Fahrenheit 11/9

by philg

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 11/9 is streaming on Amazon Prime right now.

It’s worth watching, even if you don’t advocate for abandoning capitalism in favor of socialism, as Mr. Moore does.

The first section is about the 2016 election. Moore says that Trump didn’t want to run for president, but only staged a couple of fake rallies to show NBC that he should be paid more. Only when Trump saw how voters loved him did he decide to run in earnest. The presentation of footage from the respective campaigns on the night of the election is dramatic even though we know the outcome.

The next section is about the incompetence, insincerity, and mendacity of establishment Democrats, including Hillary Clinton and the officials who suppressed votes for beloved Bernie Sanders at the convention, even from states that Mr. Sanders had won (but what difference would it have made? Hillary did win more votes).

Moore doesn’t waste too much time trashing establishment Republicans, whom his audience presumably already associate with being on the payroll of the rich. In fact, he says that, starting with Bill Clinton, most Democrats are also on this payroll and there is little to distinguish non-socialist Democrats from Republicans.

Moore covers the Flint, Michigan water situation in detail (it was all caused by Republicans and cronies who wanted to make big $$; simple incompetence was not a factor), but the relevance to Donald Trump is never clear. Everything significant happened prior to Trump taking office (though Trump was the only candidate from either party to visit Flint during the campaign, according to Moore). There is footage of Obama lying to citizens about drinking the water. He is shown asking for a glass and just wetting his lips with the potentially tainted water, but not sipping any. Hidden below the podium is a glass of the actual water that he is consuming.

Another theme that keeps coming up is the Parkland shooting, but Donald Trump’s involvement is not explained.

There is a lot of footage of Adolf Hitler. Trump’s voice is synced up with Hitler’s lips moving. (Those who are passionate about women in aviation will be disappointed that Hannah Reitsch isn’t shown or quoted (“It was the blackest day when we could not die at our Führer’s side.”))

Yale History professor Timothy Snyder is quoted saying that the comparison of Trump to Hitler isn’t perfect, but only because no comparison ever is. A 99-year-old Nuremberg prosecutor is interviewed saying that what Trump is doing by separating children from migrant parents at the border is as bad as the crimes he was prosecuting, e.g., killing 90,000 Jews. (Michael Moore has experience with U.S. family court litigation, but not a custody lawsuit that separated a child from a parent. All of the fighting has been over cash and real estate. The litigation has stretched over most of this decade and a new lawsuit was filed a few months ago (Daily Mail).)

The Reichstag fire is compared to 9/11 in terms of providing the would-be dictator an excuse to seize power, but it is unclear how Trump could have engineered an emergency 15+ years prior to taking office.

Moore and Professor Snyder seem pretty sure that Trump is on track to be the next Hitler, but they don’t say how it can be accomplished.

I had never seen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on video before (we are not TV news watchers), so it was interesting to see footage of her campaigning. Moore expresses enthusiasm about young female socialists, preferably immigrants and/or Muslim, taking over the Democratic Party.

The documentary footage closes with the Hawaii mistaken missile alert (all done by state officials in a state that last voted for a Republican in 1984) and with a student from Parkland speaking dramatically about the school shooting (but, again, why is Trump to blame for these unfortunate events?).

So Fahrenheit 11/9 is worth seeing both for how Michael Moore weaves together familiar topics and also to try to understand how young Americans who call themselves “socialist” think.

14 thoughts on “Fahrenheit 11/9”

  3. Leni Reifenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will’ deserves a viewing to really understand the trumpenfuhrergestalt.

    John Toland’s “The Last 100 Days,” documents Hannah Reitsch’ last interview with the pre-Trump:

    Painfully Greim began to dress. In tears, Hanna went up to Hitler, “My Führer, why, why, don’t you let us stay?”

    Hitler looked at her. “God protect you.”

    Frau Goebbels gave Hanna two letters to her son. She took off a diamond ring and asked Hanna to wear it in her memory. Eva Braun also gave Hanna a letter, for her sister, Frau Fegelein. Later Hanna couldn’t resist reading it; she thought it was “so vulgar, so theatrical and in such poor, adolescent taste” that she tore it up.

    The dark night was lit up by flaming buildings, and Greim and Hanna could hear intense small-arms fire as an armored car brought them to an Arado 96 trainer, hidden near the Brandenburg Gate. Hanna taxied the little plane down the East-West Axis and took off in a hail of fire. At rooftop level Russian searchlights picked up the Arado, and flak explosions began tossing it about like a feather. With full power she climbed out of the maelstrom—below lay Berlin, a sea of flames. She headed north.

    • Mememe – I know nothing except what I just read in wikipedia (within Arado 96 article) … they make it sound like Hannah was a passenger. They mention a Luftwaffe officer that was PIC.
      A 3 seater trainer seemed odd, but looking at pictures it does look like it has 3 seats.

    • John V.

      Her passenger was Rupert Ritter von Greim. Greim, though a celebrated pilot, was likely incapable of piloting the aircraft due to war wounds. Hannah Reitsch was a genuine Valkyrie.

  5. I also just watched this movie a few days ago on Amazon Prime. My first thought as the movie concluded:

    Note this movie came out in September 2018, well before the most recent government shutdown. It was a bit unnerving that he described Hilter taking power via a series of “National Emergencies” that enabled him to seize authority outside the normal bounds of his position. Many (most?) German citizens allowed him to do so, and even encouraged him.

    Now Trump is threatening a “National Non-emergency Emergency” to fund his border wall, in order to seize funding outside of the normal legislative channels. Many (most?) Republicans are allowing him to do so, and are even encouraging him.

  7. Inspired by Philip’s review, watched yesterday. The footage of Miss Venezuela campaigning was a revelation as she’s charismatic in a Bill Clinton way. I’ve seen a few of her outrageous interviews, to include her saying that she suffered less because she had clarity about identifying as a cisgender woman. But what makes her electable IMAO is her public oration — when reading from a speech likely written by one of her staffers who grasps basic civics and mathematics, she’s compelling like Reagan or Obama.

  8. Trump is asking asking for $5 billion for the fence (i.e.: wall) [1]. Let us say it will end up costing $50 when it is all done. That is a drop in the bucket compared how much the government spent on other things [2, 3, 4, 5, etc].

    This whole standoff is nothing more than political game.

    [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-continues-to-demand-5-billion-for-border-wall-as-shutdown-looms/2018/11/26/f2ff5868-f1d4-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html?utm_term=.8d65c7d24d3a
    [2] https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/welfare_spending
    [3] https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nhe-fact-sheet.html
    [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States
    [5] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/DHS%20FY18%20BIB%20Final.pdf

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