THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BUSH - A film by William Karel in collaboration with Eric Laurent

This film was made before the 2004 US election with the intention of tipping the balance against Bush. It has been called the French Fahrenheit 9/11; however, it does not try to be as emotional as the Michael Moore film. Also, unlike Moore there are pro-Bush (or at least not avowedly anti-Bush) commentators such as Richard Perle, Viet Dinh, Frank Carlucci and David Frum.

Although this and a few other documentaries were made to try and stop the re-election of Bush, and Karel himself said the film "will be redundant by the 3rd of November [2004]." I think there is value left in this film and others like it if they are viewed with something else in mind. It isn’t that they are upstanding tributes to the brilliance of various directors. They are always built on research conducted by many people. It’s something else.

I can’t remember where I picked it up but I heard a phrase “the natural selection of accidents” (a Google search informs me it was Leon Trotsky). It means that when something happens, civilians being bombed for example (not Trotsky’s illustration), it may have been prima facie an accident (or not) but when a situation or a system is designed in a certain way then these things are going to happen. The Bush family do not exist in a vacuum. The system that has allowed them to rise has also allowed others like them to be in such a position. It’s not really an accident. We could easily be talking about ‘The World According To Kerry’ and being just as annoyed about it. Or Blair, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin – take your pick.

That’s why although they appear to have failed in their central purpose there are still good reasons to see these films. There is an argument to be made for saying ‘Bush won lets move on to the next thing that we can win’ but unless people understand why people like Bush win, then they will continue to do so. The depictions of the sort of society George Bush comes from are, in this regard, more valuable than the short term goals of the film-maker.

It wasn’t broadcast in the US. William Karel explains why…

"It seemed like such a no-brainer that one of the large networks would pick it up and yet that hasn't happened. One of the potential broadcasters in the United States said they would be interested, but they would have to pull out the whole section on Ariel Sharon and the relationship with Israel. So there were some problems."

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) did put it on and well done to them. It runs through the most common accusations levelled at the Bush junta. The ties with religion, the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, the corporate ties, war profiteering, links with Saudi Arabia, and the creation of Saddam.

When the religious aspect of the Bush administration is presented it is often done in such a way as to write it off as a cold ploy to ensnare the Christian right vote and thereby ensure re-election. This film suggests that it is a genuinely heartfelt belief. I am not sure which of these is true – I don’t know any of the Bush people. I suspect that some of them believe it and some of them are using it, after all, there are a lot of people involved in a US administration. Either way it leads to some frightening situations.

There is some strange footage of a meeting of the Christian Coalition of America in Colorado. This group came together to acclaim the state of Israel. There is Hebrew music playing and traditional Jewish dancing despite the fact that none of the participants is Jewish. Nothing wrong with cross-culturalism I know but the films contention is that there are far more fanatical supporters of the Jewish state among the US Christian right than there are among American Jews. Robert Baer (former CIA operative) says “up to 60 million people that identify themselves with the Christian right believe that the state of Israel must exist at the end of History and that’s how we are all going to go to Heaven. If it doesn’t exist – if it’s overrun by Muslims, we are going to go to hell.”

Personally, this is not the way I would like the world’s most powerful people to be thinking.

The film does not attempt to say that this is the Bush position, just that he met Sharon more than any other leader during his first term (9 times) and that there are links to this kind of thinking within the administration. According to Charles Lewis (head of the Centre for Public Integrity) Dick Cheney said something along the lines of “god put oil in certain places and you can’t do anything about that.”

There is a smattering of media issues. David Frum the former Bush speechwriter (who seemed to be over here the entire time the US election was on – did anyone else notice that?) commented that “writing for the President is like writing for a movie – he is like a character in a movie.” Maybe so, Frum is trying to write him as the hero and 30% of the US electorate seem to agree but the rest of the world...

Rather than having Michael Moore driving around in a van with a megaphone (which was funny) there was some analysis of the Patriot Act. I was staggered to hear the author of it, Viet Dinh, stating, “I am always afraid of Big Brother, of George Orwell. Those kinds of activities can quickly turn ourselves into a Gestapo state.” I wonder if there has ever been a clearer illustration of Doublethink (the definition of Doublethink is “the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in ones head and simultaneously believe in both of them.)” They mention ‘Operation Tips’ which is similar to some of our government’s recent initiatives about shopping benefit fraudsters and so on. It encouraged people to call the government with information about anyone who might be slightly out of the ordinary. In his now familiar but entirely unreassuring way Cheney said “The way I see it it’s a new normalcy, I think those will become permanent features in our way of life”

Bush Granddaddy’s Nazi connections are exposed. Prescott Bush was involved with the Nazis at the same time his son was fighting them in the pacific. The US government took over all of his companies after the war due to this collaboration. One of his companies made mines using concentration camp labour.

In a lot of documentaries, and almost daily on ‘Democracy Now’, there are officials or operatives who resigned due to disgust and/or disdain about what is happening under the current US regime. Now it seems a resignation is no longer necessary. When Karel was asked if he had ever been discouraged by the US government he replied "On the contrary... this is the fifth film that I have made about America - all of them quite critical - and the American embassy in Paris couldn't have been more helpful."

You can download it for nothing here

http://michaelgreenwell.wordpress.com/ 

Added: July 16th 2005
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Language: english