For years Lee and I have been devoted fans of documentaries. People don’t make them to get rich, they are almost always a labor of love. But they sneak into art theaters and play for about a week, often in December to quality for the Oscars. Then they’re gone. So you may not have heard of this film, but it’s worth your time. It’s made by an obscure filmmaker from Flint, Michigan, of all places, named Michael Moore. Apparently Mr. Moore doesn’t like George W. Bush too much ...

Okay, enough of that. You cannot review Fahrenheit 9/11 without revealing your own political positions. You can say a few things about it as art, such as that the recreation of 9/11 in a dark theater with a black screen and surround sound is one of the most moving moments I have ever had in a theater. I wept. You can take him to task for his customary cheap shots. There are some here, not as many as usual. You can argue his facts. You can argue his slant. (My biggest What the fuck? moment was when he said Iraq was a nation that had never killed an American citizen. Tell it to the mothers of Desert Storm dead, Mike. That was a righteous war against an aggressor nation, supported by the whole world.)

Bottom line, I can’t imagine coming out of the theater feeling anything but angry.

1) Angry at MM if you love Bush.

2) Angry at the thugs who have been raping this country for 4 years now if you hate Bush.

3) Angry at MM if you are a liberal and don’t like the way he cheapens his arguments by going too far, every damn time.

4) Angry if you think that lies in support of what you see as a greater truth are in the end a disservice to your position.

Well, I’m angry, too. How angry?

Until now, I put myself in that last category. I hated Bowling for Columbine, and I stand by that opinion. I have seen Michael Moore as the Rush Limbaugh of the Left, and I didn’t like it. I have been and still am alarmed by the divisiveness in this country, which is worse than any time in my memory. Everything is "Us vs. Them," and it’s not just disagreement, it’s hatred.

Lee sent me two columns by Leonard Pitts and Ellen Goodman, two very articulate liberal writers, in reaction to the film. Here is part of what Pitts had to say:

"I find myself wondering if we will not all become self-righteous and extreme now, pulling away from a center that no longer holds. And if so, who will be left to seek common ground for the common good? Fahrenheit made me angry. It scares me how easily that happened. And how good it feels."

And Goodman:

"Michael Moore has been called the left-wing answer to Rush Limbaugh. Rush without the OxyContin. But is it heresy to ask whether the left actually wants its own Rush? I actually agree with P.J. O'Rourke, a conservative who writes in The Atlantic that he tunes out Rush because there's no room for measured debate: ‘Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.’ But now liberals are trudging purposefully down the same low road."

Does the left actually want its own Rush? More to the point, does it need its own Rush?

My short answer is, Yes.

For about ten years now the right has lied, bullied, intimidated, and frightened the left to the point that "liberal" is a word the Democratic Party is afraid to say. These people who have the nerve to whine about F9/11 being "unfair" are the same ones who impeached Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob, and accused Hillary of murder. And we have sat back and taken it, because we’re afraid to get lowdown and dirty, too. We want our squeamish hands clean. Like Tom Lehrer sang, "Though he may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs!"

I bought it. I always felt that, if you got down in the sewers and started slinging shit at your shit-slinging opponent, you just ended up covered in shit. But wait ... if you just stand there, you’re going to get shit-covered, too, aren’t you? And the asshole is laughing at you, like all bullies, because you don’t have the balls to fight back. And you know what? If you show up for a knife fight with nothing but your fists, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who is leaving the fight on his feet.

I’ve always believed that the best way to deal with a bully is simply not to fight him. Run away if I have to; I’m not proud. But there are some bullies you can’t avoid, and some fights you can’t run away from, should not run away from. Maybe the most important fight of that nature is for the soul of our country, our democracy itself. It’s under attack, my friends.

Okay, so if you have to fight ... you should fight fair, right? Duke it out in a boxing ring with a referee, right? But isn’t that a switchblade Condie "Sugar-Leeza" Rice is hiding in her glove? And doesn’t that ref look an awful lot like "Big Tony" Scalia, who let himself get buffaloed by Mad Mike Savage at the Saturday Night Radio Rasslin’ match while his tag-team partner, Rush the Rushian, put a hurtin’ on Captain America with a highly illegal piledriver?

Well, fuck that. If you have to fight, if you are going to fight a bully who has already shown he won't fight fair, the proper weapon to bring to a knife fight is a gun. If your opponent has no honor, and George Bush doesn’t, then indulging in fine notions of fair play is a certain way to lose. You want to see a good example, witness the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 of Al Gore politely presiding over his political funeral ... and repeatedly silencing his friends to do so. Do you really believe Dick Cheney would do that, in another disputed election? Dream on. He wouldn’t have to. For one thing, 48 or 49 Republican senators would stand up and shout, forcing a debate. They know how to fight, they don’t give a shit about a constitutional crisis.

It’s time, my brothers and sisters. It is time to invite these people out through the screen door to the parking lot in back of the American Bar & Grill and kick them in the nuts while they’re taking off their jackets. It’s time to knee them in the face as they bend over, karate chop the backs of their necks as they’re doing down, and grind their faces into the gravel and crushed beer cans and chewed up Bull Durham. It’s time to throw them against the sides of their pickup trucks until they stop moving. Then it’s time to exorcise the masters of war, drag them out into the sunlight to wither and desiccate, bury the ashes at a crossroads under a full moon, sow the ground with salt, and stand over their graves till we’re sure that they’re dead. And piss on the headstones when we are sure.

Angry? I am so far beyond angry at these chickenhawk thugs that I’m ready to use any means necessary to get rid of them. Any means necessary. If that means using big fat lying Michael Moore as a battering ram to break down the gates and front door of the White House, I’m willing to grab a piece of his jeans and help swing him. He’s willing; let’s use him. I want to grab George W. Bush and his entire cynical, fascistic, warmongering, murdering team by the seat of the pants and the scruff of the neck and toss them out the window of the Lincoln Bedroom, which they have disgraced. I want to load him and his whole nightmare family into a garbage truck and deposit them back in Crawford: his Machiavellian father, his useless daughters, his sanctimonious brother, his tennis-cheat other brother, his simpering wife, and his hideous mother. Put a strong fence around the whole place and let them kick shit to their heart’s content. At least it will only land on other Bushes, not on my beloved country.

That’s how angry I am.

NOTE: Some of my friends and relatives think I’ve gone too far here. That in these days of Homeland Security, John Ashcroft, Internet snooping, and the Patriot Act, I might expect the FBI to come knocking on my door if I post this. Part of me would welcome that, part of me wants to quote a well-known coward and deserter, a man who has failed his way into a higher position than any man in history: "Bring ‘em on!" But these days I might find myself being held incommunicado at Gitmo, and that doesn’t appeal. So listen up! If you are the kind of manure-for-brains who sees himself as the Timothy McVeigh of the Left, I am not counseling you to kill anybody. It’s known as metaphor, shithead! I’m not even advising you to kick anybody in the nuts, except in the political sense.

Well, maybe John Ashcroft. He is so asking for it ...