BEFORE: I promised I'd check in with Michael Moore again, so here we are. It's July now, and we're coming up on the Fourth, so there's no better time than now to report on the current state of our nation, with regards to politics and such. Right?
Vladimir Putin carries over again from "Icarus", most likely via archive footage, unless Michael Moore somehow managed to land an interview regarding collusion...
THE PLOT: Filmmaker Michael Moore examines the current state of American politics, particularly the Trump presidency and gun violence, while highlighting the power of grassroots democratic movements.
AFTER: Stop me if you've heard this one before - a conservative man wins an election in the most advanced country in the world, even though the country has a liberal majority. Once elected, he creates one phony disaster after another in order to pretend to "fix" those problems, and he flames the citizens' fears about immigrants, non-whites and people of certain religions at large rallies for his supporters, who then hang on his every word and buy into his cult of personality. This eventually leads to people without proper documentation being put into camps. Now, am I talking about Donald Trump, or Adolf Hitler?
This is probably the best analogy drawn in "Fahrenheit 11/9", though it doesn't really work, not totally. The burning of the Reichstag is compared with the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but wouldn't that make George W. Bush the Hitler in this scenario, not Trump? I guess some people believe that the Nazis did a little arson to create the "emergency situation" that granted Hitler special powers, and this is supposed to be a connection to the Patriot Act - but is Moore suggesting that 9/11 was an inside job? Jeez, I thought he was smarter than that...
If Moore had JUST stuck to Trumpian mistakes, flubs, incompetence, scandals and general misconduct, I think I could have gone along more willingly on this ride. Certainly there's enough of that material for a whole documentary, or perhaps even TEN documentaries - but Moore can't stay in that lane for very long, unfortunately. First he tries to make this film all about himself - as in "Hey, did I ever tell you I was on a talk show once with Donald Trump?" and "Hey, did you know Jared Kushner said some nice things about one of my movies?" Yeah, Mike, umm, congratulations? Now I'm confused, are you against Trump, and if so, why are you acting proud of some weird old connection to him? Pick a lane, plus it's a bit like saying, "Hey, did I ever tell you that I met Satan one time?" in that I'm totally expecting a negative review to follow.
But instead Moore almost acts like an apologist for Trump here - the fact that he got elected is blamed on all of the wrong parties. He starts by blaming Gwen Stefani, for making so much money for appearing on "The Voice" that (supposedly) Trump started his whole campaign as a ploy to raise his visibility and increase his salary for "The Apprentice". So therefore the whole scene where Trump descended on that elevator to a cheering crowd was phony - the crowd was being paid, he had no intention of running for President, and the whole thing's like a practical joke gone WAY too far. It seems wrong to blame Ms. Stefani (maybe for other things, but not for this) because there's probably a LOT of people who have higher TV contracts than her, really, TV salaries are totally out of control, but hey, that's capitalism. And NBC can't be held responsible, either, because as soon as Trump declared himself as a candidate, they were FORCED to fire him from "The Apprentice", because the equal time rules state that they couldn't give one candidate air time, and they certainly couldn't afford to make a show for every Republican running for President. So Trump would have to be some kind of IDIOT to try this ploy to get more money, and...oh, wait, yeah, this probably tracks.
So who IS responsible for Trump getting elected - some people say it's Russia, but I haven't yet heard specifics on exactly what Russia did, and when. Did they just post a lot of false things on social media with a bunch of bots to muddy the waters and try to change opinions? Did Trump have a secret deal with Putin to find Hillary's lost e-mails? If so, then why did he publicly ask the Russians to find them while on TV, besides the fact that he's the stupidest criminal ever? Were there Russian agents stealing ballots, or was it the secret meeting in Trump Tower between Don Jr. and the mysterious oligarchs? This is a whole separate movie, and if I'm being honest, that's the movie I was expecting from Michael Moore, and he just didn't deliver it.
But if you ask me, the culprit in the election upset of 2016 is right under our noses - it's the polls. Yes, the very process that helps us track who's leading in the election race is also responsible for influencing the result that it's trying to predict (roughly in the same way that quantum particle physics works - where we don't know the spin of a particle until we observe it, and the observing helps to determine the spin). Allow me to explain - we've got about 100 news organizations out there, all fighting for the latest polling data, because they all want to keep us up to date on who's leading in the polls. But so many people depend on those polls to try to figure out who's likely to win, because who wants to vote for a losing candidate? If the polls tell me that Joe Biden's leading the Democrats with 25% of support from likely voters, that's going to change my perception of him - suddenly, he seems a bit more electable. And if the polls tell us that he'd beat Trump on Election Day if they went head-to-head, wow, that's great, maybe I should throw my support his way. If the polls tell us the same thing about Elizabeth Warren, she's going to get the same bump from people who right now are looking for a "winning horse" to back.
