God Bless America

The story: Philip Stewart Hoffman ("Happiness," "Boogie Nights") decides to make a documentary with some friends of his. They follow both the Republican and Democratic national conventions with vigor (using creative techniques at times to get on the inside track), and end up learning more about the protests out on the streets than about the political banter going on inside the sold-out auditoriums. Hoffman interviews a long, impressive list of celebrities, some of whom are far more friendly and willing to discuss matters with him than others. Notable appearances by Susan Sarandon, Bill Maher, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Ben Harper, and WIllie Nelson (among many others) make the film interesting, and politically important (or at least in some people's minds) figures such as Newt Gingrich, Ralph Nader, Ralph Reed, and Jesse Jackson add a serious dimension to a film that sometimes comes across as being made by a bunch of sloppy revolutionaries in their 20's and 30's that say "like" and "you know" too much while speaking to big politicians in suits and ties.

2000's conclusion: American politics are fucked and are centered entirely around money.

Not anything any of us didn't know, but something that sometimes needs to be spelled out clearly on screen to have the emotions and effects of such a declaration hit home. Hoffman and Co. take on America by interviewing a variety of people all over the country. Like Bowling for Columbine, this mini-entourage makes the mistake of covering far too many topics in what could otherwise be a more powerful film if more focused, but that happens a lot in documentaries.

In Party, however, it feels like these kids were more just going along with what they discovered while filming than attempting to get across any one particular message. For this reason, the film's choppiness goes over more smoothly than that of Bowling.

So now I am in this funny head-state. I am all fuzzy and twisted and warped over American politics. I have spent so much of my time in Parisian cafes and French living rooms trying to convince the French that we are not all ignorant rednecks, that capitalism is not the devil incarnate, and that we don't all have four-story luxury homes that waste away most of the world's natural resources. That beef and Coca-Cola don't run our lives. That some of us are tree-hugging ecological types. That others of us aren't for the death penalty. That we don't all run from gun show to gun show hollerin' holy hell, raising a ruckus about Jesus and how to bring Him into your life.

Meanwhile, I am still working on my doozie for tomorrow or whenever (the doozie, may I remind you, is to be based on a previous entry about an email on America, which you should read if you haven't already). And I am thoroughly thrown off-track by this disturbing State of the Union experience. Plus I am reading too much Chomsky and feeling too at odds with my own country's political system as a result. Worse still, I am overseas and none of my friends follow politics and current events like I do, so I am isolated and running these disturbing circles by my lonesome.

But I think, more than anything, I am angry. How can America even pretend to say that it is a democratic, freedom-loving country when police can brutally attack people during a peaceful demonstration outside of the Democratic National Convention in LA just because they are struggling to have their opinion heard? How can a presidential race be so close (and a country be so divided) that the leader of the world's most powerful country is eventually chosen by a Supreme Court whose members are obvioulsy voting along their own partisan lines? And how can we use the word "God" so much in an inaugural address (or State of the Union address, for that matter. I quote: "We Americans have faith in ourselves, but not in ourselves alone. We do not know --we do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May He guide us now. And may God continue to bless the United States of America." Those were the last three lines of Bush's speech. What the fuck?) when we keep saying that there is seperation between church and state?

America is a country centered around and run by a handful of people. The rest of us are just spectators - marginalized - and in turn are rendered apathetic or hysterical when it comes to disagreeing with our government's visable and hidden political agendas. Nobody that's apathetic is going to change anything, and anybody that is hysterical is not going to be taken seriously.

Ralph Nader said something interesting in the film. As I wasn't around for the elections, I heard very little from the man beyond an occasional blurb in the press. Paraphrasing mildly, he said, "Your average American has no voice - they don't have television stations or radios or any other sort of media, because that's all run by massive corporations. Their only medium is the street."

I found that wonderfully phrased. But the problem is that nobody - or at least nobody with oil spouting out his ass - knows one damn thing about what people are crying for in the streets. And while some people's oil spouts are a little smaller, or are really just a shit ton of stocks or oodles of corporate money or accumulated inherited or illegally obtained fortunes, none of those other hoodlums in Congress are making any effort to listen to any "fringe" groups either. Yet those peripheral people are at least half of the people these crooks are supposed to represent. So when we are obligated to take to the street and march to be heard, why won't anybody listen?

Why does America have such a violent history when it comes to non-violent protests? The French are protest CRAZY, but I can only remember of one incident over the last three years where the protests turned violent. And even then, the images were nothing compared to the brutality seen during any American protest that has gotten out of hand (hosing, gas masks, pellet guns, club beatings, etc). People are going to frickin combat training camp just to have their opinions heard, for Christ's sake..

At one point in the film, Hoffman goes to an old folks' home. One of the elderly men in there said, "You know, if you take something like social security, Medicare, retirement funds - people nowadays think that that is just some sort of basic fundamental part of American society. But those are things that we fought for, that we remember once living without and demanding they be put on the political agenda. Americans need to be active in the changing of laws and governmental policy." (again, paraphrasing severely)

He's so right. But we are all so apathetic. Or we have all lost hope. If the street really is our only medium, yet nobody is listening, what the hell else can we do?