Michael Moore's Mystery Message
by G. Stolyarov II
Gather round, and I shall teach you a new game, called “Michael Moore’s Mystery Message.” It is a fun game, really; you get to see a film, visit a colorful website, manage a few ironic laughs at someone who seeks to make you laugh at President Bush, and, at the end, receive a grand prize. What is this prize? That is a mystery to be unraveled, much like Michael Moore’s message. Are you ready?
Watching Michael Moore’s film, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” you get to look at pretty pictures of Iraq as a children’s paradise under the benevolent regime of Saddam Hussein. Toddlers laugh and run out of the arms of adoring mothers onto playgrounds that are filled with carefree little ones running about. The sun shines upon the prosperous land of Iraq, as our faithful and infallible guide, Mr. Moore, speaks of a peaceful country that had never attacked the United States.
Then come the missiles, the gigantic explosions, and the big, bad American soldiers who listen to obscene rock music as they shoot those innocent Iraqi children. Mutilated bodies of kids, stacked in the back of pickup trucks, are the horrifying consequences of this unjust occupation. Surely, those kids would have grown up to a far more prosperous future should the terrible Americans not have come! After all, their benevolent regime would have done them the service of … throwing their heads against prison walls, electrocuting the genitalia of their parents, paying midnight visits with the kind, order-maintaining security forces of the loving leader. But wait … Mr. Moore never speaks of these great rewards that non-occupation would have brought those kids! And what about the Kurdish kids a little to the north? Who could think that the big, bad Americans deprived them of the nerve gas that Uncle Saddam would inevitably have brightened their future with? Could something of Mr. Moore’s mystery message be found in that?
Further along in the game you find out that not only are the deaths of those kids our fault, but that the death of American soldiers is our fault as well. Mr. Moore tells you the poignant story of a once-patriotic mother in his hometown of Flint, Michigan, whose son was killed in action in Iraq. Moore takes us on this mother’s visit to Washington, D.C., where she meets a woman who is not easily swayed by appeals to sheer emotion. The mother goes away in tears, bitterly complaining to Mr. Moore about what the woman told her: that America’s enemies were responsible for the death of her son. She laments in a sorrowful voice that some people just cannot understand what she has been through … certainly, such an impassioned, sentimental, heart-wrenching appeal must mean that she is absolutely right! This must mean that the old Iraqi woman you saw earlier, who had, in tears, brought the curse of Allah upon us dirty Americans, is also absolutely right. Congratulations, Mr. Moore for that brilliant feat of analytical insight.
Now, we flash back a little to Mr. Moore’s persistent harping on the composition of the armed forces; how marine recruiters deliberately target the poorer shopping centers in Flint, Michigan, as pools of potential soldiers. Now, the men hired are usually those who can find few, if any, opportunities more promising than the military — this must mean that the ruling upper-class elite is subordinating and enslaving the struggling proletariat! It must all be a ploy by the rightist commercial barons to keep the poor poor by paying them higher wages than they would ever otherwise have seen and giving them the training and skills they had sought in the first place!
What is in Michael Moore’s mystery message about members of Congress? Well, they are reluctant to send their kids to fight the war they voted to support. It is a travesty of justice that, in this free market of labor, their kids can find more promising opportunities than the military, as a result of their skills, education, and volition … they should fight the war that their parents agree with … just as, if their parents morally support the cause of sanitation, they should all go and clean up the sewers, or, if their parents support the cause of agriculture, they should all go and plant crops! After thorough logical analysis, you have to accept the validity of Mr. Moore’s message.
Now, in this grossly unfair situation of un-egalitarian recruitment into the military, you have to take a look at yourself. Are you wearing a business suit or a nice shirt? Do you own two or more cars and a spacious home? Are you young and looking forward to a prosperous career? Do you share any of the foreign policy goals espoused by the Bush Administration, especially the notion that the Second Gulf War was somehow necessary or justified? Well, Mr. Moore, on his official website, will tell you that you are a chickenhawk, defined as “person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it; particularly when that enthusiasm is undimmed by personal experience with war; most emphatically when that lack of experience came in spite of ample opportunity in that person’s youth.” He will also add that “We’d all be much safer if [YOU] were actually on the front lines standing behind [YOUR] words.” He wants to temper your country’s militaristic forays into peaceful countries with kind, benevolent leaders who make kids laugh. After all, the best way for you not to kill innocent little kids is to make sure that you never get yourself into a situation where one of those innocent kids tries to kill you! Hmmm… does this message sound familiar?
“No! It cannot be!” you will say. “Michael Moore, the great opponent of the Bush Administration’s domestic intrusions into people’s rights and private lives, supporting a plan to draft me?” This kind, compassionate, sincere, brilliantly logical, and stunningly handsome man, who had turned and twisted your heart every which way during that masterpiece of a documentary of his, would want you to suffer some of the risks of his proletarian comrades in Flint, Michigan? And besides, the American public opposes re-instituting the draft overwhelmingly! Certainly, the friend of the people, Mr. Moore, would never openly state his support for it!
And he never did ... openly that is. But the arguments he had made, with respect to military composition and the consequent unfairness inherent in the volunteer force, with the need to “even out the burden” among the various social strata and hold the “chickenhawks” personally responsible for their policies, are precisely the arguments that Representative Charles Rangel in the House of Representatives and Senator Fritz Hollings, in the Senate, made when they introduced twin bills HR 163 and S 89, which would render every person residing in America between ages 18 and 26 eligible to be conscripted! Could that be Michael Moore’s mystery message?
You will find out, upon further examination, that the sponsors of the draft bills are all, with one exception, Democrats, members of the party which Mr. Moore desperately wants to win the next election. You will, too, note that the next election will take place in a little over four months. Could these facts and this timing all somehow play into actualizing the goal of Michael Moore’s mystery message, or is this just some bizarre, manifold coincidence?
Answer the question for yourself and spread the word to as many thinking individuals as you can, and you might just win this game and receive your grand prize: your liberty and your life.
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