And the horse race is a great analogy, because last month I found out that betting big on a horse can change the odds, which affects the payout. In sort of the same way, releasing poll data can affect public opinion, because it can peg one candidate as a likely winner and the other as a likely loser. So you might think that polling data made public could widen the gap between two candidates. BUT, here's what can happen - let's take two candidates, we'll call them (arbitrarily) Blue Lady and Red Maniac. Six months before the election, a poll shows that Blue Lady has 80% of the vote (give or take) and Red Maniac has 20%. The poll gets released, and Blue Lady thinks she has the election in the bag, so she breathes easily - but Red Maniac works harder than ever, he schedules more rallies, plans more fundraising events, gets more active on social media, and for the sake of argument, let's just say that his efforts start to pay off. When it's two months before the election, Blue Lady has lost some ground, now she has just 60% of the vote, and Red Maniac has 40%. Still, things are looking good for Blue Lady, so maybe she doesn't schedule a couple campaign stops in IndiaVania, because that state's in her back pocket, and decides to focus on other states where the gap is closer. But Red Maniac now can see which states he's gaining ground in, so his staff starts to focus there, they fan the fears of immigrants and terrorism there because polls show that people in those states consider this an important topic, and he gets a little more funding from corporate interests, since he's a bit closer to being electable.
Now it's the day before the election, and things are really getting crazy - the latest poll shows that Blue Lady has 55% of the support and Red Maniac has increased to 45%. Still, no worries, it's got to be Blue Lady, she's still got a comfortable lead, so the news reports that it's going to be Blue Lady, and this affects people on Election Day. Blue Lady's supporters in states where she's in the lead are less likely to get out to the polls and vote, because it's basically a done deal, she's going to win, what possible difference could it make if just ONE person sleeps in on Election Day, or goes straight home that night to watch the election results. Meanwhile, the Red Maniac's followers know just how close the race is, and they're still PISSED that he's behind, so they make sure to stop at the polls, and if they can slash the tires of a few supporters of Blue Lady, well, that's a few more people that aren't going to make it to the voting booth. So the polls have the ability to CHANGE people's perceptions and their behavior - and I believe they are part of the reason that we've had so many close elections in the past couple of decades. Instead of widening the gap, the polls allow the leading party to relax and give the trailing party incentive to double their efforts, so they end up narrowing the gap, to the point where there could easily be an upset.
In addition, the poll results are so specific now that, if there is someone out there who's intent on hacking the election or denying voting rights to people in certain demographics or locations, the polls practically give that entity a road map on how to do it. Factor in gerrymandering, systemic racism, tougher voter ID laws and the countering of efforts to "bring out the vote" in some communities, and you can see how easy it is to influence an election, with or without Russia's help. What's the solution? We can't do away with polls, but maybe have less of them? Over the last few elections the news has avoided on reporting results until after the polls close, but by then the damage is done. Polls showed Hillary Clinton ahead for MONTHS, and that gave her supporters a long time to get accustomed to the idea of her victory, to the point where there was little need for them to keep encouraging people to vote. Meanwhile, we've raised the most apathetic generation of young people, the millennials, so with a few key exceptions, it's hard to get them fired up to do anything, let alone vote. (Anyway, most of them wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders, and so many of them felt excluded, that was more of an incentive for them to stay home.)
Michael Moore does report here that in some states, his buddy Bernie Sanders actually got more primary votes than Hillary did, so he SHOULD have been awarded more consideration during the nomination process. The super-delegates at the convention, however, minimized the amount of support for Sanders in order to increase the support for Hillary, thus creating another fait accompli. They were right do so to create party unity, but they were also wrong to skew the results in favor of any nominee, even the "presumptive nominee". There shouldn't be any presumptions made, because that's the whole point of the convention, to take the primary results and figure out who the nominee should be, from the data and not from any presumptions. This was the "DNC scandal" of 2016, where the Democratic National Committee basically told everyone at the convention that they could support anybody they wanted, as long as that was the same candidate THEY wanted to win. Umm, that's not democracy, even if it produces the most likely candidate to beat the other party. This "win at all costs" mentality does more harm than good to a political party.
