I enthusiastically recommend Michael Moore’s new book, Dude, Where’s My Country? Like his runaway
best-seller, Stupid White Men, it is highly entertaining and informative, but here Moore strikes a far more
serious tone beneath the wit. In fact, the book contains perhaps the most concise and accurate discussion of the psychopathology
of the American political right I have yet seen.
Given the season, I haven’t had time to do a comprehensive review of Dude, Where’s My Country?, nor do I
think such a review is really necessary. Just go out and buy the book, and then loan it out to as many people as possible.
To entice you toward that end, let me present a few quotes from George Orwell’s 1984 that Moore, brilliant social
commentator that he is, thought worthy of including in the book:
"The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility
of independent thought."
"All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make
them accept longer working hours or shorter rations."
"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of
what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening."
"The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses,
all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job
away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off
his cap and address him as ‘Sir.’"
It’s not rocket science to connect these few Orwellian dots with the domestic and foreign policy steps taken by the
Bush administration since 9/11. I will try to address this subject in more depth after the holidays.
For the die-hard anti-communist reader of this post, let me mention that the book Orwell wrote in satirical protest against
Soviet Communism was Animal Farm. 1984 originated entirely from his experience as a propagandist
with the British Ministry of Information during WWII.
It is worth noting that Oceania, the fictional country in 1984 Orwell creates as the fiefdom of Big
Brother, was born of the political and military union of the United States and the British Empire. In 1984,
the Soviet Union became Oceania’s enemy, Eurasia. (Reference on request.) Orwell saw quite cleary
the potential for dictatorship and repression in the democracies as well as in the totalitarian states, and it wasn't from
the likes of Hillary Clinton.
Best wishes to all for the holidays, and I look forward to hearing from you in 2004!
Bill
P.s.: Check out the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom: www.gush-shalom.org. Lots of good material on the conflict. More on that later, too.
