Last week I saw the movie that everyone's talking about. I talked about it quite a bit, too, certainly more than I talk about most movies and with more people. Yesterday I saw the movie that everyone should be talking about. Control Room doesn't come at you with an obvious agenda (which I don't fault Mr. Moore for since he doesn't pretend to be impartial, but it gets a little tedious); I wouldn't call it an impartial movie - if there are good arguments that science can never be unbiased, then we shouldn't expect any documentary film to be - but it doesn't hit you over the head, and there are certainly multiple viewpoints presented.

But what really makes Control Room so much more effective/affective than Fahrenheit 9/11 is the fact that it comes at the debate from a wholly different angle. I've read all the political hotbooks of late, and I know the Iraq/terrorism issue pretty damn well, but this film had a veiwpoint I had never seen before, one that I doubt most Americans have seen. Since September 11, I've heard about Al Jazeera almost as much as I've heard about Fox News, but I've never known anything more about it than what the American press says, which is usually just parroting Bush administration viewpoints. It's easy enough for Rumsfeld et al to say that Al Jazeera is propaganda and lies (as if Fox News wasn't), but the real story is much more complex than that.

In the film, there's an Al Jazeera journalist who says "You are the most powerful nation on earth, I agree; you can defeat everybody, I agree. But don't ask us to love it as well!" But this same journalist, when confronted by an emotional Arab with the question of who will stop the United States, replies that "the United States will stop the United States". At which point I'm thinking, yeah it's possible, the United States could conceivably just implode if it stays on its present course. But that's not what he's talking about. He adds that he has "100% faith in the American Constitution, 100% faith in the American people" to stop the United States. It's heartbreaking. There are ideals here which shine bright enough for the whole world to see. The country was founded on them. But nearly half the country voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and it's not a sure thing that he'll be voted out this time around. Personally, I have about 90% faith in the American Constitution (it would be closer to 100% if the supreme court wasn't in the habit of appointing/anointing presidents), but only 50% (+/- 4% margin of polling error) faith in the American people.