[lbo-talk] Re: "America's pathetic liberals: the sequel"

[BklynMagus]

Dear List:

Michael posted a link to a review of F9/11 which had the
following:

I have a problem with all the liberal whining in America over professional
soldiers being killed in Iraq, actually still a small number compared to the
tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed both in the war and in the
decade-long run-up of brutally harsh American-imposed restrictions, and it
is no different for Moore's scene of a mother's tears. No, I'm not talking
about the poor mother herself whose loss is real, but about the calculation
of Moore's film in using the scene and about the very predictable result on
American audiences. Pictures of a small number of flag-draped coffins appear
to be almost the only thing fueling America's limp antiwar movement.

1) What is wrong with calculation in a movie?  Have the films of Ozu, Fassbinder,
Anthony Mann, Hitchcock, Frankenheimer, Murnau not reached Canada yet?
If not, the leftists of our great neighbor to the north need a cinema intervention
right away.  They better start going to the Cinematheque in Toronto with
greater frequency.

2) What is wrong with a result (predictable or otherwise) that leads to progressive
action?  I have never understood this purity fetish among leftists -- both ideological
and sexual.  Different people will be moved to action by different aspects of a
complex situation.  If we are working toward the same goals in roughly the same
ethical framework, who cares what has motivated a person to do so?  Seems like a
waste of time to fret over intentions and why our allies are working with us.

Brian Dauth
Queer Buddhist Resister