Moore had me hooked with his first doc, Roger and Me.
I loved that on-screen persona, the fat slob schlumpfing about Michigan looking for the president of General Motors. Wanting to hold him to account for shipping all those Michigan jobs to Mexico. It was a beautiful thing!
Over the holidays me and the Farm Manager found time to finally view his latest doc, Where to Invade Next.
We weren't disappointed. Moore's latest film neatly contrasts living standards in America with what regular folks typically experience in a variety of European counties. The contrast is an eye-opener. On the one side you've got eight weeks of paid vacation, free health care, free post-secondary education, subsidized day-care, and yadayadayada...
On the other side you've got... well, look around you.
University grads working at Mickey D's trying to pay down their $50,000 student loans.
Health care expenses as the prime cause of personal bankruptcy.
Veterans sleeping on the sidewalk.
Families living in their cars.
Welcome to America!
Over the course of his career, Mr. Moore has done yeoman's work skewering the shibboleths of "American exceptionalism." I suspect a lot of the millennials "feeling the Bern" were feeling it largely thanks to Moore's oeuvre.
So here's what I don't like about Michael Moore.
Right after he made his last doc he came down four-square for Hillary. Yup, Michael Moore, renegade documentary film-maker, morphed into a strident Dem party supporter.
This was after the Democrats had held the White House for eight years and had done utterly fuck-all to improve the lot of those folks Moore claims to represent; the working class.
The homeless vets.
The families living out of their cars...
Ya, there's Obamacare, I suppose, but what is that other than a giant subsidy to for-profit health-care providers?
And of course there's the record of the Nobel Peace Prize winner's foreign policy. Let me know if you can think of an example where Obama's foreign policy fostered anything resembling peace. Instead, America is involved in more foreign intrigues than ever, and never in the interest of "peace."
This is the party that America's number one anti-establishment film-maker wants you to support?
Fuck you, Michael Moore!
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