Michael Moore’s economy of good and evil

Is “Fahrenheit 9-11” a great film? Despite raising questions often neglected by the mainstream media, this film lacks serious political analysis. Those failings limit its capacity to catalyze any long-term political movement. Whether it will help unseat the incumbent remains to be seen, but paradoxically a less singular focus on George W. Bush would have enhanced its ability to contribute to his defeat.

Let’s put this film in context. In domestic terms, much of the last decade has been spent in an effort to explain poverty. The poverty of minority urban communities was a consequence of the shameful lifestyles of the single mothers or predatory teenagers From Bill Clinton to Bill Cosby, the rhetoric of personal degeneracy governs discussions of poverty.

Internationally, with the demise of the Soviet Union, instability in such places as Afghanistan, Colombia, Indonesia or Israel has been attributed to vaguely defined international terrorism. Even before Bush II, that threat was often coded as “Arab.” The Oklahoma City bombing, before 9-11 the most destructive terrorism on our shores, was at first almost universally attributed by our media, without the benefit of any collaboration, to “Arab terrorists.”

Rather than critiquing the Manichaean, good vs. evil metaphors that currently dominate our politics, Moore constructs his own populist version. To his great credit, Moore does sensitively explore the circumstances of poor and working class Americans. Unemployment is persistent – and not because these citizens are hooked on drugs or lack ambition. Even the much-celebrated working class white ethnics can no longer find the manufacturing jobs that sustained their parents’ generation. Military recruiters who make outrageous promises to lure them pray upon marginalized whites and minorities. Once in the services, they have performed with valor only to see promises stiffed and serious medical needs neglected.

Moore also properly highlights the ways in which 9-11 was used to rationalize a long planned war against Iraq. But if Iraq was for Bush II the linchpin of evil, for Moore it strangely becomes an innocent victim of utterly avaricious attack. Moore’s images of Iraq resemble a pleasant middle class U.S. suburb with light-hearted children enjoying soccer and haircuts. This is hardly the Iraq that Amnesty International would present.

Moore’s understanding of both Iraq and domestic injustice come together in his explanation of the Iraq invasion. The war grows out of 1) long-standing collaboration between the Bush family and prominent Saudis to control Middle Eastern oil for their own personal profit, 2) the profits Bush and his Carlyle Group colleagues have derived from munitions manufacture. These views are nicely tied together with a closing quotation from George Orwell on the ways in which the wars are used to entrench political leaders.

A self-described conservative Democrat and lifelong patriot who once despised antiwar protesters delivers the political conclusion to us. Having lost a son in the war and having come to understand the lies and manipulation that drove it, she now believes that Bush must be defeated.

And surely he must. Therefore, shouldn’t commentators and activists put their reservations aside if this film energizes the base? And doesn’t demonization by a populist filmmaker have less serious consequences than demonization of African or Arab Americans by governments now engaged in racial profiling?

Moore has no power beyond ridicule, but even were he to mobilize an electoral majority, removing Bush would be merely a first step toward a more humane domestic and international agenda. As far back as FDR, U.S. presidents had cozy relations with the Saudis, all in the interests of cheap and predictable oil supplies. A film that fails to acknowledge these earlier connections and rests its case on circumstantial conspiracy theory is easily countered – at least among the uncommitted. An economy heavily dependent on oil has been a largely bipartisan agenda. Neither major party candidate advocates taxation to reflect oil’s true costs and to wean us toward safer and more efficient heating and transportation systems.

Nor are organized labor and many of the workers being exploited by this administration utterly above reproach. Throughout the 1950s and “’60s, Tim Rutten, the AFL-CIO collaborated with US government efforts to weaken grass roots unionism abroad and often crushed internal union efforts to redress racial or gender exploitation. (Moore even ridicules Bush for taking vacations! He thereby plays on a traditional view of work long accepted by male business and union leaders, that work is good and leisure, family time, and vacations are harmful.)

U.S. citizens don’t need conspiracy theory or new narratives of good vs. evil to appreciate the risks of this administration’s policies. Moore’s considerable cinematic talents could go to a demonstration of the risks to both Iraqis and Americans of efforts to control world oil. And in a future film he might explore a propensity to which we are all too easily given, reducing major social problems to narratives of good vs. evil people, classes and nations.

John Buell is a political economist who lives in Southwest Harbor. Readers wishing to contact him may e-mail messages to jbuell@acadia.net