Bush's Incompetence on Film

By chance this week, I watched When the Levees Broke in my Hurricane Katrina in Historical Perspective class and then No End in Sight at home. These two films are great documents to show the historical incompetence of the Bush administration. Plenty of people have talked about both films so I won't go into much detail here. But I think watching them back to back is extremely powerful.

When the Levees Broke, Spike Lee's documentary on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is possibly the best documentary I have ever seen. That's a strong statement I know. But that film has unbelievable power. It's actually not that great for discussion I think, or at least it wasn't with me leading it, because it is just too overwhelming. After each of the 4 episodes, one just feels completely devastated. Michael Eric Dyson, in his book about Katrina, Come Hell or High Water, explores Kanye West's assertion that George Bush doesn't care about black people. Essentially, Dyson says, that regardless of Bush's actual feelings toward African-Americans, he doesn't care about them as a political group. That disinterest dominated hurricane relief efforts. As we all know, relief was slow and inadequate and hundreds if not thousands of people died as a direct result. In the aftermath, Bush was conducting fundraisers and talking about Iraq, Cheney was hanging out on his ranch in Wyoming, and Condi was shopping. None of them cared. Today, Hurricane Katrina relief funds are running out with most of the city not yet rebuilt and much not even cleaned up. Nothing more is coming either. Disgusting.

Watching No End in Sight only reinforced When the Levees Broke. Again viewing the aftermath of the Iraq invasion and the multiple ways the Bush administration sabotaged their own war through ideology, contempt for the Iraqis, inexperience, incompetence, disinterest, malfeasance, and idiocy. While I still believe that it is a very hard case to make that this administration is the worst in American history, it sure is awfully close and I pray the worst in my lifetime. Because I don't want to live through something worse.

I was thinking about Fahrenheit 9/11 after watching these films. The problem with that movie is the conspiracy theory aspect to it. Why focus on conspiracy theories when this administration has done so many horrible things that are easily documented and clear to the public? Accusing it of conspiracies almost serves its interest because it draws attention from their actual evil.