[As e-mailed to Moore, with small formatting changes.]
Dear Mr. Moore,
My name is also Mike, Mike Khmelnitsky. I am writing to you after having read through most of Stupid White Men, which promised that you check your e-mail "often." Needless to say, as per your letters to Bush and the (now-late) Arafat in your book, I am working under the assumption that this e-mail will never be read by you, so, if nothing else, I'd like this to be a gedanken, a thought-experiment. If you do receive this - wonderful.
Before I go any further, Mr. Moore, I have to say that I am a fan of your work, hell, look at these exuberant responses at my blog: here, here, here or here. I saw Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, listened to (and now read most of) Stupid White Men and heard you blast Bush at the Oscars and pitch in with The Corporation. The thing is, as of late (well, tonight), a growing sense of unease began cultivating, in the approximate area of my physical body where the proverbial butterflies flutter from time to time, with regard to the...platform from which you say things.
Now, before I explain the Big Problem, I'd like to also clarify why your work in general, and the state of America in specific, is so important to me, despite me being a good-for-nothing, twenty-three year-old, white, bisexual, bipolar, half-Jewish, baptised-Christian, secular, male, Russian-born, Canadian, English Major. For one thing, you guys, the Americans, are buying us up wholesale, like during the recent (Austin, Texas) purchase of our, British Columbian, natural gas company, Terasen. I guess all the power and resources we were selling to you already weren't enough and America now wants to put Canada in a chokehold with pretty much every resource (from cars to softwood lumber to god knows what else) quickly, before we grow some backbone.
Another thing is - all this Globalisation and Free Enterprise have caused the sale or, rather, the handover, of our wonderful Medicare system to American companies, which, under your various Patriot Acts and other Wonderfully-Sounding Things, have exposed us to the same privacy and information-control crap that all those left-wing books and movies love talking about these days, over and over again.
Finally (heh, right, who are we kidding?), on my recent road-trip to the US with my pro-Bush friend (obligatory desert photo), I found myself wondering whether I was in the US or Canada. The people are the same (well, they say pardon me instead of excuse me), the fast-food and motel franchises were (whew) the same, the infrastructure was the same, the TV was the same, the music was the same and the politics - yes, even the politics - were the same.
Hell, my Honours English paper that I am currently trying to hammer out is on Walt Whitman and Elizabeth Smart (a Canadian prolific in America) and their visions of a Greater America, that is beyond politics and artificial social restrictions and status quo. Canadian lit is boring. We don't fight our demons as much as you guys do - Thompson, Vonnegut, Heller - it's a treasury of response to strife, stuff that we pride ourselves on not having. Well, maybe in lesser quantities (Japanese internment, Ukrainian internment, the Chinese building our railroads, stuff like that).
In short, there's no escaping it. Canada is in a very tight, symbiotic relationship with the US. You go to war, we need to respond somehow; you want to test nukes right next to Vancouver Island's shores, we need to respond somehow (gotta love those "Welcome to Vancouver - A Nuclear Weapons Free Zone" signs); you manufacture a celebrity, a movie, a song, a controversy, and we, Canadians, have to be concerned because, well, if you guys mess up, we're done for. I'm not disclaiming responsibility here, I'm ust setting up the legitimacy of my concern with the following:
You, Mr. Moore, have all the right in the world (pun intended, as you will soon see) to be Pissed Off: all the power to you for collecting all that data no one typically cares about, for challenging people's perspectives on things they have come to take for granted to such an insane degree, for giving a damn. But, an interesting trend is now emerging, now that you have established yourself as an Influential Political figure, an iconoclast for some, a voice of reason and different thinking for others. Of course, it's hard to notice, due to that biblical thing about beams and slivers in people's eyes, but it's there. What I am talking about here is not the discrepancy between what you say and "the truth," whatever that might be, as some see it, but a discrepancy between what you say and how it is perceived.
You started off right enough; I think Roger and Me is a masterpiece of sorts, simply due to the factual nature of its investigation, sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek presentation and a good, political kind of unsettling-ness. You were fresh and unabashed. Now, you are a household word, your own words as powerful as that Ark of the Covenant, melting those Indiana Jones Nazis (ooh what a terrible metaphor, heh) to some, and holy water to others. In other words, you - not Michael Moore the person - but Michael Moore the cult icon - have become a rallying point, and now we (the Greater America - and by extension, the Western World - and by extension, the rest of the world) have a problem.
