The genius of Michael Moore’s film, Fahrenheit 9/11 is that it restores September 11, 2001 to its proper historical context. Despite the title, the film does not begin with the attack on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon but with the fraudulent election of George W. Bush in November 2000. Some of the multiple failures of the democratic system in that election are well known. Hanging chads, for example, will probably make it into the next edition of Webster’s Dictionary. But I have not spoken with anyone who remembers seeing TV coverage of the succession of African-American representatives who came before the Senate, Al Gore presiding, to protest the irregularities in the voting process. Watching this pageant of representative democracy in action, one experiences a brief but thrilling suspension of memory: will the single necessary Senator (Byrd? Kennedy? Leahy? Kerry?) rise to endorse the petition? Can the Republic be saved from the ravages we know are on their way? Can we change the ending? In the Senate chamber there is only silence and the gavel of Al Gore.

Moore presents the events of the morning of September 11, 2001 through its sounds. Rather than the renewable visceral shock of seeing the buildings appear to swallow the planes and then implode, we are made to listen to the incoherent cries of something terrible happening as it happens. The screen is dark and lightens only enough to be filled with dust and shards of paper and debris. We look not at the violence of the act of terror but at the violence of its effect. It was as clear on September 12, 2001 as it is today that the administration of George W. Bush would use the attack to launch a range of policies, domestic and foreign, which might otherwise have found little support. What was less clear then was how successfully the administration would be able to manipulate the appeal to national security so that both the press and the opposition party effectively censored themselves.

Let me offer one small example. During the Democratic primaries, the front-runner, Howard Dean, was asked to respond to the news that Saddam Hussein had been captured. According to the secretary of defense, the vice president, the secretary of state and of course the president, the people of Iraq, the United States and indeed the world, had all been made safer with this evil man safely in American hands. Dean said he thought capturing Saddam Hussein had been a fine thing, but that he doubted the American people were any safer in consequence. It was a small but precise truth. The penalty for telling this truth was instantaneous: denunciation from every quarter, not least from the four quarters of his own party.

The Bush administration tells lies both large and small, vague and precise. Many bear no relation to September 11, 2001 and we can assume would have been told in any case. For example, in order to “better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits of America’s greatest natural resources, our forests and grasslands,” the administration gave the Forest Service the power to skip environmental reviews before approving lumber company requests to log national forest land. In order to move “toward more effective prevention of black-lung disease,” the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration raised the limit on the amount of coal dust allowed in mines. In order to “save hundreds of lives,” the Department of Transportation increased the number of hours long distance truckers could drive before a mandated rest period. Through budget cuts, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has lost seventy-seven enforcement agents; it created two new jobs for staff who would “help industry comply with agency rules.” Rules on mercury, the efficiency of air conditioners, food labelling, training of health care workers, restoration of wetlands, and media concentration have all been weakened. As “regulatory initiatives,” these achievements on behalf of business require no new legislation and can be halted only through costly legal action. According to the president’s spokesman, the new rules are the expression of the “President’s common-sense policies [which] reflect the values of America, whether it is cracking down on corporate wrong-doing or eliminating burdensome regulations to create jobs.” This is a sentence of genuine Orwellian grandeur.[1]

Because the crimes of omission and commission of this administration are delivered to the public piecemeal by the press, rarely followed up and, when printed, usually appear deep inside on what publishers call the “airplane pages” (as both the New York Times and the Washington Post acknowledged in recent self-criticisms), the public has little sense of the over-all corruption of the administration. Moreover, the war – against terrorism at home, Afghanistan, Iraq, and enemies yet unborn – distracts the public and, when attention is paid, is used to justify everything.

At the Nuremburg trials, Hermann Goering explained the way of the world to an American intelligence officer named Gustave Gilbert. Goering noted that most people in the world, including the Germans, had not wanted war. “But, after all,” he explained, “it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship." Gilbert protested that in a democracy the people had a say in such matters; in the U.S., for example, only the Congress could declare war. "Oh, that is all well and good,” Goering answered, “but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Thus Bush insists that the more war he and his cabal make in Iraq and Afghanistan the more safe they have made the country and indeed the world. Thus John Kerry, as if aware of Goering’s rule, accepts the nomination of his party by “reporting for duty” and promises to keep the country even more safe through a more successful, internationalized pursuit of the same misbegotten war. It is likely Bush believes what he is saying, a frightening prospect. It is likely that Kerry does not, which makes voting for him imperative.

In the past four years those of us who thought that the differences between George W. Bush and Al Gore were marginal have learned how important those margins are. It is in the margins that countries are taken to war under the sign of a pumped-up foreign threat; it is in the margins that protective regulations are dismantled; it is in the margins that the wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations are relieved of their tax burdens; it is also in the margins that public health in the U.S. continues to deteriorate. It is in the margins, in short, that people live and die.[2] This election will most likely be determined in the margins. Its effect, like that of the election of 2000, will be central.

[1] All quotes from Joel Brinkley, “Out of Spotlight, Bush Overhauls U.S. Regulations,” New York Times, August 14, 2004, p.10. In the case of the truckers, the rest period was also expanded, but truckers say this will not lessen the negative effect of a longer shift.

[2] The administration understands the importance of margins very well. Recently, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement opened an investigation of alleged voter fraud in the last election for mayor of Orlando. The investigation has frightened its targeted community -- the aging, black membership of Orlando’s League of Voters. Every vote counts. See Bob Herbert, “Suppress the Vote?” New York Times, August 16, pp. 19.