Apart from that, this film plays out a bit like Michael Moore's greatest hits album, if he were a band. There's news of the Parkland School shooting in Florida, which calls to mind his film "Bowling for Columbine". There's repeat information about how Goldman Sachs contributed so much money to Obama, and the fact that lobbyists and corporate donations are killing the democratic process, which is straight out of "Capitalism: A Love Story". The links between Trump and Putin are sort of a repeat of "Fahrenheit 9/11", which highlighted the close connections between the Bushes and the Bin Ladens. And then of course there's an update on the Flint water crisis, which is a shout-out back to "Roger & Me" and every other Michael Moore film.
Moore is still seeing the world through Flint-colored glasses, always circling back to his hometown in Michigan, no matter what the topic is. That's all well and good, because somebody should stick up for the citizens of Flint, and he has a national platform, if he wants to use it to get them some attention, he has every right to do that. But not EVERY problem is connected to the Flint auto industry, no matter how hard he tries to draw the connections, so sometimes that feels very forced. Flint's been hit harder than most cities, perhaps, with one crisis after another, and now it's a persistent lack of drinkable water, combined with surprise mock terrorist attacks with no notice (really?) so that our military forces can practice in an urban environment, without damaging anything that matters much. But I also have to wonder, could Michael Moore be doing more to help the city he loves so much? Like, he's great at saying, "Hey, somebody should DO something about this!" Well, Mike, you're somebody, why not YOU? What was the budget of this movie, and would that money have been better spent fixing the Flint water crisis, if it's so urgent and the politicians aren't doing what they're supposed to?
I think the Flint water crisis kind of broke Michael Moore, because he seems to be anti-Obama now, and he supported Obama for so many years - he practically threw a party when the USA elected its first black President in 2008. But when Obama visited Flint, he made a big show about drinking a glass of water that did NOT come from a bottle, and Moore claims now that he didn't DRINK the water, he only pretended to, he just wet his lips and did the worst magic trick ever. Twice. Can we get some confirmation on this, like can somebody measure the amount of liquid in the glass in the footage and prove it? If not, then STFU. Look, I don't know why Obama made such a big show of drinking the water, and then for some reason he admitted he probably also ate lead paint as a child, and he turned out just fine. (This would make for a terrible PSA, but that's neither here nor there.) At worst that's a failed photo op from a lame duck President, but that's no reason to turn on Obama and blame his policies for "creating" Trump. Forgive my analogy, but that's like throwing the baby out with the highly contaminated bath-water.
He also tries to connect the governor of Michigan with Donald Trump, as if Rick Snyder was the "pre-Trump", or Trump drew inspiration from him, which may or may not be true. But wait, Mr. Moore, you said that Trump was like the new Hitler, how can he also be the new Rick Snyder? I'm just not seeing the connection here, just because you say it's there doesn't make it so. And yes, Moore is still pulling that same B.S. where he shows up at the governor's office, unannounced, to try to make a "citizen's arrest" (which isn't even a real thing, look it up). At this point the security guard should totally call him out by saying, "Oh, you want to arrest the governor? Sure, Mr. Moore, right this way, he's in his office, go in and arrest him." And Moore would have NO PLAN and be revealed as the charlatan that he is.
Same goes for depicting Trump being interviewed by Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose - OK, so now we know that in those segments, one sexual predator was interviewing another. So what? Is there a point to be made there? You may see some dramatic irony there, but isn't this good news, that most of the known sexual predators in the news business are now out of work, and out of positions of power? It seems that Moore is just still pretty sore about the Harvey Weinstein scandal breaking, which resulted in $2 million of funding for Moore's film disappearing. Let's not forget that rooting out sexual predators and getting them fired is a POSITIVE thing overall.
