FRFI 176 December 2003 / January 2004
Diego Garcia: still fighting for justice
Dude, where’s my country? Michael Moore, hardback £17.99, published by Allan Lane, 2003
This rapidly-written book by Michael Moore and his support team was published in the month following the invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces. The speed of its publication reflects the urgency Moore feels about the leadership and, indeed, ownership of the USA today. The title means that the interests of the people of North America have been hijacked by a handful of neoconservatives around the Bush family. Their greed, militarism and reactionary social values do not reflect those of the majority of the population who, Moore illustrates with a series of independent opinion poll results, are essentially tolerant and liberal on questions of race, gender and wealth distribution.
Michael Moore’s Stupid white men became an international best-seller with over four million copies sold in 2002-3 and, when his documentary film on gun law Bowling for Columbine won an Oscar, he spoke out against the war on Iraq to a worldwide television audience. As an author, performer, film-maker and television producer Moore has broken through the isolation of progressive forces to win popular acclaim. His work lifts the curtain on the realities of working life for the majority of the people in the USA, the manipulation and control of the media by a handful of owners and the impact of the corporations on domestic and foreign policy. And all this with humour and minutely researched detail.
Dude, where’s my country? raises some now familiar questions about the special relationship between the Saudi Arabian elite, the Bin Laden family in particular, and the Bush senior administration. This includes the matter of the protection of nearly 30 members of the Bin Laden family who were flown out of the USA within hours of the 11 September 2001 attack. Moore also documents trading relations with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq which include sales of biological and chemical warfare elements since the 1980s.
Much of this has been leaking out in the media as the US death toll rises and the CIA and other elements of the ruling class turn against each other to distance themselves from responsibility for the war and the failure to make immediate oil profits the prize of conquest. But Moore correctly puts Bush’s foreign policy into the context of privatisation and market deregulation combined with strengthening control over world resources. He shows how the Bush regime deliberately builds fear of terrorism and encourages xenophobia to distort and scar everyday perceptions in the USA. The Senate passed the USA Patriot Act, 98 to 1, a month after 11 September 2001 (an actual acronym for ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001). It is essentially a gagging order which allows any investigation of individuals to take place and prohibits anything being said by anyone about such searches on pain of prosecution and detention. An unknown number of people are imprisoned without charge under these Homeland Security measures and it is forbidden to talk about this without being accused of aiding and abetting the enemy. Michael Moore describes all this with energetic fury.
Where the book fails is in the recipe for change which shows that he may hate the capitalists but he does not understand how capitalism works. In the chapter ‘Woo Hoo! I Got Me a Tax Cut!’ he describes how, as a result of Bush’s tax cuts from 39% to 35%, he gained $33,000 this year. Last year Moore was a high earner with his successful book and film and is a beneficiary of the tax cuts alongside Dick Cheney, who has a $85,924 tax cut this year and a promised $171,850 next year. Bush is not just rewarding his super-rich buddies but is also buying off different layers of society with cash as electoral bait. However no amount of bribing and bullying the population will permanently preserve the capitalist system which is inherently prone to crisis and war. Moore has an under-consumptionist view of the economic problems of capitalism arguing that it is both logical and good for employers to allow unionisation, pay good wages, provide crèche and health facilities for workers because happier employees are more productive and responsible and have money to purchase goods. Equally, spending on decent state schools, clean air and water practices and a less punitive system of drug monitoring would benefit the whole of society by making people healthier, wiser and easing up the prison system. Moore speaks with the voice of common sense, the decent average guy but also in some desperation, even proposing Oprah Winfrey, anybody half-way human, to oppose Bush in the 2004 presidential election.
Dude, where’s my country? is a wonderful contribution to the fight against the US regime. Soon to be out in paperback it is highly recommended as a kind of running commentary on this critical moment of history. Packing in a lot of facts and figures Moore shows that 2003 reality is more crazy than the most zany humourist could ever invent.
Susan Davidson
