fahrenheit 11/9…

I went along to the Watershed this morning (yes, this morning... again) to see Michael Moore’s film “Fahrenheit 11/9”. The thing about Michael Moore is that you know what you’re going to get, so the film was a predictably impressive, satirical, anti-establishment analysis of Trump (he compares Hitler to Trump), the Republican Party… AND the Democratic Party (they ALL get condemned in their various ways). It seems that Bernie Saunders is one of the very few politicians who comes out of the film in a positive light. In July 2016, Michael Moore (no fan of Trump!) wrote an essay entitled “5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win” and was duly labelled as a ‘doomsayer’.
The rest, as they say, is history… and, according to Moore, we’re all complicit.
Sadly, it’s all very well us in the UK shaking our heads in despair of decency and democracy in the US but, frighteningly, the same thing is happening on our own doorstep. There’s a very real sense that corporations and big business (not to mention the odd foreign power) are influencing elections and how we think.
It’s quite a long film (just over 2 hours long), but I found it completely compelling and tremendously persuasive… albeit depressing. Perhaps it dwelt a little too long on the water fiasco at Flint, Michigan (where Moore lives), which he for which he lays at the feet of the state’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder (Moore uses the piece to illustrate what he sees as power, corruption and deception). It’s frequently funny, but it also makes you squirm uncomfortably. One of the key matters from Trump’s election that is highlighted in the film is this: Trump voters 63million; Clinton voters 66million; non-voters 100million. Moore acknowledges that Trump has learnt from other big business leaders that you can get away with negligence and cronyism. The film is certainly a warning (to us all!).

If you’d expected Moore to be rousing and encouraging, you’d be disappointed (but he is powerful and convincing). He suggests that the principal hope might be the next generation (he trumpets the work of the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting, and the aggressive anti-gun protests they’ve led) or, just possibly, if more people are prepared to stand up and fight against what’s happening in America (he reminds us of the general strike that teachers in West Virginia engaged in over the appalling meanness of their pay, and how that action spread to other states). It's a very impressive film and one that's well worth seeing.

There IS dissent happening across America (and across the UK in the ugly shadow of Brexit) and people ARE calling for change. Resistance is not futile, but is it enough? Is it too late already?
PS: The film's title relies on US date notation to refer to November 9, when Trump's 2016 presidential win was announced (the election took place the day prior). The title simultaneously serves as a callback to Moore's 2004 political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which refers to the date of the September 11 attacks in the United States. Both of Moore's documentary titles are an allusion to the 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (taken from Wikipedia).
PPS: The excellent photograph montage is from The Irish Times.