Downsizing The Empire
|
|
Downsizing The Empire
|
|
|
Michael Moore has a recurring problem. His latest work of polemical excess is out to achieve mutually exclusive goals. Nothing new about that. His previous success was Bowling for Columbine, a film that suffered from the same malady. Was Moore advocating gun control? Not in the Canadian scenes he wasn’t. Apparently guns are OK if they aren’t in America. But if guns are only bad in America then maybe the problem isn’t guns at all. Except that the same film dropped the anti-American context when convenient. Moore never runs out of ammo for cheap shots. Fahrenheit 9/11 carries on this fine tradition by again arranging a head-on collision between two distinct documentaries. As usual, he is taking on America —- except that he isn’t. Are his films breath mints or candy mints? Why, they’re two mints in one. To quote Humpty Dumpty (an obvious role model for Moore) in Alice Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean —- neither more nor less.” |
|
|
What is Fahrenheit 9/11 exactly? It has been called a Mockumentary. Fine. Satire is an effective weapon in the propagandist’s bag of treats. But the audience is tricked when the satirist is unclear about what he is satirizing. To some extent Moore is indicting the American Empire for policies he believes have brought us to our current situation. But no one is going to confuse our jolly filmmaker with Noam Chomsky, outside of the less thoughtful commentators on right wing radio. The reason for this is that Moore has narrowed his critique of the American Empire so as to exclude Democrats. (This has nothing to do with his snit against Senate Democrats in the early portions of the film. That’s about Florida 2000. Domestic politics. Nothing of interest to the Henry Kissingers among us.) Just when the logic of a documentary would force Moore to complain about bi-partisan support of annoying dictators the film reverses direction so quickly that you can hear the gears strip. |
|
|
Suddenly even a lot of Republicans are let off the hook as Moore keeps narrowing the focus. It turns out that the Bush family —- with assistance from the House of Saud —- runs the entire world. Of course, it helps that the world is not a very big place in Fahrenheit 9/11. The Middle East has very few players in it. Israel hardly exists at all. It’s some shadowy entity with a few problems. Turkey is something on your dinner plate. Europe consists of two eternal allies, France and Germany —- along with a few comic opera Third Worlders foolish enough to join the Coalition of the Willing. Russia is another shadowy presence. The mysterious east is so mysterious that it doesn’t seem to exist at all, and therefore has no appetite for oil. |
|
|
|
Bush and Cheney want Caspian Sea oil just for themselves. That’s why it’s bad that the USA fought in Afghanistan. Except that the war in Afghanistan was an important and necessary war in contrast to the war in Iraq. (Christopher Hitchens insists that Moore stopped opposing war with the Taliban just in time for this film.) The Saudis are so bad we should probably go to war with them. Except that war is bad. Trying to make sense of this is like going around in circles in Moore’s rented ice cream truck. Wicked Republicans have corporate interests all over the world. Just consider the Carlyle Group! Moore neglects to mention that lovable Democrat billionaire George Soros is up to his eyeballs in the Carlyle Group. Apparently a George who is a Democrat gets a free pass to the corporate penthouse but a Republican named George is not to be trusted. In Fahrenheit 9/11, members of the Bush administration pose for photo ops with ARABS! Shocking, but true. Not only are these dusky gentlemen wearing funny headgear but there is every chance that they believe in the dread teachings of ISLAM. |
|
Moore must not agree with fellow Bush hater Janeane Garofalo when she says that Arabs are the new second-class citizens. Moore doesn’t like the weakness we see in Bush. He edits his film so that the audience recoils from the President's racial tolerance. Moore knows what’s going on. Bush does it for MONEY. A stronger leader is needed uncorrupted by Capitalism. If only Bush were more like Franklin Delano Roosevelt who rounded up the Japanese American population after Pearl Harbor! Moore would never make a film attacking Bush for doing anything like that. Yeah, right. As for the funniest scenes in this film, Moore gets a lot of mileage from our absurdly inadequate border patrols. Does that mean if Bush turned into Michael Savage and actually sealed the borders that Moore would applaud? Yeah, right. |
|
|
After viewing Fahrenheit 9/11, Bill O’Reilly compared Moore to Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister. Generally the two utilized different techniques for decidedly different ends. But there is one moment in this current opus that has the true Goebbels touch. Moore shows us a happy and peaceful Iraq right before the attack. Then it’s time for pictures of the victims of war. In this relentless portion of the film, not one second is devoted to Saddam Hussein’s victims before the war. Whatever one thinks of the two wars since 9/11, this film sheds no light on anything. Some viewers foolishly think that if Moore had made the film right now he might have had to deal with the New York Times report about American forces removing uranium from Iraq. Forget the details. Ignore the news, pro and con. Michael Moore doesn’t care about either war. He doesn’t care about Kerry or Nader or the man in the moon. He doesn’t care about the dead soldiers except as film fodder. |
|
|
If Bush had not gone to war with anyone then Michael Moore would have made a film chastising him for cowardice in the face of the enemy! Fahrenheit 9/11 is mistitled with a conscious rip-off of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel, Fahrenheit 451. (Bradbury detests Moore and makes no bones about it in public statements.) The film should be called Florida 2000. Moore hates Bush in the same manner that anti-Clinton fanatics could not abide our previous Caesar. That’s why we spend such an inordinate amount of time with Bush during the famous seven minutes at the school. Moore and his lackey, Bill Maher, are aghast that Bush just sat there, worried and stunned, finishing the photo op with the kids. He was obviously waiting for further reports while taking in the magnitude of the terrible news. (In Moore’s sick mind that means the Prez was waiting for someone to tell him what to do.) |
|
|
Here is the President of the United States with the power to actually destroy the fucking world and Moore is upset that the man is not in a panic. Think about that. Moore has said that Bush has a vacancy upstairs. There is something a lot worse in the head of Michael Moore. |
|
