The Dick Cheney Biography - VICE

I had just finished watching this film although it likes to paint itself as a comedy kind of. But it is deadly serious and doubts that was the intention of Adam McKay who wrote and directed it. It has dead serious undertones, and if you follow politics from the side. You will find it hard to ignore 

Vice starts with a disclaimer.

"The following is a true story.

Or as true as it can be given that Dick Cheney is known as one of the most secretive leaders in history.

But we did our f**king best."

The first scene in the film was a drunk younger Dick Cheney being arrested in 1963, by the side of the road. It turns out that his wife gave him an ultimatum to improve his life, and he did.

"Beware the quiet man. For a while, others speak, he watches.

And while others act, he plans. And when they finally rest .... he strikes.

Anonymous"

There was a scene on 9/11 where Dick Cheney was in the Emergency Operations Center. In that room, there was "confusion, fear, and uncertainty". But he saw something that no one else saw in that room - opportunity. And that was the setting of the film how a mild-mannered monotone bureaucrat was able to accumulate so much power and authority that very few leaders in the history of America ever had. And he did it as a ghost with very few people ever releasing or know who he is.

The person that pushed him the most was his wife Lynne, and when he got his job as a congressional intern at Washington DC, she was the first person he called. He became the intern to Donald Henry Rumsfeld (Rummy), a former fighter jet pilot, and he liked him immediately. Rumsfeld had 3 rules for his "lackeys"

1. Keep your mouth shut.
2. Do as you are told.
3. Be loyal

Cheney loves working for Rummy and had a special knack for politics. He had met his life calling and something he would do all his life. He also met other characters who would play a role in his life, Robert Ailes of Fox News, pitching for a conservative news outlet. He had worked for Nixon subsequently, assisting Donald Rumsfeld, who was working as Nixon's Chief of Staff. There were some problems between Rumsfeld and Henry Kissinger - Rumsfeld was sent to Brussels as US Representative to NATO. After Watergate, all those affected were toxic, and Dick saw an opportunity and returned to the White House under President Ford. 

One of Dick's "superpowers" was to make the most extreme and wild ideas seem measured, professional and respectable. When Donald Rumsfeld became the Secretary of Defense, he took Rummy's former job as White House Chief of Staff. He did a sneaky thing as Chief of Staff, and he studied a thing called "Unitary Executive theory". "In its most extreme form, the unitary executive theory can mean that neither Congress nor the federal courts can tell the President what to do or how to do it, particularly regarding national security matters." In short, it gave the President of the United States absolute power, like the Kings and Queens of old or a dictator.

President Ford lost his reelection campaign, and Dick returned to Congress representing Wyoming. Although while he was campaigning, he had a heart attack and his wife took over the campaign. With a divisive and negative campaign message based on hate and fear. During the time of Carter, as a metaphor, solar panels were installed on the White House roof. But in the US, there was a deep wave of resentment developing especially in the South. The type of resentment to the liberal media and the Washington establishment that has been developing around the US during the Obama years - that allowed Trump to win. The Anti-Progressive, Anti-Establishment, Anti Roe vs Wane gave women a right to abortion, etc. Then Big Business tried paying taxes, got together, and started think tanks and lobby groups. With the slogan "Let's Make America Great Again" in the 1980 presidential campaign. It has always been the same players, but now it was a different game and Republicans under Reagan won by a landslide. And with Reagan in the White House, there were able to retrieve many of the laws and powers, reducing the "Big Government". He eliminated the Fairness Doctrine that required holders of broadcast licenses to present an honest, equitable and balanced view. This was said to give rise to right-wing media and allow or encouraged the polarized environment that we have today. It allowed Tax reduction and "trickled down economics". Reagan sought to loosen federal regulation of economic activities, and he appointed key officials who shared this agenda. And of course, he got rid of the green loving Carter's solar panels on the roof of the White House.



About midway in the movie, he discovered that his daughter was gay, and to his credit, he knew that it would affect him politically, but he stood by his daughter. And the film did seem to end there with the end credits rolling, and with a caption, he retired from active politics and took a job as the CEO of an oil company. But that diversion ended with a phone call from the Republican Primary winner, Presidential Candidate George W Bush Jr, who wanted Dick to be his running mate. He went for the meeting, but a visual metaphor of Dick fishing was used, and he dangled the bait of Vice-President and reeled him in. David Addington was his legal adviser and later would become his Chief Of Staff. He read up on the vice president's role, and it was not responsible to Congress, and the role depended on the President. In one of the meetings with the presidential candidate Bush, they agreed on his role. The vice-president will take over the "boring" roles, the bureaucratic functions, energy, foreign policy, military, etc. In short, he expanded the VP's role and was not accountable to the American people directly. He did not even need to hand in his taxes returns and did not need to submit for a medical examination. According to the film, he took over the Bush Presidency and was the first contact on almost everything - "Dick Cheney was everywhere". Putting his people everywhere and removing the opposition. They can some think tanks and redefine the land scale, re-branding "global warming" to "climate change" and "Estate Tax" to "Death Tax". These little or minor changes in the words did have a large effect on the way people felt about them. He was able to cut taxes for the super-rich, reduce death tax, stop climate regulation, stop regulations for companies and dish out millions to his supporters. He had a meeting with top energy executives long before 9/11, and just after he becomes VP, the meeting was top secret. But the Freedom of Information Act got that they used an Iraq oil field map with various US oil companies linked to it.

There was a scene when Bush Jr was meeting with the supreme military commanders, and they were discussing Iraq. There was a bit of surprise from the President and others. Where did Iraq come into it? Bush Dick called the President to one side and said that it would be better if both the President and Vice were not in the same meeting room to ensure "Continuity of government".  President Bush, throughout the film, was seen as aloof and out of touch, and the people really running the government was Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. After that, he was able to push the Iraq notion of being responsible for 9/11. Another rebranding was with the word "torture", and it became "enhance interrogation" by definition, the "US does not torture". They changed the laws and extended the power of the state. To cut a long story, short Dick was able to accumulate power and engineered an invasion of Iraq. There were scenes where a reluctant Colin Powell, played by Tyler Perry, testified before US Congress supporting the war. The film showed the abuses of power and corruption. The defence and oil companies made millions of Iraq. Later, all the emails and communications relating to the correspondence before the war was lost or could not be retrieved.

Lest I forget, Dick shot a lawyer in the face, and it was the lawyer who apologized for getting in the way of the shot.

Now that is Power!!.