Dude, Where's My Country?
By Michael Moore
Penguin, 2003
249pp, $40 (hb)
REVIEW BY NICK FREDMAN
Michael Moore is back, again bearing the weapons of leftist analysis, righteous anger and humour to smite all stupid white men, particularly George W. Bush.
Bush looms large in this, Moore's fourth book, as Moore expounds on his theme of the US as a country of basically decent working people under the thumb of the rich and powerful. Dude, Where's My Country? depicts an unelected regime bent on using all necessary force to make the world safe for corporate profiteers, and puts forward alternatives to the rule of the Republican right.
Moore — through around 20 years of producing increasingly successful journalism, films and books — is highly skilled at laying bere the workings of capitalism by focusing on the misdeeds of particular representatives of the corporate rich and their political flunkeys.
His first documentary film, Roger and Me (1989), was a savagely funny indictment of the destruction of Moore's hometown of Flint, Michigan. As General Motors, although making record profits, closed down the plants where generations of Moore's family worked, the film-maker attempts to interview the bland figure of GM CEO Roger Smith, and his lack of success mirrors the powerlessness of the laid-off workers and impoverished families.
The unexpected success of Roger and Me allowed Moore in 1993-94 to produce TV Nation, a major network series that specialised in humourous, progressive current affairs and in tormenting the rich. Despite its popularity, the show was axed after one season but led to a book, Adventures in a TV Nation, written in collaboration with Moore's wife Kathleen Glynn, which details what was censored by the network in the series, and to two seasons of a similar series, The Awful Truth, in 2000-01.
Moore's first book was Downsize This! (1996), in which he vented his spleen at both corporate layoffs and union misleaders who failed to struggle against them. A chaotic tour to promote the book was filmed as The Big One (1997), in which Moore joined in strikes and demonstrations and shamed the CEO of Nike.
In 2002, Moore went from cult hero of the left to media stardom with the release of Stupid White Men (nearing 5 million copies sold) and the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine, which relates the annual gun-death slaughter in the US to a history of colonialism, racism and savage capitalism.
As in Stupid White Men, in Dude, Where's My Country? Moore combines an extensive range of sources with biting satire to put his views on numerous topics. He takes a detailed look at the unanswered questions behind the 9/11 terrorist assault, pointing out the extensive links between the Bush family, other oil interests in the US administration, the Saudi royal family, and the "war on terror".
Moore slices up the lies that justified the march to war on Iraq, compares the general lack of elite interest in holding Bush accountable for these to their drive to impeach Clinton's over his lies about his extra-marital sexual affairs.
Moore savages the Bush team's "war on terror" and "homeland security" policies, showing them as a continuation of US imperialism's traditions of constant warfare, propping up of dictators, coups against opposing governments, impoverishment of the world's majority, and tax cuts for the rich and repression of dissent at home. He cuts through the US elite consensus with a succinct quip: "How to stop terrorism? Stop being terrorists!"
Moore's apparent desire to be skeptical of the verities of the US left as well as those of conservatives and the ruling class have got him into some trouble with fans and allies. In one section of Dude, he urges leftist readers to "admit that the left has made mistakes". No problem there, but he specifically says of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black radical journalist on death row for allegedly killing a cop, that "Mumia probably killed that guy". Activists supporting Abu-Jamal are demanding Moore substantiate this highly contentious claim.
This section of the book is part of a chapter on winning over conservatives, in which Moore also argues that the left should be showing how union rights, good wages, a clean environment and decent childcare, health care and education can be "good for profits". Moore wants to pander to some conservative prejudices and business interests because he thinks a liberal, social-democratic form of capitalism can solve the basic problems faced by working people.
The anger of Moore's denunciations of the current state of affairs sits a bit uneasily with the fairly moderate nature of the change he is advocating.
One of the most positive aspects of Moore's politics is his ability to connect with ordinary people, which is based on his optimism about their potential. He argues in Dude that the majority of working Americans are led by life experience and common-sense decency to be progressive, and cites a number of polls on reproductive freedoms, civil rights, union rights, the environment and public health care to back this up (although he may be underestimating the problem of capitalist ideology, Moore's critics pointing to a number of other US polls showing majorities in favour of various conservative positions).
He has constantly reiterated that the major parties are creatures of the big corporations and that a political alternative is needed. In The Big One Moore yells out, "The richest 1% have two parties and we've got none! That's hardly fair!".
In Stupid White Men he discusses his role as a prominent supporter of Ralph Nader's Green Party presidential challenge in 2000, and how at the time he argued a united front-type idea that the Greens put forward some minimum progressive demands on Democrat contender Al Gore, in return for tactical voting in some states, as a way of orientating to the working-class base of the Democrats.
In Dude, Moore argues for another Green-Democrat alliance in 2004, but this time leaving the presidential race to the liberal capitalist party, and dropping the emphasis on building a political alternative in favour of the lesser-evil argument that "there is probably no greater imperative facing the nation than the defeat of George W. Bush in the 2004 election".
He argues that it's too late to build a Greens campaign and canvasses a number of progressive/liberal celebrities such as Martin Sheen, Paul Newman, Oprah Winfrey or "any one of the Dixie Chicks" as popular potential Democratic challengers to Bush.
More seriously, he supports what must be classed as a barely lesser-evil: General Wesley Clark, a Democrat who, although he bombed civilians in Serbia and Kosova as NATO commander in the 1990s, has, according to Moore, some progressive ideas.
Moore scorns the "defeatist nature of these sad, impotent Democrats", but he seems at this point less optimistic about building an alternative to them, and in the ability of working people to really change things.
At one point, Moore compares Richard Nixon's record to more recent presidents and states "to think Nixon was the last 'liberal' in office makes me want to puke". But he misses the point that the mass social movements that existed in the late 1960s and early 1970s forced Nixon to introduce some progrssive measures, such as affirmative action laws, despite Nixon's own views.
The problem with the "anyone but Bush" line advocated by Moore and other prominent leftists such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert is that it fails to recognise that the willingness and ability of working people to struggle for their rights is the key limitation on any capitalist administration, and that a strong Greens electoral campaign could help politicise working people, thus helping them fight whichever big-business politician sits in the White House after 2004, and be a step towards replacing capitalist governments with a working people's government.
In a recent interview, Moore described his films, TV shows and books as "working-class versions of the op-ed page". Despite his limitations, he comes down on our side more often than virtually anyone else with a perch in the corporate media. Moore's work is entertaining, accessible and has influenced millions — not bad achievements for the left to aspire to.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, November 12, 2003.
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