A Few Shiny Pebbles

Several interesting posts and links about Michael Moore’s “documentary”, SICKO, caught my eye in the past few days. Each of these excerpts should be read in their entirety at the linked blogs, because they are important to all of us who want more facts on hand about the Healthcare Issue.

On Josue Sierra’s Blog, Josue writes that Dr. Darsi Ferrer reports that it is his opinion that:

Havana, August 6, 2007—There is no doubt that the Cuban authorities will not allow the Cuban people the possibility of watching this documentary by Michael Moore, a leading movie producer and ideological ally of the Cuban regime.

Although it might look contradictory, the propaganda used in the film to discredit the USA health system while trying to highlight the excellence of the Cuban health system, turned out to be considered “subversive” by the Cuban regime. It so happens that he based his arguments on gross lies that do not represent at all the Cuban health drama.

[. . .]

The Cuban health system can be described with one word: Chaos. The majority of the installations are in ruins, with continued great physical deterioration coupled with disastrous operating conditions. In contrast, the exclusive medical institutions, reserved for foreigners with hard currency, members of the “ruling elite” and the high ranking military personnel offer excellent medical services.

Josue Sierra links to “Sicko Banned in Cuba” by Val Prieto, at Babalublog, who further discusses SICKO and Cuba. And a little further searching got me to Hugh Hewitt, who excerpts from and links to a post about the Canadian healthcare system by “Dr. G.” at his blog, Abducens Nucleus:

Some patients just aren’t willing to sit back and take it anymore. The nation’s health system is long on promises and short on delivery. The litany of delays in care due to limited access grows by the day. In one instance, a patient sued her insurer because she was forced to wait four months for an MRI for her brain tumor and then months more to see a neurologist. In one metropolitan area, waiting times in the ER average four hours, while one in ten waits more than 12 hours.

One in three households surveyed tried and failed to gain timely access to at least one health service within the previous three months. And in one study, the total waiting time between referral from a general practitioner and specialty care averaged nearly 18 weeks. Even the Supreme Court has weighed in on the unacceptable delays in care. But the lawsuit is not against a dreaded American HMO and the events did not happen in the U.S. All were byproducts of the Canadian health care system.

Now, I hadn’t thought of it before—and probably Michael Moore didn’t think about it until recently either—but propaganda is surprisingly tricky art-form. It’s clearly not a matter simply of telling the Big Lie. If you manufacture deliberate lies, distortions, misstatements, etc., in an attempt to prove something that is isn’t true, it seems that there are what might be considered “unintended consequences” when you turn to present the finished product—in this case, Moore’s “documentary” SICKO.

Michael Moore made tens of millions of dollars with his “documentaries” about capitalism, guns and racial hatred, and Iraq. He was hailed as a hero by the Left, and since the Left exists all over the world, his “documentaries” were popular all over the world. The Left hates America, and as a group the Left ignored the fact that so much of the “documentaries” was lies, distortions, and carefully crafted editing using images and words that accompanied them to imply a connection that wasn’t there. The Left, which controls the Main Stream Media in most of the world, also ignored the problems with the “documentaries”. This meant that most people who saw Moore’s work were not equipped with the information that would have empowered them to judge what they saw and heard. These “documentaries” were capitalistic successes, making Moore a great deal of money and fame, and generated extra anti-American animosity in the world.

Michael Moore had every reason to believe that his proven talent for skillfully mixing sound and images to lie about aspects of America would continue to generate him the same box office figures and the same acclaim. When he created SICKO, his “documentary” about how “terrible” the American health industries are, he released it to the world and sat back to receive the cash and the compliments.

But something went wrong. And it appears that lying propaganda is only useful when your side as a whole approves of it despite the lies, and when the average person seeing it gets convinced because of the skill of the propagandist and the fact that the average person so often doesn’t know about the lies. It turns out that it may be banned in Cuba, a Leftist stronghold, because the average Cuban knows very well that SICKO is lying about their own Cuban health care system—because the average Cuban has no choice but to use the health care that the average Cuban is forced to use. It doesn’t matter that the Left that controls the Cuban media is not going to report the fact that the only people who can go to the excellent Cuban Hospitals portrayed in the “documentary” are the Cuban elite. The Cuban people know from personal experience that their own health care system is chaotic, unpleasant, and dangerous. So you don’t want to show SICKO in Cuba.

And there is a problem in Canada, as well. And in other parts of the world. Because everyone has either their own experience with their own health care system or they know someone close who has. People travel, and a lot of people know about the health systems of a lot of countries. There are problems with health care systems all over the world, but most people have a lot of first and second hand information and experience to draw from when they judge “documentaries” about such systems.

And that’s a real problem for Michael Moore. He has no difficulties when the Left Media won’t expose his lies and distortions, or when he shows the “documentaries” to audiences who either rubber stamp his views or are taken in by the mastery Moore has in technique. But if he is going to show lies and distortions to people who know enough to judge those lies and other tricks for the propaganda they are, it all falls apart. The Left Media can’t protect his lies from people who know them for what they are, and the Left absolutely doesn’t want to allow his lies to be judged by people who are captive to Leftist health care systems.

Compared to his other “documentaries”, who would have thought that Michael Moore’s “documentary” SICKO would have had such a relatively unhealthy box office?

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