Progressive filmmaker Michael Moore, most famously known for his liberal documentaries such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine, released a new film shortly prior to the U.S. presidential election entitled Trumpland. It was a “tongue-in-cheek” look at GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and his supporters, but since it was only released in theaters in two cities, it wasn’t really seen by that many voters (the film is only 43 minutes long).
In theory, the film claims to be sympathetic to the Trump supporters it interviews, but in reality, it’s a cynical take on those people who Hillary Clinton and other global elitists have called “deplorable.”
Moore has been interjecting publicly into the nation’s discourse about the election for the past year on and off, previously writing a controversial piece that appeared in The Huffington Post claiming that Trump running for president was just another way the business magnate could get more money from NBC for his reality television shows.
Moore claimed that Trump didn’t actually want to be president; he merely wanted the publicity that went along with running for the job. As evidence, Moore pointed to Trump’s many self-skewering gaffes, impossible-to-defend tweets and the fact that Trump had been good friends with both Bill and Hillary Clinton for decades before the race, posing with the couple in a number of now-ubiquitous photos taken at Trump’s most recent wedding.
After his editorial was widely read and discussed, Moore went on the warpath against Trump, pulling out his surprise documentary film only three weeks before the election, hoping that it would register as a serious blow to the Republican candidate with scant time to go before the polls opened.
Unfortunately for Moore, Trumpland barely registered on independent or Democrat voters’ radar, instead being perceived as a heartfelt and genuine work by some Republicans, who promoted its rise on iTunes popularity lists.
Moore really hasn’t had a hit title in theaters for about seven years now, and so, the rabble that the aging overweight slacker roused at the Trumpland premiere was predictably more PR-worthy than the film itself. Moore read at length about how he perceived Trump and the viability of Trump’s appeal, which he confessed he (like many progressives) was late in comprehending.
To the astonishment of progressives, Moore believed that Trump would win the election. “Trump’s election is going to be the biggest F*** YOU ever recorded in human history,” Moore declared. “And it will feel good.” So confident was Moore about a Trump victory that even Donald Trump, Jr. retweeted his words.
But after the election, like so many hardcore liberals, Moore was heartbroken, angry, bitter and unsentimental. The day after the election, the portly filmmaker posted to his Facebook account that citizens’ duty was to “take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people.” Moore was upset with pollsters, who had predicted a Clinton landslide, or at least a marginal win.
Moore insisted that “healing” was the wrong thing to do. Instead, Moore wrote, his followers had a duty to “quickly and decisively form an opposition movement, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the 1960s… The core of this opposition force will be fueled by young people who, as with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, don’t tolerate b.s. and are relentless in their resistance to authority. They have no interest in compromising with racists and misogynists.”
Moore stated that the next step was to try to impeach Trump. Although Moore had no crimes to charge Trump with, he vowed that he would “bring charges against [Trump] when he violates his oath and breaks the law — and then we must remove him from office.”
Moore gave no timeline for this happening, but has indicated via other soundbites and interviews that it should happen as soon as possible — or at least as soon as Trump “breaks the law” — although which law Moore is referring to has not yet been specified.
Moore passionately mandated that any and all Trump nominees to the Supreme Court be blocked, by all means including civil disobedience. (Moore may not be aware that such action likely will not be able to affect a Supreme Court justice confirmation one way or the other, unless he’s talking about trying to physically occupy the chamber of the Senate, in which case he may be risking an extreme confrontation with the government.)
Furthermore, Moore demanded an apology from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) for manipulating the primary elections against Clinton rival Senator Bernie Sanders, and if no such apology was forthcoming from the DNC, Moore would “issue the apology in person” when he and his followers “take over the Democratic Party.”
In addition to the above steps, Moore obliged President Obama to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate why FBI Director James Comey reopened his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server 11 days before the election.
He also called for a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College, for the discontinuation of electronic voting machines, for making Election Day a national holiday and for allowing any and all criminals to vote, regardless of their legal status and/or the state in which they resided.
Finally, rounding out Moore’s list of demands was a call for President Obama to send the Army Corps of Engineers to Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan to fix the rusted and unrepaired water pipes there.
These demands were rapidly typed out in the two days following the election and have not been updated since. However, they’ve been shared more than 250,000 times and “reacted to” on Facebook more than 600,000 times.
Moore has almost 5 million followers on social media, so it’s clear he’s able to reach a few people. But whether he’ll be able to marshal forces of equal number in real life — even if funded by billionaire activists, such as financier George Soros — is anyone’s guess.
In many ways, as with his political nemesis, Moore’s own worst enemy is himself. The documentary hack from Flint carries a lot of baggage — both literally and figuratively — and someone such as Soros or anyone else who wants to take Trump on should carefully weigh whether they want to support such dodgy ballast.
~Conservative Zone
