Michael Moore Gives Us Reason to Think

CHICAGOLAWBULLETIN.COM FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018

Volume 164, No. 190 Serving Chicago’s legal community for 163 years Michael Moore gives us reason to think

lue-collar polemicist The citizens were thrilled, expect- Michael Moore’s recent- ing him to declare a national emer- ly released documen- gency and send the Army Corp of tary, “Fahrenheit 11/9,”is Engineers to fix Flint’s water prob- a call to action. The title lem. Instead, the president pan- refersB to the date Donald Trump’s tomimed drinking “s a fe”Flint wa- presidency was proclaimed after RE B E C CA ter by touching a glassful to his the 2016 election results were de- L. FORD lips. The audience gasped. termined. It is also a play on the “When he came here he was title of a previous Moore film, our president”said whistleblower “Fahrenheit 9/11,”which was a Rebecca L. Ford is counsel to Scharf April Cook-Hawkins, a former Banks Marmor LLC, and concentrates her smackdown of George W. Bush’s practice on complex litigation, compliance, state employee who refused to fal- build-up to the Iraq war. board governance and specialized sify lead levels reported in state Now on a quest to save democ- employment issues. She is the former health department documents, racy, Moore seeks to frighten us executive vice president for litigation and “after that, he wasn’t .” into the fray. To accomplish this intellectual property at MGM. She can be Donald Trump was the only mission, he evokes the misdeeds of reached at [email protected]. presidential candidate to visit Trump, Hitler, Hillary Clinton, Michigan, a state Clinton lost by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Nancy only two votes per precinct. Pelosi, the ousted media sex of- care if he’s lying. People believe in Moore urgently wants to show fenders and Barack Obama. h i m .” that political anger makes us vul- In this somewhat disjointed Where did the disillusionment in nerable to charlatans like Snyder film, Moore rattles together sev- the political system that led to the who mask crass exploitation in eral stories: the rise of the “m a - Trump victory come from? Moore the guise of problem-solving. lignant narcissist” Democracy can be Trump; the poison- lost, warns Yale pro- ing of the water in Democracy can be lost, warns Yale professor fessor Tim Snyder, if Flint Mich.; the eu- people don’t con- phoric victory of the Tim Snyder, if people don’t constantly assert stantly assert them- West Virginia teach- themselves. “Democracy can go away or selves. “D e m o c r a c y e rs ’strike and the can go away or the unqualified virtue of the way money is used in the political way money is used the students who process can make democracy a joke.” in the political pro- survived the Park- cess can make land, Fla., school democracy a joke.” shooting. Moore shocks us by spotlights his hometown of Flint, In a different time and place, a showing unspeakable political Mich., as a microcosm of America. similar political climate led to Na- mendacity, then provides hope by He chronicles the Gov. Rick Sny- tional Socialism. In case we don’t presenting models of successful der-staged takeover that switched get that message, Moore has help- grassroots organization. F l i n t’s water source from the fully mocked-up a clip of Hitler lip- Bernie Sanders-supporter glacial Lake Huron to the open synching one of Trump’s speeches. Moore, who famously predicted sewer that is the Flint River. More convincingly, he inter- T r u m p’s defeat of Clinton, saw The river water brought with it views Ben Ferencz, the last living Trump as the inevitable choice (or lead poisoning, Legionnaires’d i s - prosecutor of the Nuremberg tri- default) of a disillusioned, disen- ease and corrosion of the water- als, who is moved to tears of gaged populous and campaign bathed auto parts manufactured in frustration as he considers the coverage that cynically and con- General Motors’Flint plant. When direction in which the nation is descendingly doubled down on GM complained, Gov. Snyder made h e a d e d . Trump to extract maximum en- clean water available to GM, but “I had people hanged for doing tertainment value. Everything not to the residents of Flint. the things they say now,”said a Trump has done, says Moore, he’s In a “Waiting for Superman”m o - grief-stricken Ferencz. “It doesn’t done in plain sight. “People don’t ment, Barack Obama visited Flint. have to end up like this.”