To compare your platform - for this is what, undoubtedly what your quest has become (complete with Must-Read Books, ideas reiterated almost on an hourly basis on University campuses everywhere, and that lovable bearded-jolly-man/baseball-cap image) to that of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News would be, I think, unfair, but I also think you might have an inkling regarding where I am going with this. Without a doubt, people need fresh thinking, a reset of the 'ol Weltanschauung, hell, options, reasons to not snuff it in some shitty urban apartment (yes, we have those, too) where no one will find your body for weeks because you don't matter anymore, other than in the form of a worker bee. However, now, that America - and Greater America - and the World have You and - by extension Jon Stewart and other Naturally Occurring Derivatives, the majority of panicked, left-wing America (and Greater America) has settled back (and hear me out here, before you show and tell me all those activists and People Who Care) - settled back and started to watch the Fight For Their Liberties and Peace as if it were another Stallone film, at times "Dedicated to the Valiant People of Afghanistan," at other times, a bit less...dedicated.
Don't worry, Mr. Moore, I am not one of those who peppers people constantly with all these oh-so-fashionable post-modern accusations of (inadvertently?) creating yet another Spectacle, trying to fight the first Spectacle (a good example in the past would be the response of the 80s to the 60s to the 50s - hah!), but the fact is that no one is willing to fight their own battles, anymore, no matter how much faith you put in all those undoubtedly-great (no sarcasm implied) peoples of America Proper.
Once, in 2003, I believe, I went to a protest in Downtown Vancouver, just to see what it was like. I don't remember what it was about anymore (early Iraq incursions? - see, I don't even care - but wait), but the point was that the people there were to be there, to rally around a cause, to sing leftist songs they did not even know the words for (they needed pamphlets) and to be generally guided by a core of five-ten organisers who didn't do much either, other than send money to random causes, money that...well, you know what typically happens to all this money, other than organising sister protests in what they called "the belly of the beast," Washington, D.C. Right. It was a feel-good, pat-on-the-back-go-home-and-blog-about-it thing. Not that I was any better than them, what with writing a poem about the experience, and just not giving a damn, but there is a point here.
When my family and I moved to Israel from Russia during the Gulf War (what a great idea, eh? Well, the Jewish pogroms were coming, so there was no choice), we arrived at a place where, until we left in 1996 for Canada, more than 70%, sometimes, of local events would be so polished and intentionally ideologically re-directed by the Western media, that everyone living in Greater America and Europe at the time might as well have read a Tom Clancy novel; the facts weren't all there, anyway. So, now I'm here and the only way I get the entire picture about over there is either through first-hand accounts of friends and acquaintances left behind or through the copious research of such people as yourself (I was very pleased [well, not in that way] to find the Maarat Hamahfela incident in Stupid White Men - you did your research).
The point though is, no matter how much Truth you shove in people's faces, they won't give a damn. Hey, I'm not going to become a Doctor Without Borders or join some wacky UN or Canadian peace-keeping force to have my conscience cleared, no. I will finish off my B.A. in English this year, comfortably go off to Japan or China to work off my $25,000 CDN student loan debt, return, repeat same with M.A., Ph.D., grow to be even more of an arrogant asshole and finally claw my way into a teaching position at one of those colleges (I'm not touching the Universities with a ten-foot pole).
The lesson here (even reflected in some of the points you make) is that we're (Greater Americans) all too locked into the study-work-earn-die pattern to quit it, but, unlike your hopeful and, pardon the term, idealistic solutions of inquiry, personal verification of Information, and involvement, the facts are in: no one cares, but everyone desperately wants to fit in with those who care, so that they can at least be in solidarity with those few Who Walk Away from Omelas (great story by Ursula LeGuin), if not on that path away from society, with them (two words: Thoreau and Walden; irony). So:
The Good Leftist's Checklist
- Rage Against the Machine sweatshirt (made in China by sweatshop labour)
- Che Guevara t-shirt ("Who is that guy, anyway?" people wonder; "Oh well, gotta fit in...")
