When the weather gets cold, go to the movies.
This week I watched two outstanding films. First I saw The Lives of Others, a German feature that has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Academy Awards. A few days later I headed down to the IFC to watch An Unreasonable Man, a new documentary about the life and legacy of Ralph Nader. You know Ralph--He went from buckling his seatbelt to destroying America. Or so the story goes, until you see this movie.
But first things first. The Lives of Others received amazing critical acclaim (Anthony Lane in the New Yorker: "If there is any justice, this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film will go to The Lives of Others"), and its director is the wondrously named Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It is set in the waning years of East Germany, from 1984-1993 (four years after the Berlin Wall fell).
The main character, Gerd Weisler, is an East German spy assigned to keep tabs on a potentially subversive playwright and his girlfriend. At first Weisler spies with great vigor; he is a perfect tool of the state. But the more he listens, the more he becomes personally invested in the lives of others. The playwright and his friends eventually undertake a dangerous mission to smuggle an article about East Germany's high suicide rate into West Berlin. Weisler knows exactly what is going on, but does not alert his superiors. The article is published, and the boss wants to know why Weisler didn't do anything about it. He can never definitively prove that Weisler broke any rules; it's what Weisler did not do (namely, turn the playwright in) that matters. Weisler is punished nonetheless, with an extreme demotion to steam-opening the letters mailed within East Germany.
Weisler accepts his fate, and the playwright goes on to achieve great acclaim after Germany is united. Weisler is a hero, because he's able to surmount totalitarian indoctrination and make a great personal sacrifice on behalf of someone he has never met.
Back to Ralph Nader. As we're all supposed to believe, if Ralph Nader had not run in 2000 (or at least not run in Florida) Al Gore would have won the Presidency. The US would have been spared four years of the George W. Bush administration, and hopefully all eight.
In a nutshell: if not for that fucking Ralph Nader, we would now be living in the glorious twilight of the Al Gore-Joe Lieberman years.
And yet...if Gore had carried his own home state of Tennessee (which he had represented in both the House and Senate) he would have won. Or how about Bill Clinton's Arkansas? Just one of those two states would have given Gore the victory, but Gore lost both even though Nader was not a factor in either one.
Hold those heretical thoughts, dear readers--It's all Ralph Nader's fault.
During the 2000 campaign, Nader (as well as Pat Buchanan) was frozen out of the televised debates. The debate rules are heavily stacked against anyone except the representatives of the two major parties. If Nader was such a minor factor that he was not even worthy of sharing the same stage as Bush and Gore, how did he retrospectively become the man who singlehandedly destroyed America? This is one of the most powerful arguments in the film.
Of course, the reason Nader gets under everyone's skin is that he believes that there is "not a dime's worth of difference" between the two major parties. As I've watched the Bush administration in horror and disbelief these past six years, that argument has grated on my nerves too. But An Unreasonable Man sets this belief in context. As a successful consumer advocate in the 1960s and 1970s, Nader worked well with Democratic politicians. Then the Reagan years began in 1980, and the Democrats moved to the right and left Nader out in the cold. By 2000, he had endured 20 years or rejection from across the political spectrum. From Nader's vantage point, there really is no difference between the two parties. I disagree with him, but his argument is not crazy.
What does it say about the state of our democracy that it is bad form for someone like Ralph Nader to run? It says that we do not really have a democracy at all in America, but rather a fiercely protected two party oligopoly. Maybe that's not such a bad thing; democracies can be unwieldy and volatile. But let's have the courage to acknowledge this truth.
To me, Ralph Nader is a hero just like Gerd Weisler. He refuses to retreat to his corner and do what he's told. As James Ridgeway of the New Republic puts it in the film, the way the Democrats treated Nader revealed their true colors as the "meanest bunch of motherfuckers" he had ever seen in his life.
One woman gasped when he said this. Maybe it was just because of the vulgar language. But maybe she gasped because it's true.
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