The whole film just kind of plays out like this, with Moore hanging his head in shame, but failing to bring the pieces together to create an overall point. It ends with the fake "missile alert" that plagued Hawaii in January 2018. It was a mistake of course, not a drill (we know this because it contained the words "This is not a drill") and freaked a lot of people out because they didn't have a plan for a real missile attack. I bet they still don't, but adding this to the film, especially as a coda, proves no point at all, it's just a time-filler. Yes, the news is often nonsensical, but so what? What do you, Mr. Moore, propose that we do about false missile alerts? No answer? Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's called FOCUS, Mike, and this film certainly needed some. The Flint water crisis deserved its own movie, perhaps, and so did the Parkland shooting. To lump both of these things in with the dumpster fire disaster that is our current President does them both a disservice, because we the audience are left to draw connections between them, when none actually exist. Making those connections would have required a bit more effort, and it seems like Moore just couldn't be bothered, because he's still suffering from some form of election-year shock. Even the good news about the diverse candidates running in the 2018 Midterm Election is just left hanging out there. And it kind of goes without saying, but Trump's election and post-election scandals needed their own movie, and to imply that this movie was going to be all about him is really a bait-and-switch.
OK, it's time to break down the cast - and when you add up the interviewed subjects, the famous politicians and news anchors who appeared in archive footage listed on the IMDB and the ones that I spotted that weren't listed, which I added, this turned into quite a handful. I think this documentary ended up with a bigger cast than "Avengers: Endgame"...
Also starring Michael Moore (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Bernie Sanders (ditto), Ruth Ben-Ghiat, April Cook-Hawkins, Ben Ferencz, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Cameron Kasky, Jenifer Lewis, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Richard Ojeda, John Podesta, Timothy Snyder, Rashida Tlaib, with archive footage of Jim Acosta, Roger Ailes, Jim Bakker (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Ashleigh Banfield, Steve Bannon, Roseanne Barr (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Joy Behar, Beyoncé (last seen in "Quincy"), Jay Z (ditto), Joe Biden (last seen in "RBG"), Samuel Alito (ditto), Stephen Breyer (ditto), Jimmy Carter (ditto), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (ditto), Anthony Kennedy (ditto), Rachel Maddow (ditto), John Roberts (ditto), George Stephanopoulos (ditto), Clarence Thomas (ditto), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Matt Lauer (ditto), John Boehner (last seen in "Capitalism: A Love Story"), Michelle Obama (ditto), Nancy Pelosi (ditto), Ronald Reagan (ditto), Paul Ryan (ditto), Chuck Schumer (ditto), Brian Williams (ditto), John Bolton, Cory Booker (last seen in "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power"), George W. Bush (ditto), Jeb Bush (ditto), Ben Carson (ditto), Bill Clinton (ditto), Hillary Clinton (ditto), Ted Cruz (ditto), Joe Lieberman (ditto), Mitch McConnell (ditto), Barack Obama (ditto), Donald Trump (ditto), Jinping Xi (ditto), Barbara Bush (last seen in "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room"), George H.W. Bush (ditto), Tucker Carlson, Chris Christie, George Clooney (last seen in "Hail, Caesar!"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "13th"), Gerald Ford (ditto), Newt Gingrich (ditto), James Comey, Kellyanne Conway, Anderson Cooper (last seen in "I Am Big Bird: The Carroll Spinney Story"), Barbara Walters (ditto), Betsy DeVos, Steve Doocy, Robert Duvall (last seen in "Lucky You"), Carly Fiorina, Zach Galifianakis (last heard in "Missing Link"), Neil Gorsuch, Mark Halperin, Sean Hannity, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Charlton Heston (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Defiance"), Steny Hoyer, Mike Huckabee, Alex Jones (last seen in "Vice"), Mike Pence (ditto), Kim Jong-Un, Jim Justice, Elena Kagan, John Kasich, Megyn Kelly, Brian Kilmeade (last seen in "Won't You Be My Neighbor"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Larry King (last seen in "The Stepford Wives"), Jared Kushner, Don Lemon (last seen in "Clive Davis; The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Bill Maher (ditto), Charlie Rose (ditto), Marla Maples, Chris Matthews (last seen in "Fair Game"), Joe Scarborough (ditto), Les Moonves, Robert Mueller, Benito Mussolini, Bill O'Reilly, Rand Paul, Katy Perry, Harry Reid, Julia Roberts (last seen in "Eat Pray Love"), Bob Simon, Dee Snider (last seen in "Lemmy"), Rick Snyder, Sonia Sotomayor, Gwen Stefani, Roger Stone, Chuck Todd, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, Melania Trump, Wendy Williams, Jeff Zucker.
RATING: 4 out of 10 striking teachers
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