Michael Moore's political documentaries are full of personal characteristics. He is always from his own point of view, directly criticizing people and events, and many of them are also related to his birthplace - the small town of Michigan (Flint). He claims to be non-partisan and has attended rallies of the two major parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, in a high-profile manner, but in terms of political views, he seems to be closer to the Democratic Party, so some people label him as a member of the Democratic Party.
2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticized then-president-GOP George Bush; his new book "Fahrenheit 11/9" made the first impression of criticizing another Republican — Current President Donald Trump. However, in fact, the protagonist of this documentary is not Trump, but the internal problems of the entire American Democratic Party.
Although Michael Moore hated Trump as much as he hated the Bush family, his comparison of Trump to Hitler in "Fahrenheit 119" shows how much he fears Trump's governance . In "Fahrenheit 119", Trump talks about seeing "Roger & Me" and admiring it. I believe this is true, not polite. I even think that Trump's emphasis on "America First" "The policy was more or less inspired by Tycoon and Me.
1989's Tycoon & Me tells the story of General Motors CEO Roger Smith's decision to make massive layoffs at Flint in 1986. In this small town with a small population, nearly half of the population works in GM factories, but GM closed thirteen factories that year and opened the same number of new factories in Mexico to reduce costs and increase profits.
Michael Moore's goal in the movie was to find out Roger Smith, and take him to Flint for a circle, let him see how his decision made the town go from prosperity to destruction, and was even rated as the least livable in the United States place.
From the point of view of the incident, because of his love for his birthplace, and the Mexicans taking the jobs of those around him, he has an "America First" stance against GM's relocation of factories. "America First" has always been one of Trump's main policies, but the director has always been anti-Republican and anti-Trump. A man seen as a Democrat "agreed" with Republican policies, so he was later criticized as a self-contradictory leftist, reflecting the disproportion between the positions and actions of Hollywood celebrities, the Republican's McCain has publicly said Michael Moore was a hypocrite; he was also praised for his caring for his community and his political stance against people.
How you evaluate the event is up to you. But from the point of view of the business community, large-scale layoffs do not involve ethical behavior. The company's "vocation" is to make money and explain to investors. If it pays enough bereavement expenses when relocating the factory, it has fulfilled its responsibilities. If the relocation of factories makes the community’s economy unbearable, what should be criticized is the incompetence of the local government, and the fact that the planning of economic activities is too single, making the community overly dependent on a single institution.
Similar to Trump's "America First", he advocates keeping jobs in the United States, but his "America First" is to a certain extent this kind of thinking from the perspective of individuals and families, rather than the overall interests of the country, He just wanted the people around him to keep their jobs in the factory, so there was a difference in essence.
On the other hand, during the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, Michael Moore had criticized Trump’s America First policy on Twitter, writing a short article “America First! Earth Last! #ParisClimateAccord” alluding to Trump’s "America First" has brought the earth into crisis. From here, we can see that Trump's "America First" is completely country-oriented, without the awareness of globalization, and it is a kind of "state-centrism"; It's a more personal, yet more global way of thinking.
Is this way of thinking contradictory? Not necessarily, but there are definitely loopholes in this. The so-called "cultivating one's own family, governing the country and pacifying the world", if one ignores the layer-by-layer relationship in it, and only focuses on "cultivating one's own body, aligning the family and pacifying the world" and ignores the interests of the country itself, this relationship will form a vacuum, and ultimately it will be detrimental to the country and the world. But can Trump's thinking mode of "self-cultivation and governing the country" rather than "pacifying the world" be maintained under globalization? This depends on us to continue to observe for a long time.
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