Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Fanning the Flames of Dissent
Fanning the flames of dissent
By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The 38 people packed into Holly Bennett's Denver home Monday night were not your run-of-the-mill revolutionaries. They were lawyers, computer experts, business owners,
physicians.
Like old friends at a party, they filled Bennett's dining room table with chips, cheese, deviled eggs and bottles of wine. Thing was, most of these people had never laid eyes on each other.
Instead, they shared a bond. They are committed to changing this country's leadership because of disgust with the policies of the president of the United States. They gathered, like tens of thousands of others did across the country, at house parties organized by an Internet-based political movement called MoveOn.org. They met to discuss Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" and listen to Moore speak via a worldwide computer hookup where grassroots met cyberspace.
Seen by millions in its first week of release, "Fahrenheit 9/11" insinuates that George W. Bush stole the 2000 presidential election when Republican officials purposely removed blacks from Florida's voter rolls. Most pointedly, though, Moore's documentary proposes that Bush did not invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein aided the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction aimed at us. Moore suggests that the president sent Americans to be killed and maimed to control Iraqi oil and impose U.S. will on the Middle East.
Bush and his supporters decry Moore as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Their problem is that the president's own conspiracy theories are at least as questionable as the filmmaker's.
"The core issue is the lie on which this war is based," David Cahn, a 45-year-old Denver urologist, told the folks in Bennett's house. "We were told we were going to war because of an imminent threat."
The Bush administration's promotion of that misconception, said 36-year-old Marine veteran Mark Randol, represents a breach of faith that overwhelms anything Michael Moore put forward.
"It's not necessarily a conspiracy," Randol said. "But the reasoning (Bush) gave in Congress for going to war was false. I would say he lied."
Those lies, Randol believes, betrayed every American whom Bush sent into combat. Randol served in the first Persian Gulf War. Republican by nature, he voted for Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and Bob Dole.
"We can't pull out of Iraq (immediately)," he said, reflecting a sentiment shared by what seemed a majority of those at Bennett's house. "We have to take responsibility for what we've done. I don't have a quick and easy answer."
Except for a change of administration.
That was the hope that led Bennett and her husband, John Lebsack, to open their house to a bunch of strangers. It's not just the war in Iraq, Bennett said; it's Bush's attacks on constitutional rights that the Supreme Court must now restore. It's the holier-than-you smugness of religious conservatives to whom Bush caters.
Amen, said Debra Taylor. The 51-year-old programmer/analyst once voted for Reagan. She first met Bennett on Monday. But they both understand the vilification of anyone who opposes the president's agenda.
"A co-worker in Texas told me how we have a Supreme Court justice promoting sex for 12-year-old girls," Taylor said. "I asked her where she heard that. She said in church. Thirty days later, my own sister in Arkansas, who goes to a Baptist church, said, 'You know, we have a Supreme Court justice promoting sex for 12-year-old girls."'
At Holly Bennett's on Monday night, silly charges of immorality played as well as contrived terrorist connections.
"I don't think the Republican Party of my parents is the Republican Party of today," Taylor said. "I'm here because I so desperately disagree with George Bush's politics."
She spoke for everyone in the room.
And, she hopes, a majority of voters in November.
By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
The 38 people packed into Holly Bennett's Denver home Monday night were not your run-of-the-mill revolutionaries. They were lawyers, computer experts, business owners,
physicians.
Like old friends at a party, they filled Bennett's dining room table with chips, cheese, deviled eggs and bottles of wine. Thing was, most of these people had never laid eyes on each other.
Instead, they shared a bond. They are committed to changing this country's leadership because of disgust with the policies of the president of the United States. They gathered, like tens of thousands of others did across the country, at house parties organized by an Internet-based political movement called MoveOn.org. They met to discuss Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" and listen to Moore speak via a worldwide computer hookup where grassroots met cyberspace.
Seen by millions in its first week of release, "Fahrenheit 9/11" insinuates that George W. Bush stole the 2000 presidential election when Republican officials purposely removed blacks from Florida's voter rolls. Most pointedly, though, Moore's documentary proposes that Bush did not invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein aided the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction aimed at us. Moore suggests that the president sent Americans to be killed and maimed to control Iraqi oil and impose U.S. will on the Middle East.
Bush and his supporters decry Moore as a crackpot conspiracy theorist. Their problem is that the president's own conspiracy theories are at least as questionable as the filmmaker's.
"The core issue is the lie on which this war is based," David Cahn, a 45-year-old Denver urologist, told the folks in Bennett's house. "We were told we were going to war because of an imminent threat."
The Bush administration's promotion of that misconception, said 36-year-old Marine veteran Mark Randol, represents a breach of faith that overwhelms anything Michael Moore put forward.
"It's not necessarily a conspiracy," Randol said. "But the reasoning (Bush) gave in Congress for going to war was false. I would say he lied."
Those lies, Randol believes, betrayed every American whom Bush sent into combat. Randol served in the first Persian Gulf War. Republican by nature, he voted for Ronald Reagan, Bush's father and Bob Dole.
"We can't pull out of Iraq (immediately)," he said, reflecting a sentiment shared by what seemed a majority of those at Bennett's house. "We have to take responsibility for what we've done. I don't have a quick and easy answer."
Except for a change of administration.
That was the hope that led Bennett and her husband, John Lebsack, to open their house to a bunch of strangers. It's not just the war in Iraq, Bennett said; it's Bush's attacks on constitutional rights that the Supreme Court must now restore. It's the holier-than-you smugness of religious conservatives to whom Bush caters.
Amen, said Debra Taylor. The 51-year-old programmer/analyst once voted for Reagan. She first met Bennett on Monday. But they both understand the vilification of anyone who opposes the president's agenda.
"A co-worker in Texas told me how we have a Supreme Court justice promoting sex for 12-year-old girls," Taylor said. "I asked her where she heard that. She said in church. Thirty days later, my own sister in Arkansas, who goes to a Baptist church, said, 'You know, we have a Supreme Court justice promoting sex for 12-year-old girls."'
At Holly Bennett's on Monday night, silly charges of immorality played as well as contrived terrorist connections.
"I don't think the Republican Party of my parents is the Republican Party of today," Taylor said. "I'm here because I so desperately disagree with George Bush's politics."
She spoke for everyone in the room.
And, she hopes, a majority of voters in November.
All articles in this archive are used under "fair use" as they are important to the national discussion of whether or not the people of this country are being deceived by their government. These articles are used as evidence in that discussion.
