t do anything about it. It’s just too late. History is full of atrocities that “will never happen again”. But they do, though they return cunningly disguised.

We live in a world that has completely lost its sense of direction. I’m looking around for someone to blame, but there’s only me here …