Is Michael Moore anti-American?
Well, he is opposed to the current direction taken by the government of our country. By implication that means he is critical of the many millions of voters who support the direction taken by our government. When you disagree with other voters, you can assume that they know what they are doing but are evil, or you can assume that they know what they are doing but are misguided, or you can assume that they don't know what they are doing. Moore tends to take option #3 -- he feels that millions of American voters simply do not know much about recent American history.
Does this make him anti-American? Before answering that question, I think it is fair to ask the same of other critics of the recent governments of our country. When Bill Clinton was president, his every move was criticized from the right. His domestic policy was seen as sly, his policy in China was stupid, and his Balkan and Afghamistani adventures were seen as un-American and politically motivated. Was Rush Limbaugh being anti-American? Was Fox News being anti-American? Was the Republican Congress being anti-American? Were the social conservatives being anti-American?
I am not meaning to be clever or split hairs here. Few things aggravate me more than the claim by conservatives that when they disagree with liberals, they are being patriotic, When liberals disagree with conservatives, they are anti-American.
Arrogance, in my dictionary, is define as "disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance." It seems to me that about the only thing more fitting of that word than Michael Moore's abrasive manners, is the conservative view that their perspective defines patriotic and American, and that anyone who disagrees is, by definition, opposed to our country. Could ANY view be more arrogant than that?
Now, back to Moore. Both Columbine and Farenheit are mixtures, but a key ingredient in both is information that the average American does not know about recent American history. The vast majority of our voters know next to nothing about our country's past involvement with Iraq and Iran, or our other foriegn military actions since Vietnam. They know only a little bit about our past support of Muslim extremists.
They also know very little about the role of large business interests in our nation's foreign policy, and have not been challenged to think for themselves what "in the best interests of America" really means, in terms of which Americans. They also know little about the history of later colonialism, and how such undertakings were generally drains on the nations involved, but bonanzas for private interests which had the ear of governments in Europe -- a relevant matter considering that neocons appear to be trying to recreate the late 19th century, with the US as the dominant international power.
Most Americans have also thought relatively little about the nature of the news that reaches (or doesn't reach) us. It is very odd that the most credible source of information about what happened in the intelligence community after 9/11, Richard Clarke, was buried as part of just a lot of partisan noise back and forth. In my mind, his statement is the credible one: our administration, faced with the very difficult job of adequately responding to the 9/11 attack, decided instead to focus our nation on Iraq, and insisted that the intelligence community provide enough suspicion of a link to provide the cover to pull it off. History will extremely likely say the following: The United States suffered a horrible terrorist attack, and the Bush administration managed to defuse internal anger over the matter by attacking a country that had little or nothing to do with that attack. Although they removed a despicable leader in the process, the attack was actually the opposite of what it appeared to be -- it avoided the need to effectively respond to Al Qaeda, and instead stengthened the political position of Muslim extremists in the Middle East. Further, viewers of American TV news, especially Fox, lacked the information to see through the Bush administration's actions.
When Moore pokes holes in this, he does so with a mixture of humor and obnoxiousness. However, I fail to see how he is being anit-American. He is doing much what the religious right has long done -- attacked the government and, by extension the media and the majority of the public, portraying the government as cynical, the media as distorted, and the public as misguided.
But how are we supposed to vote in a democratic government if we don't hear these points of views? And it is telling that the attacks on Moore and the religious right are both mainly of the ad hominem variety -- they are "nuts" or "extremists" but the arguments against them are weak.