- Lisa Simpson's sticker from "The Simpsons" episode where she pretends to be a University student: "America out of Everywhere"
- Having seen at least two of Michael Moore's last two movies
- Having attended at least two of the latest-and-greatest "protest" concerts/antiwar "rallies"/meetings
- Having read at least two of Salman Rushdie's and Noam Chomsky's books
- Disdainful look in the eye constantly alternating with:
- Scared look in the eye, due to fear of offending world with own gender/race/sexuality, lest the rules for Political Correctness change even more tomorrow
- A full closet of sweatshop-made clothes with the labels carefully taken off
- A cursory, selective knowledge of History, centred around American Wrongs, and, as a result:
- Unswerving dedication to The Daily Show
- A "choose life" Trainspotting poster
- Bike (with "One Less Car" sticker; made in China, assembled in Mexico)
- Weed
- Blog
You get the idea. Not that I'm placing the problem as squarely on your personal shoulders as you place many problems on Bush's (no, that parallel doesn't work at all), but, the thing is, your purpose outgrew itself; not even you yourself can control the platform from which you are now campaigning - but that's not even the real problem. The real problem is that you set out there with a fully-formulated, sarcastic, adult theory, out of which only selective parts are being comprehended and parroted over and over (even by me: "oil pipeline conspiracy"; "Bush relation to those families"; "gun control problems"); not that those are incorrect, mind you - and that's the problem - the need to belong compels people to buy your side of things wholesale, but they can't, because it's now more iconic than practical, more talk than action that (because of their own comfort) people will not take.
You may be a believer that the human is basically good, just really corrupted by reticence, conservatism, consumerism and comfort; alright. I, on the other hand, maintain that we are quite rotten down to the core; that we would rather strive for the minimum work and maximum comfort, as opposed to maximum justice. We want security, we want the status quo. Who is the overwhelming senior-aged majority in good, 'ol mother Russia voting for right now? The Communists! The neo-Fascists! Sure, there was some monkey business down in Florida, but don't kid yourself for a second, Mr. Moore, the people - your people - wanted Bush to be in power - and they got him. They wanted Bush to have a second term - and they got it - just like they got their (wonderfully-well-stocked - nothing like our versions) Wal-Marts, SUVs and comfy homes.
I think you are working under a false assumption, Mr. Moore, that people want Justice and Liberty and Freedom as much as they want Food, Drink, Health, Non-Violence, Education and Happiness. Well, no; we are animals; we want bread and circuses; we want all the choicest cuts of that Beef, we want our Alcohol and cars, computers, guns, airplanes, tanks, PDAs, fountain pens and nice watches, women just as guilty as men. Justice and Liberty are not exactly on top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Our eyes shine like those of Tolkien's Gollum at the prospect of more - so, while we are, indeed, idiots - we are, by definition, incorrigible.
I was almost lynched (brace yourself here) during just the past Summer term, when, in my Children's Lit class, after having watched Pocahontas, I maintained that the First Nations problem is an extension of the fact that homo sapiens is, in his nature, a greedy, selfish son of a bitch and - considering even First Nations happily killed and scalped each other - their adoption of Western weapons and, later on, Western ways, is simply an extension of that need.
We need to separate all that bacteriological-warfare horror and genocide from this question, though, yes, that was just as horrid as the Nazi executions of some of my ancestors, the thing is, I see this chunk of history as the Whites, who happened to be more developed (the mob lights its torches) coming to a less developed place (the mob advances on me; hear me out) and, naturally, due to an imbalance of that Development (i.e. need-based comfort in terms of a house in which you are not eaten by a bear or a rifle with which you can shoot a whole lot more buffalo), there is a conflict, after which (now) the First Nations are quite happy in Houses and with Snowmobiles, on par with the rest of Us Whites. But -
Note how I'm not touching upon the cultural aspect of it all, in here. What I'm talking about is the animal rage with which everyone fought and still fights for land (I don't care whose it was: the animals work according to Survival of the Fittest - so why don't we admit we're just monkeys with guns?), for food, for resources... Imagine (this is another gedanken) a nation that believed in The Raven and all that very nice communion-with-nature stuff but happened to have acquired guns and boats, etc. first, after which they, naturally found a continent which they wanted to expand to and wage war on those peace-loving White Men, women and children that worshipped a strange god who sent his only son to atone for their stupidity. It could happen. Please, please, let's not say that it's in the White Man's Blood to be violent, to divide and conquer, to violate the land, to be this giant S.O.B. The One Who Gets There First is the bastard, and all the rest of us sit by, jealously, as The One Who Got There First naturally holds on to his power.
