Winners and losers

I don’t understand the concept of « losing your vote » or « perdre ses �lections ». I hear people say this all the time, even intelligent people, and it always makes me impatient. You don’t vote to win (even though you can hope to). You vote to express a choice. If we voted to win, we would all vote for the same party, which would take away the need to have multiple parties. Nice vision of democracy.

It doesn’t matter if you know for sure that the party or the candidate you choose will not be elected. You go out to vote to say what your vision of your country/province/municipality corresponds to. Sometimes, most of the times, you have to make compromises on that vision, as no party seems to quit fit (or at least the system these parties have to deal with doesn’t). Hell, you can even choose to cancel your vote – that’s one way to express a vision. If the election isn’t rigged, your vote won’t be lost even if you don’t « win ».

I used to share my life with a man who believed in anarchy. Every election we would have the same discussions. I couldn’t believe he didn’t go out to vote. He couldn’t believe I « participated » in such a corrupted system. I kept trying to convince him to at least go to the polls and put the anarchy sign on his ballot, or something like that. If you don’t get out of your house (unless 99% of the population does the same for ideological reasons), then they won’t know what your absence means. (Especially if you’re not an active anarchist, involved in some kind of protest.)

Don’t tell me you’re not planning on voting because you know you won’t win, or even because you know you will. It just doesn’t make sense. As Kate says it well on her blog today: « Don’t think the winners will ignore a growing popular vote in favour of the NDP or the Green Party: they know that means support for environmental issues or for more equitable governance, and they will have to act accordingly. » Same thing with the Bloc qu�b�cois.

Me, an idealist? How could I be, when I know I’m going to lose my vote tonight? ;-)

Degr�s d’appr�ciation

Blork et moi avions d�cid� d�aller voir Fahrenheit 9/11 t�t ce soir, sans nous rendre compte que c��tait la premi�re du film (on parle du film dans les journaux depuis tellement longtemps que j�avais l�impression qu�il �tait d�j� en salle). Nous avons donc eu la surprise de voir que la repr�sentation que nous avions choisie �tait compl�te mais nous avons pu obtenir des billets pour celle de 19h15, alors que, selon mon ex rencontr� sur place, les lignes t�l�phoniques de r�servation de billets annon�aient que c��tait complet.

Nous sommes donc arriv�s t�t et avons pu choisir de bons si�ges. La salle �tait pleine � craquer et j��tais agr�ablement surprise de voir des gens de tous les �ges, dont plusieurs connaissances, venus voir le film d�s sa premi�re soir�e en salle.

Il y avait une �nergie sp�ciale dans l�air, un � buzz � qu�on ne voit pas souvent, m�me lors des soirs de premi�res. Mais la surprise r�elle nous attendait � la sortie du film. Le cin�ma, un tr�s grand cin�plex avec beaucoup d�espace, �tait plein � craquer. Il y avait des gens partout qui attendaient patiemment le d�but de la prochaine s�ance du film de Moore. Pour satisfaire � la demande, des repr�sentations avaient �t� ajout�es dans d’autres salles. Plusieurs jeunes �taient venus en groupe et lisaient ou discutaient, assis sur le sol, en attendant de pouvoir entrer. Les ascenseurs �taient pleins, le stationnement �tait plein, les rues autour du cin�ma grouillaient d�activit�. �a parlait, �a discutait, �a gesticulait. Il semble bien que l�effet Moore ait frapp� encore plus fort cette fois-ci. (Fait int�ressant � noter: sur les 10 films � l’affiche dans ce cin�ma, 4 �taient des documentaires. L’impact populaire des films de Moore y est pour quelque chose dans ce regain d’int�r�t vers le documentaire.)

Je ne tenterai pas de faire la critique du film. Je suis de ceux qui trouvent le travail de Moore important sans pour autant appuyer � 100% les techniques du journaliste et du cin�aste. Je me contenterai de dire que j�ai appr�ci� le fait que Moore se soit moins mis en vedette dans ce film que dans ses � documentaires � pr�c�dents et que j�ai �t� �mue jusqu�aux larmes par certains passages, moi qui pleure rarement au cin�ma�

Le magazine en ligne Salon a publi� deux int�ressantes critiques du film, l�une pro Fahrenheit 9/11 et l�autre contre. Voici deux extraits de chacune de ces critiques qui expriment bien ce que je ressens face � cette �uvre :

Extrait du texte de Andrew O’Hehir:

Fahrenheit 9/11 is an enormous film, an angry film, a flawed film and often a very, very funny film. There is anguish in it and death, and not as much coherence as there might be. It’s a political screed that makes our commander in chief look like a simpering dolt (and also like the instrument of a massive machine he cannot control) [�] In its bigness and rage, its low humor and its sentimentality, it has something of Whitman, something of Twain, something of Tom Paine. Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is becoming one of the signal artists of our age.

Extrait du texte de Stephanie Zacharek :

Moore is a very specific and slippery kind of bully: He glides along on his underdog status as if it were a parade float. He professes to feel great compassion for the common man. Yet over and over again, in movie after movie, he invites the audience to chuckle over ordinary people. Why? In « Fahrenheit 9/11 » he lists the countries that stepped forward as members of Bush’s Coalition of the Willing (Palau, Costa Rica, Iceland, Romania, Morocco, and the Netherlands among them), accompanied by funny stock footage of people in costumes of many lands. If Moore is the left’s great spokesman by default, shouldn’t he be using his influence (not to mention his money) to raise the level of political discourse in this country instead of lowering it? Instead we have a filmmaker who manages the feat of getting liberal audiences to laugh at how funny those foreigners are.

I’ve heard even die-hard Moore detractors defend « Fahrenheit 9/11, » claiming that its flaws don’t matter because it speaks to a higher truth. The thinking goes, I suppose, that we need every anti-Bush voice we can get, and Moore, who won an Academy Award for « Bowling for Columbine » and has several bestselling books under his belt, is likely to wield more influence than most other voices coming from the left. What’s more, even though « Fahrenheit 9/11 » isn’t journalism, Moore presents his findings with an air of authority. Moore believes the press has let us down in calling Bush on his fraudulence and falseheartedness, and he’s right. Still, the tradition, craft and standards of journalism have to count for something: Should we really be holding up cheap shots, inference and sloppy reporting as gateways to the truth?