{"id":8633,"date":"2018-09-19T18:07:38","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T22:07:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8633"},"modified":"2018-09-19T18:07:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T22:07:38","slug":"michael-moore-fahrenheit-11-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/09\/19\/michael-moore-fahrenheit-11-9\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Why Save This America?\u2019\u2014Michael Moore\u2019s Bleak \u2018Fahrenheit 11\/9\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHow the fuck did this happen?\u201d Michael Moore asks aloud in his pointed new documentary <a href=\"https:\/\/fahrenheit119.com\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cFahrenheit 11\/9,\u201d<\/a> the filmmaker\u2019s rumination on America during the presidency of Donald Trump. (The title refers to the day Trump was declared winner.)<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a fiery film and a bleak one, filled what seem to be Moore\u2019s conflicted emotions about where the United States is headed. It\u2019s choppy too\u2014as if Moore hasn\u2019t processed all the material yet, as if he rushed to get the film in theaters so that it could affect the midterm elections.<\/p>\n<p>In \u201cFahrenheit 11\/9,\u201d Moore\u2014the activist director behind \u201cRoger &#038; Me\u201d (1989),  \u201cBowling for Columbine\u201d (2002), \u201cFahrenheit 9\/11\u201d (2004),  \u201cSicko\u201d (2007)\u2014reviews events from the eve of the 2016 elections to recent months\u2014the campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the survivors who organized the anti-gun violence March For Our Lives, the successful West Virginia teachers strike.<\/p>\n<p>Moore finds hope in recent liberal successes. He argues: \u201cThe United States of America is a leftist country,\u201d rattling off a list of polls showing large majorities support healthcare, legal marijuana, immigration, free college. Americans are pro-choice and 78 percent don\u2019t own a gun, he says. Fifty-seven percent of Texans aren\u2019t white, he adds.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WRQv9xMQ3E0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>But mostly the film is depressing. \u201cIf America is us and we\u2019re the majority, how do we not hold a single seat of power?\u201d Moore asks, from the presidency to Congress to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>Moore charges that Democratic leaders\u2019 compromises with big business set them against Bernie Sanders (\u201cWe were a real threat to the liberal establishment,\u201d the Vermont socialist says) and left Hillary Clinton vulnerable to Trump\u2019s (disingenuous) claims that he was the candidate of the people, the pro-healthcare, pro-childcare, job creator.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe strongman, the autocrat, only succeeds,\u201d Moore says, \u201cwhen a vast swath of the population feels they\u2019ve had enough and give up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The emotional heart of the film is the poisoning of the water supply in Moore\u2019s hometown of Flint, Michigan. Moore alleges that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder covered up what was going on for a year and a half, children got sick with lead poisoning and grown-ups began to die from Legionnaires\u2019 disease. One woman cries recalling her choice to bring her mother to a Flint hospital, where she was apparently given the poisoned water: \u201cI wish to this day I would have taken my mama to Ann Arbor.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moore ends \u201cFahrenheit 11\/9\u201d by arguing that Trump is an authoritarian threat\u2014along the lines of Hitler\u2014with his demonizing of Muslims and immigrants, with his efforts to discredit those who might rein him in, from the press to the courts.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen is it too late to turn back?\u201d Moore asks. The United States today, he says, is a nation of paramilitary police, of opioid addiction, of the ongoing Flint water crisis. It\u2019s an America, he says, in which teachers are paid so poorly that they have to work second jobs to make ends meet, an America that loves guns more than protecting its children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy save this America?\u201d Moore asks. \u201cThe America I want to save is the America we\u2019ve never had.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Moore says we can\u2019t hope for the Constitution or impeachment or the Mueller investigation to save us. \u201cWe need action,\u201d Moore says. \u201cWe have to get rid of the whole rotten system.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/wonderlandlandfanclub\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And <a href=\"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/subscribe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don&#8217;t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cHow the fuck did this happen?\u201d Michael Moore asks aloud in his pointed new documentary \u201cFahrenheit 11\/9,\u201d the filmmaker\u2019s rumination on America during the presidency of Donald Trump. (The title refers to the day Trump was declared winner.) It\u2019s a fiery film and a bleak one, filled what seem to be Moore\u2019s conflicted emotions about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,116],"tags":[279,62],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8633"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8639,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633\/revisions\/8639"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}