Michael Moore with Donald Trump Jr. at the release of Sicko, 2007
Richard Ojeda running for Congress in West Virginia
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running for Congress from Queens
Moore with Parkland survivor David Hogg
Parkland survivors
Emma González at the student-led March for Our Lives rally in Washington
Michael Moore
FAHRENHEIT 11/9 B+
USA (128 mi)
2018 d: Michael Moore
Actually much better
than advertised, reflective of the somber mood in the country at the moment,
Moore has created a cautionary essay on democracy that is clear and easy to digest,
and is not an excoriation of Trump, as some may have been lead to believe, but
views him as a symptom of a larger problem that was decades in the making,
where the largest political party in America are those who don’t care enough to
vote (currently 100 million). So instead
of lampooning Trump and going right after him with unrelenting satire, as he
did with Bush in FAHRENHEIT 9/11, which proved ultimately unsuccessful as Bush
won re-election anyway, much of it due to a wave of Republican resentment
“against” writer/director Michael Moore himself, who was viewed at the time as
the last bastion of the progressive left in the United States, this film offers
a sober analysis of what went wrong in America.
Moore has lost much of his influence with the public, including much of
his audience since all the praise heaped upon that earlier film, which was
wildly entertaining and overwhelmingly profitable, made for just $6 million
dollars, yet earning well over $200 million dollars. This film pales in comparison in terms of
public interest and doesn’t have the “Wow” factor of the earlier film, yet it
does a much better job explaining how something like this could have happened,
contending the rise of Trump is not an anomaly or even that much of a surprise,
as despite overwhelming Russian interference and a last minute decision by FBI
director James Comey to re-open an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s
personal emails just days before the election, the real contributor to Trump’s
election victory were some questionable decisions made within the Democratic
Party itself, including a baffling superdelegate system of appointed party
officials in the primary elections that stacked the deck in favor of one
candidate, Clinton, at the expense of actual democratic votes, allowing Clinton
to claim victory in states where a majority of voters actually voted for Bernie
Sanders, including West Virginia where all 55 counties voted for Sanders, yet
Clinton won a majority of delegates, which had a huge effect in suppressing the
wave of newly energized Sanders supporters, who were turned off by the crass
hypocrisy on display where votes didn’t count.
The other, perhaps even more inexplicable act was carried out by a
tone-deaf President Obama who turned a blind eye to the Flint water crisis, all
but guaranteeing that the Republican officials who orchestrated a mass
poisoning of a large black urban community in America would not be held
accountable, which had a similar effect of suppressing the black vote. By letting the real culprits off the hook,
many of the most fervently enthused Democratic supporters stayed at home on
Election Day, as the Democratic Party simply allowed a no-name group of
Republicans to fill the void.
The film opens with
a wave of pre-election euphoria, as Hillary Clinton and her supporters were all
lead to believe she would be anointed into the Presidency on Election Day, as
nearly all political prognosticators (including Fox News) were in unanimous
agreement that Clinton would win in a landslide, booking a modern era hotel
with actual glass ceilings for her victory celebration, which was packed with
supporters, while down the street there were few Trump hopefuls in a less than
enthusiastic crowd, where a grim atmosphere greeted the victory with few smiles
or any hint of celebration, as they were thoroughly unprepared for what
happened. All the Hollywood royalty, one
by one, were caught laughing on camera while declaring “Trump would never be
President,” as if it could not happen here, all totally dumbfounded with the
results. In typical Michael Moore
fashion, this is all prefaced with a wistful query, “Was it all a dream?” And once reality drops like a ton of bricks,
he asks more earnestly, “What the fuck happened?” The rest of the film pretty much answers that
question. As Trump dispatches each of
his Republican rivals, basically bullying them off the stage with ferocious
insults, we see glee in the eyes of CBS CEO Les Moonves declaring the country
may be in crisis, but the networks ultimately win with Trump in power, turning
him into a media darling, willingly offering him free air time, as he’s like a
performance magnet holding a TV audience, where people are riveted to the
screens to see what monstrosity will happen next, as he’s literally an accident
waiting to happen, running his campaign like a demolition derby, forcefully
assaulting anyone who gets in his path.