It's interesting, then, that when I stand up for those Inhuman White Settlers, who a fellow classmate, to loud acclaim, proclaimed to have "been wrong," and say that, look, lots of them are British prisoners, half can barely feed their families, they really are looking for a new life, new opportunities, they want to start over in earnest - while their government (and, naturally, The Ones Who Got There First, who make it up) do their own, dastardly deeds. The ones on top, whether they be immigrants who work their way up through hard work (no, Hard Work is not a myth - talk to my parents to find out more), or politicians who climbed even higher - what incentive is there to give that achievement away, for the sake of some sort of moral equilibrium? There's no way in hell my dad is sharing the fruits of his hard work with some First Nations people; he earned it for his family, for me, and I can't blame him.
Oh well. Any which way, I think the story begins to sound familiar here. Of course, I, being outwardly a specimen of Male White Hegemony, was almost eaten alive by the Equity office at the University, and, of course, those poor, poor First Nations girls in my class (who don't have to pay that $25,000 CDN, by the way, not by a long shot) were ever-so-hurt, even though my ancestors were quite far from oppressing the First Nations, themselves buried alive by the Nazis or declared Kulaks by the Soviets. Oh, how heartless of Mike (me) to say all those vile things! Don't listen to that horrible twat: instead, repeat some Empty Terms after me: Democracy, Affirmative Action, Peace, Love and Respect, prosperity, Canada is #1, Canada is Better than the US, Gentille Politesse (ooh, that rhymes), and all that other wonderful stuff.
Well, there it is; humanity sucks. Thank god I'm young enough to be able to say that, eh? I am reminded here of a Russian joke about a sanitation worker who keeps smelling like crap and finally gets some cologne and asks his friend how he smells, and the friend replies that he smells like someone crapped under a pine tree. That's what Political Correctness smells like to me: trying to cover up all that bloodshed and stench of the dead with pretty words and very nice doublespeak.
So, now we've got this large, pan-North-American, (pan Western-European, even), coalition of the left, for whom you speak. And what do you tell them? "Did you know your nation sucks?" "Get involved, despite needing to get to stay alive first!" "Tsk, tsk, oh those males; in vitro cum (pun not intended; I recently found out not many people are even aware of this term in the non-colloquial sense) some lesbian action and you'll be obsolete, shape up!" (No mention of women's quirks, such as the Inability to Reason Logically on a Daily Basis/In a Relationship (crowd makes nooses) which stands in direct conflict with their certain success in the Arts and Sciences (no sarcasm meant), or really good examples of very politically-vicious, government-employed women.) You know what I say? I refuse to be guilty of being a White (Jewish) Man (Bisexual), as I once actually felt guilty. "We" happened to get "there" first, just like the settlers happened to have Guns and Boats and whatnot first. Sure, as you've suggested, maybe we'll just evolve out of the picture, since we lead such terribly unstable lives, for us and for others, but -
The thing is that you, Mr. Moore, are an advocate of a sort of revolution, quite in tune with the entire leftist thing, if you think about it. Revolution fits the leftist package quite neatly, and your irreverent examples from your high school days are quite amusing. Unfortunately, America Proper is not exactly a school district; it is a complicated, exuberant, terrible, beautiful mess of a Gordian Knot that must evolve, rather than revolt (I mean, come on, look at Russia); then again, I don't think today's Americans have the same steel balls that those guys two-hundred-or-so years ago had. We'd all rather slowly eat into our economic and moral credit until we're either too old, too stupid, or too satisfied to care (I, the thinker, have got a great poem on the subject).
