Documenting the disastrous rightward lurch

Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 11/9, is a clarion call to seize the opportunity we have to use what is left of our democracy to keep this country from driving off a cliff.

Don’t think that you are immune to what is happening in this country because you live in a fairly prosperous, white, sheltered community. There are multiple Americas, and many of them are suffering.

I was surprised at the size of the outrage just this year shown to us so clearly by this documentary and not by the media. The recently departed CEO of CBS was quoted as saying about the whole Trump phenomenon: “It may not be good for the country, but it’s damn good for us.”

The “collusion” not spoken about enough is that between the major news networks in minimizing widespread support for Bernie Sanders. All this and much more that led to the election of an incompetent president and the disaster for so many in the two years since is explained in this film. The poisoning of Flint, Mich., and the hopelessness of people disenfranchised by policies designed to remove the rights we have come to expect did not have to happen. The speeches of Donald Trump chosen by Moore make it clear that recent policy changes are deliberately written to advance white supremacy at the expense of the rest of America.

As a 103-year-old woman who drops her ballot in the box in the film says, “This is the most important election in my lifetime.” A T-shirt on a man in one of his rallies sums up the rightward lurch Trump has precipitated, declaring “I’d rather be Russian than Democrat.”

This movie is an informative history of crime, incompetence and malfeasance fueled by greed, ignorance and a lust for power. If we are lucky it will come back to a screen in town before the election.