In Trump’s view, this is simply good business, continually surrounding
himself with all the accoutrements of wealth, where it’s only natural that
people serve him, not the other way around which is how the Constitution
envisioned it. But Democrats didn’t play
fair with the Constitution either, so what example did they set? Who are they to cry foul? Moore actually traces the beginnings back to
President Bill Clinton, which began the strange and twisted journey of centrist
Democrats being more Republican than the Republicans, outflanking Senator
Robert Dole to the right in his re-election bid, introducing harsher drug
penalties, incarcerating blacks in record numbers, aligning themselves with
Wall Street and Big Business, and then signing a Welfare Reform bill that
didn’t contain a single Democratic legislator’s signature, that allowed each
state to determine their own provisions, effectively returning States’ Rights
to prominence, perhaps the centerpiece of the Reagan era vision of New
Federalism. Obama continued these same
policies with his Auto industry and Wall Street bailouts, claiming some banks
and businesses were simply too big to fail, lending them Federal money, quickly
making recoveries while individuals permanently lost their homes, pension
benefits, or health care plans during the economic crisis, with many never
recovering afterwards, blaming the Democrats for their neglect.
Actually, in this
film, Trump is a secondary figure, though there is a rather queasy segment
where he fixates on his daughter’s beauty and sexual prowess, claiming he would
be dating her if she wasn’t his daughter, which is simply too creepy to watch. Easily the strongest section is about the
Flint water crisis, demonstrating astute journalistic acumen in a documentary
film, suggesting this may have been the initial subject of the film, as Moore
outlines exactly how the Republican Party, led by Governor Rick Snyder, a
business executive and former CEO of Gateway Computers, shamefully implemented
a cheaper plan in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan, to stop using clean
water from nearby Lake Huron and instead use the polluted water from the Flint
River that actually flows through town, a move that was designed to save
millions, but at what expense? In a
criminal cover-up, Snyder’s officials continually pronounced the water safe,
even as they knowingly failed to filter out the lead from the older water pipes,
resulting in scientific readings that were consistently elevated above
acceptable levels. By ignoring the
facts, however, and in some cases cooking the books and altering the
measurements, the Republicans devised a strategy of lying publicly to an overwhelmingly
impoverished black community, offering no alternative but to drink poisoned
water for a year and a half until finally acknowledging a mistake, but only
after 12 died when the lead poisoning caused an outbreak of Legionnaires’
Disease, resulting in four resignations, four firings, five suspensions, and
fifteen criminal indictments, currently providing residents with bottled water
for drinking, cooking, cleaning, and bathing.
This moral outrage is heartbreakingly rendered, using black people and especially
their children as pawns, saving the auto industry, as the polluted water was
ruining their machinery, quickly switching them back to clean water from Lake
Huron, but left a community in crisis to suffer the consequences. When
President Obama arrived to announce the system would be fixed under his watch,
and wrongdoers would be held accountable, just the opposite happened, with
Obama foolishly staging a drink of water as proof everything was all right (it
wasn’t and still isn’t, as the lead-filled pipes won’t be fully replaced until
2020), leaving the citizens utterly demoralized afterwards, turning them off to
any idea that government actually works for them, basically leaving them to
live with the consequences for the rest of their lives, as lead never leaves
the system, and without ever holding Michigan Governor Rick Snyder
accountable. Significantly (though
underreported), the Democratic primary in Flint had a much larger turnout in
2016 than the general election held just a few months later, where the obvious
conclusion is that Obama’s visit had the effect of suppressing the Democratic
vote. To one local community leader, he
told Moore, “When President Obama came here, he was my President. When he left, he wasn’t.” In a surreal follow-up, the U.S. Army used
the abandoned buildings of Flint, Michigan to stage military assault maneuvers
WITHOUT warning local residents, who literally freaked out over what was
happening.
Moore takes us to
West Virginia where we meet Richard Ojeda, a physically fit Iraq and
Afghanistan war veteran running for Congress, who’s tired of conditions in his
town that leave one out of four homes in a dilapidated state, telling Moore, “I
can take you five minutes from here and show you where our kids have it worse
than the kids I saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
These conditions are not brand new, but have been lingering for decades,
made worse by the opioid crisis which was ignored by both political parties. While Michigan and West Virginia have two
Republican Governors, their accomplices are lined with Democrats, with Ojeda
claiming this is how people lose faith in their government, as neither party
actually works to improve their lives.