In many ways (stop me if you've heard this before), you are polarising America - Greater America - and the Western world - by, while saying that the New Democrats are the same crap as the Compassionate Conservatives, North vs. South, Canada vs. US in terms of friendliness and safety, Blacks vs. Whites (why the lack of Hispanic discussion in Stupid White Men?) - since now, regardless of what you say, people will line up either behind you, or behind Mr. Bush. The medium has become the message, the allure of "getting down to the core of things," of challenging authority out of your parents' basement (guilty as charged), participating in the unfolding of a Great Corporate Evil - on the right side of things. How you say things has become more important than what you say. Dare I say, Mr. Moore, you have become a product, another ideological commodity to be bought and sold wholesale, without contemplation, with two-step, E-Z comfort, user-friendly, safe-to-use, batteries-included participation.
Needless to say, people start questioning your lifestyle, your money, the schools your children go to, the car you drive (hey, I drive a Chevette that's one year older than I am; I don't say this politically; just sharing) and it turns out that you're just another human being - just like any one of us - but it also turns out that you are struggling just like the rest of us, struggling with the politics, struggling with your emotions, but you have no solutions, only questions to raise, just like everyone else. If anything, that's quite disillusioning (although if you logged on to my Moral Bank & Trust account, you'll see I'm already overdrawn there by a few grand).
I could be a bit contentious here, say something clever like:
"Mr. Moore, if you have all this motivation, knowledge, wisdom, charisma and ever-important American birth (as opposed to poor Arnie), why don't you - that's right, you run for president of the Altered States of America? It says on Wikipedia that you made about $200 mil. off Fahrenheit 9/11; I don't know how much the IRS let you keep of that, but I think that with your personal earnings and another few films (the 9/11 and a half thing that I saw being in development on IMDb) - and - let's not forget about them - the hordes of your (quite rabid, at times) fans who worship the ground you walk on (the Universities' vote alone would rock the vote) - you could be a no-brainer winner (pun not intended, but it's a good one, eh?)
Not that I think that Mr. Bush's job is overbearingly difficult, but I'd like to see you untangle the American take on the environment, gun control, civil rights, education, Medicare and foreign policy (and no sarcasm intended here, no sir). But, don't kid yourself, Mr. Moore, when Nixon inherited Vietnam from Johnson, could he reshape American policies overnight (even if he wanted to)? Could Clinton clean up after Daddy Bush (even if he wanted to)? Can the next Presidential Candidate (you?) clean up after Sonny Bush? I think not.
I think that (pardon the cliché), absolute power corrupts absolutely. I think that, once elected into office, you'd have a lot of fun imagining all those wonderful things you'd do, but end up doing what you must, to:
a) Uphold (read: appease) the needs of the people, no matter how crazy or misguided - or get voted out or impeached with the help of dirty tricks.
b) Appease the corporations that now hold America Proper together like so much Crazy Glue. Piss them off and your country will crumble to pieces, because we don't have citizens now; we have shareholders - at home, at work, and at school.
c) Keep the world in balance - since you've already started policing it, how could you stop now? Even in Stupid White Men, many of your rational, thought-out solutions involve foreign involvement into other countries' affairs. This cannot be changed overnight.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Moore, and just like any other Good Samaritan, the system (the cliché patrol gets out their zap guns) will crush you and you will become 'one of them.'"
I could say all that - but I won't, because you know it and I know it: it is much safer, much more comfortable to watch the crap go down while we feel good by "acting" against that which we despise - by being instant pundits with our films and blogs and poetry, by being forgiving and progressive, tolerant and passionate - while being cowards, just like you and I, Mr. Moore. I won't run for president because I'm an unknown and non-political good-for-nothing Canadian, as I've mentioned in the beginning of this letter. What's your excuse? What are all of our excuses? Why don't we give a damn?
Don't get me wrong, I did not set out to write this essay-letter to insult or offend you, but I think you are a reasonable enough man to see some of the problems that peek through your Good Intentions and Good Deeds. Hell, I am just like you, Mr. Moore - confused, angered, trying to align myself with a group, unable to buy politics wholesale anymore. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, if we're already on the subject of trying to pin the blame somewhere, let's expand our categories to stupid human beings, and start working from that. Life, I like to say, is a love affair with your conscience. *shrug* ;)
Sincerely, your big fan,
Michael G. Khmelnitsky
http://www.mig81.com/
http://poetry.mig81.com/
Jesus, you are verbose.
I am who I am, Judas. ;)