Open systems and their applications

Open

Before making assumptions and applying critical thinking to any one of the topics from Michael Moore's book, we need to make the observation that Michael Moore's work is less a set of applicable solutions to problems that he identifies in the American society and political life, but more of a putting together of real facts and humorous comments, of permanently critical observations and hilariously inapplicable solutions. Indeed, many of these solutions are comical, either real ones (such as the fact that the Palestinians could perhaps take on a Gandhi - like approach in their struggle) or unreal ones, such as the one where the Northern Ireland conflict could be solved if Protestants became Catholics.

Certainly, from a humorous perspective, this can be an excellent literary work, but the problem is that Michael Moore believes himself to be underlining deep problems of the U.S. society and to be proposing intelligent possible solutions for these. His work is created to be both satiric and conceptual, but it only makes it as satirical. From this perspective, we are bound to raise the issue that Michael Moore only comes up with problems rather than solutions to those problems.

The second general consideration that needs to be made is tied to the fact that his work is entirely subjective and biased. Despite the fact that he often targets the Democrats as well, notably the Gore campaign, for example, he is determined to underline only negative effects of the Republican governance. Somehow, this is not a reasonable demarche: some of the measures that the Republicans have applied may have been included in larger and more extensive frameworks, frameworks where the cause-effect coordination could be noticed and analyzed much closer and in more detail. As Moore presents the facts, we only have some blunt attacks on measures taken by an administration, something that generally produces the inevitable question "didn't these guys do anything right?"

Third of all, some of the facts that Moore uses seem to be right down wrong. The U.S. leads in terms of budget deficit, however, up to 2001, this was not true: the U.S. recorded throughout the Clinton administration a positive budgetary balance. At this point, as a reader, I would have probably been more entitled to discover why it came about that this balance turned negative, under what circumstances and how this affected the U.S. society. From all these perspectives, Michael Moore's book succeeds only occasionally to go beyond the stature of a comment book, a small satiric comment on U.S. society, rather than a well-analyzed, documented critic of the U.S. society.

Starting with punctual observations and topics at this point, Michael Moore continues to support, throughout the book, the idea that the 2000 elections were fraudulently won by Bush and his Republican team. This is an incipient motivation to refer to Bush as "President" Bush throughout the book. Together with Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, and the judges and the Supreme Court, he was able to turn around a popular choice and win the elections!

Certainly, if we hadn't actually read this, we wouldn't have believed that someone actually wrote it. Not necessarily that the electoral system in the U.S. is flawless and that such a thing could not have happened under any circumstances, but, first of all, it is difficult to believe that a country the size (in terms of population) of the United States can successfully fraud an election. We can believe this possible in Belarus, for example, with a population of 11 million inhabitants, but the United States, with its 300 million?! First of all, it's not feasible from a technical point-of-view and, second of all, such a population would immediately know that they are being cheated and would react.

Further more, we are talking here about a system that has been functional and has worked for 250 years. We are not aware of any election frauds reported throughout the history of the United States, it's strange to see this go about, all of a sudden, somewhere in 2000, after 250 years of functional democracy.

Finally, on this topic, as throughout the book, Michael Moore really presents no arguments, no proof of his ideas, making us be quite certain that his book is a mere exercise of style and of critical thought. Do we see anywhere in the book actual proof that all that he asserts has truly happened? Do we see documents, transcripts, recordings etc. Watergate was a viable accusation because it could be proved with recordings of the entire affair. Clinton's sexgate could be proved because there were people, individuals, who could vouch for what had happened. However, in this case, there is no actual proof, only mere assertions.

One of the things that is entirely bothersome in this book, tied to what was mentioned previously, is the fact that Michael Moore seems to find an incredible talent of blaming any insignificant dysfunctional issue in the American society on the White House and the Administration in general. In my opinion, one of the very strong examples in this sense is revealed in the very first chapter of the book, entitled "The Sad and Sordid Whereabouts of bin Cheney and bin Bush."

Already, the title itself expresses the very aggressive, subjective stance that Michael Moore is choosing to use in this book. You can actually criticize in a decent, polite fashion, but he chooses an aggressive language, not necessarily satirical or as a caricature, but impolite and unworthy for a critical opinion. However, this is not the point here.

The topic of this chapter is things you can no longer take on the plane (yes, very interesting...) and, distinctly, the problem that butane lighters were still allowed on the plane, despite the fact that passengers were not allowed with other objects just as dangerous. He is then proceeding to suggest that this is because of the fact that cigarette producers have lobbied with the White House to pass on an act that allows lighters on airplanes. We have a total of 1429 words trying to convince us, with the usual Michael Moore rhetoric, that the cigarette producers are the source of all evils, because they are the cause due to which lighters are on planes

This is just a pretext, as we read on, we find out that "unless there was no real threat at all. The hard and difficult questions must be asked: Is the "War on Terrorism" a ruse, a concoction to divert the citizens' attention." Obviously, Michael Moore is developing his theory of conspiracy from the very first pages of his book...and he keeps committing to this aim throughout the book. The ties he makes are truly amazing: remember, we had started with the materials that were banned on planes, reached lighters (that were not banned), went through to not prove that the cigarette producers had obviously lobbied this at the highest levels of decision, only to pinpoint the obvious: war on terrorism is a diversion.