Among the more inspirational voices are West Virginia teachers, who are
more than classroom instructors, as they’re also social workers and mothers,
with one teacher claiming she had 8 students in her class that listed her as
“Mom” on their cellphones, as those children had no real mothers. While the teachers grapple with the idea of
what to do, as many are paid so little they end up on Food Stamps, they receive
little help from their teacher’s union, urged not to strike, as they may lose
their jobs. But their conditions are so
dire they felt they had no other choice, first going out in one county, another
the next day, eventually combining all their forces and going on a work
stoppage, which they were told was illegal, holding boisterous rallies on the
steps of the State capitol, where after a week their union generated an offer,
but only for the teachers, not the accompanying bus drivers, janitors and
kitchen staff, so they held out some more until everyone was on board. It was a thrilling display of solidarity
because it had a happy ending. There are
thousands of stories that don’t end so well.
But this wildcat strike led to more in Kentucky and Oklahoma, bringing
attention to the plight of underpaid teachers.
This stark contrast between an overwhelmingly black population in Flint,
Michigan and a decimated, almost exclusively white community in West Virginia
suggests they have more in common than they’d like to believe, as both live in
misery and deprivation, repressive conditions that have existed for so long
that residents have simply given up on voting or believing they’ll ever receive
help from their government. It is to
Moore’s credit that he doesn’t shy away from matters of race and class in
America, as indifference and neglect are the same everywhere, as is
disappointment, suggesting these conditions are inextricably intertwined.
Easily the weakest and most controversial segment is when
Moore outlines similarities with Trump and Hitler, with Republicans and the
Nazi Party, mimicking archival footage of a Hitler speech with Trump’s
words. While this is somewhat
cringeworthy, it knocks the film off the rails with exaggerated overkill, as
Nazi comparisons are extremely odious and far off the mark, though it is meant
to be a warning shot across the bow, suggesting this could happen in
America. Trump’s fascination with
growing autocratic power around the globe is no secret, where we can easily
imagine him having his Charlie Chaplin moment bouncing an inflated globe off
his feet in THE GREAT DICTATOR (1940), The Great Dictator - complete
globe scene YouTube (3:44), and Trump is a specialist in creating false
illusions, where he could easily invent a national emergency scenario,
suspending the Constitution and all future elections, but we’re not at that
point yet, and it’s not in the foreseeable future unless some catastrophe
happens, though doomsday thoughts of this nature may cross the minds of many
Americans, suggesting we live in more fearful times. Moore even resurrects the legitimate fears of
99-year old Benjamin Berell Ferencz, the last living Nuremberg prosecutor,
claiming he’s seen conditions like these before, suggesting all it takes is a
spark, creating anxiety and panic, allowing the power mongers to take
over. Before people realize what’s
happened, it’s too late, as they’ve been caught off-guard. While this comes across as idle speculation,
the central thread of the film is that you can’t trust the system, which exists
for the elite and powerful, who make their own rules, while everybody else is
just a pawn in their game. In direct response,
Moore singles out a new breed of politician, including the previously mentioned
Ojeda, but also Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a progressive socialist that we see
going door-to-door in her Queens neighborhood of New York, defeating the Chair
of the Democratic House Caucus, certainly offering a change from what we’re
used to, who may run into a brick wall of resentment and distrust, but she may
surprise us as well with her enthusiasm.
Rashida Tlaib from Moore’s home state of Michigan will be the first
Muslim-American woman elected to Congress, as she’s running unopposed,
succeeding John Conyer’s seat, where she’s also connected to socialist grass
roots, but demonstrates an infectious enthusiasm in working for her
constituents. Moore seems much more
fascinated by passing the torch to the younger generation, including the Parkland
survivors who are still too young to vote, but mobilized millions in a
student-led March for Our Lives rally in Washington and around the world
protesting our gun laws, with Emma González offering positively riveting
testimony (timed to match the exact amount of time it took for the shooting at
her high school, which closes the film, cue Bob Dylan to sing an orchestral
version of “With God On Our Side” over the credits). These are feel-good stories that offer a more
powerful glimpse of the future, as if it’s in good hands, as kids today are
aware of so much more, with one Parkland student acknowledging that her
maturity comes from being raised by social media. They offer a different kind
of savvy and know-how than what we’re used to, but their presence offers a sign
of something better to come. It’s a
challenging and provocative film that speaks to our better angels and our most
nightmarish fears, at times infuriating, yet offering an incisive analytical
view of what led us here, while offering hope as our roadmap to the future.
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