Lies My Father Told Me

by David Somerfleck

(10/20/03) Let me make it as clear as G.W. Bush's lack of complexity, my father and I have never been (what most would call) close and probably never will be. Whatever remorse you may detect in that statement is tempered by the steely resolve of experience's inculcated lessons; what is, in some cases, must be; for logical reason. (Now, my mother, God bless her, is another story, if you like castrating Zionists.)

One common language my father and I always spoke fluently, however, was a mutually shared love of classic cinema. My father loved westerns (whether Glenn Ford, Sergio Leone spaghetti camp, or John Wayne's swaggering, existentialism) and the Frank Capra-esque epic in which the struggling Everyman achieves a humble triumph over overbearing victimization. I like those movies, too; but where my father's love of cinema begins and ends there, mine continues through genres all the way to present day box office pop bonanzas like "The Matrix." Just as the only books my father ever picked up were manuals necessary for work, while Kafka fascinated me; like two rivers, we met at some junctures but diverged through the largest expanses of earth and geography.

One film my father always loved was "Lies My Father Told Me." He was completely unaware of any irony involved in such a film, much less of the two of us watching it together. But there it was, bold as a narc at a biker rally, awaiting biased perception to make of it what it would.

The film is essentially a 1920's bittersweet intergenerational conflict about a young boy's divided upbringing in a Montreal Jewish ghetto; when many public streets were still dirt, and horse drawn wagons still were the sole mode of transportation, and where anti-Semitism was as blatant as Craig Kilborn's self-congratulating inability to be funny.

The story focuses upon David and his Orthodox grandfather who collects bottles, rags, and old clothes from the back of a horse-drawn wagon. David's grandfather has infused the boy with a sense of wonder at the world around him, and has introduced him to the teaching of the Talmud and religious Jewish life.

While David's grandfather belongs to the 'old' school, David's father is a modern man, who is opposed to David's religious leanings. To survive in the modern world, David's father thinks that it is vital to be a Canadian citizen first, and Jewish second - the complete opposite of the grandfather's perspective. As the tension among the three generations increases, David begins to feel that his father is lying to him.

While the grandfather wants David to follow his path, he also doesn't want to come between David and his father. Within this seeming-chaos, David is forced to grow up, and to see the world for what it really is.

What does the quest for a single truth that explicates our purpose, have to do with you? What does such an intergenerational hegira have to do with modern politics? Gentle reader, instead ask what doesn't it have to do with you or politics.

Just as the character of David in the film "Lies My Father Told Me" was searching for something to believe in, that would transcend materialism and generations of struggle and prejudice, so I sought some kind of father-son bond that could not be given; just as we as a nation, as a people, are seeking a leadership that can only exist in fantasy.

How can we, (descendants of Puritans) expect our nation's leaders to be wise and virtuous when we hold them up to unreal expectations with rigged election processes, public perception based on incomplete information, gut feelings, physical appearance and spin control? We can't.

Just as individuals are flawed creatures, so are our politicians and presidents; who at turns will be philandering exhibitionists with kind intent toward the poor such as Clinton, or racist money-laundering oil barons who lack vision but are handsome and smile and wink at each camera and depict themselves as "good old boys" of simple means close to the earth yet loot the national treasury and make a mockery of our laws.

The lies of our fathers are not that we shouldn't dream or aspire to more, but that we should trust openly in mythology without foundation in logic. Henry David Thoreau once said, "Build your castles in the air, for that is where they should be. Now lay your foundation beneath them." If you believe the lies of the fox, you're the only one to blame.

Why is the media asleep at the wheel and not asking about Bush's obvious dealings with too-numerous corporate megaliths, the Saudis, the Bin Laden family, oil dependency? Why are the inconsistencies regarding pre-9/11 events not being investigated as Watergate was? Why is Attorney General Ashcroft's mangling of our civil rights being ignored?

I'll tell you why: Because the blind fear that allowed the Bush junta to take place during Election Debacle 2000 is also allowing Bush's smoke and mirrors policies to run rampant through the streets of sanity. Reporters are bought and sold many times over by their publishers before they realize the futility of their trade, but we, naive and sheltered Americans, actually believe what we see on CNN as incontrovertible fact.

As a nation, we are still children; immature and wanting easy answers to complex queries.

When we face the reality that we will never have perfect leaders, when we cease to react to life's uncertainties from a visceral place of fear and reactionism, when conservative ceases to be synonymous with racism and withholding from the needy and liberalism stops being a jingoistic catchphrase for wimpy, then we can view the election process as a logical judging of a candidate's reasoned qualifications to hold office and not like a beauty contest in which the most charismatic or more attractive person will always win - whether worthy or not.