Moore’s back — taking aim right and left
Michael Moore is up to his old tricks in his look at Donald Trump
The take-away from the two hours and seven minutes that is professional rabble-rouser Michael Moore’s latest film? The guy in the Oval Office is merely a symptom of a failing democracy. He’s not Hitler. He’s not even Hitler’s syphilis. He’s the tremors that accompany the disease. Though arguably that’s bad enough. No one likes syphilitic tremors.
Think what you will of Moore, he was part of the ridiculed
minority before the 2016 election that predicted a Trump win. And in this scathing polemic, in between detours to Florida (teens against lax gun laws), New Jersey (teachers striking for a living wage) and his hometown of Flint, Mich. (an ongoing water crisis), he takes aim at those he holds responsible.
They include Gwen Stefani (it’s complicated), super-delegates (for overturning democratically chosen candidates) and, generally speaking, a system that has leaders on both sides of the political spectrum beholden to wealthy corporations and their powerful lobbying arms. Even Barack Obama gets tarred with this brush.
Time and again we see average Americans so fed up with the system that they withdraw from it. This is why only 66 million people voted for Hillary Clinton (and even fewer for Trump) while almost 100 million didn’t vote at all. Moore would also like to see the electoral college abolished, on the grounds that: “You can’t call it democracy if the person who gets the most votes doesn’t win.”
For Canadians, Fahrenheit 11/9 — a reference to Nov. 9, 2016, when the presidential win was announced — is little more than a ringside seat to what is happening in the U.S. But it’s an entertaining view. Moore’s tricky mix of humour and outrage is in full, fine form here.
So we get him and Trump together on 1998’s The Roseanne Show, with the future president saying he admired Moore’s film Roger & Me and adding: “I hope he never does one on me.” There’s Les Moonves saying of the election: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”
As an aside, it’s amazing how many now-disgraced racists and alleged sexual predators appear in this film. And how the one at the top has managed to hang on to power, even suggesting scrapping the two-term limit. But Moore has a remedy. (The film is being released six weeks ahead of the U.S. midterms.) Get involved in politics, and for heaven’s sake, vote. You can’t blame Gwen Stefani for everything.