I'll say one thing for Dagbladet's review of Michael Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?: It's not what I expected. All the noise Moore's critics make must have breached the barrier to Dagbladet's alternate universe somehow.

The American satirist, activist and patriot Michael Moore is a red firework of contradictions, exaggerations and conspiracies. .. Michael Moore has made himself filthy rich by attacking the filthy rich. He attacks power and multinational corporations, but has himself become powerful. .. The problem is that Michael Moore is not very funny. .. In good conspiratorial spirit his connections [between Bush and bin Laden] are phrased like seven questions, but the "great secret" falls on its own implausibility when Moore consistently uses such authorized sources as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. .. Michael Moore is a mix of a secretary, a janitor and a president. He picks up stuff other people have written, cleans it up and brings it on to the public more or less truthfully. With rhetorical persuasion. .. Moore is harmless both as a comedian and a documentarist, but the combination is poisonous [ie. powerful, most likely -bs].

I'm almost tempted to forgive Dagbladet's half-hearted recommendation of the
book. The rationale seems to be that "yes he's unreliable and not very funny but the other side is just as bad":

The French aristocrat Alexis de Toquevill believed in the 1830's that the Americans always exaggerate. That may be so, but in that case "Dude, Where's My Country?" must be read in that context. One of Moore's toughest competitors on the bestseller lists was long the young, beautiful and blond journalist Ann Coulter, and her attack on the treasonous liberal US. Her reply to the September 11 attack was: - We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.

The US is an ideological war zone these days. Michael Moore is obviously an effectful warrior, documentarist/humorist or not. Now he's also armed with a general [Wesley Clark]. That is reason enough to take him seriously.

This is an improvement from seeing Moore as a knight in shining white armor battling the reactionary forces of the vast right-wing conspiracy, (as other reviewers clearly do), but it still misses the point in a big way. Yes, the US is an ideological war zone, with deep trenches on both side. Outsiders (and of course insiders, but outsiders more easily) often stumble into either of the trenches. The adrenaline kick of defending the borderland of civilization against the barbarians on the other side keeps them there. I've been there myself as a Chomskyite.

But there is an alternative. I'm not setting up a false golden mean here, (ie. the extremes are bad so all sensible people choose the center), but there are better ways to fight ideological wars than from the trenches. Two keywords are flexibility and politeness. Flexibility as in not being bound by the views of arbitrarily formed ideological camps. Ideological camps tend to include a lot of different viewpoints that are logically independent of each other, only grouped together because a lot of people have happened to share those views. The smart thing is to pick and choose. Politeness as in being careful not to use flame war rhetorics unless absolutely necessary. It is conceivable that people who disagree with you really are evil or brainwashed, but this is so rare that it's a good rule of thumb that they're not.

The alternative is not a middle ground where everyone agree with each other, while patting each other on the back - that middle ground exists, but it's a very dangerous place to be in. The alternative is a place where people fight ideas with ideas, ruthlessly and without euphemism, but where they are also careful not to confuse ideas with people, or unrelated ideas with each other.

Michael Moore and, (judging from the still quite shocking article quoted above), Ann Coulter, are trench-writers for trench-fighters, and should of little interest to anyone else. You can argue that liberals were dangerously naive about the Soviet Union without calling them traitors, or that Bush is dangerously incompetent without calling him a wannabe dictator. Only the people who do are worth listening to.

I suppose I will have to read Moore's new book, and that last one. His popularity worldwide and in Norway makes him sort of an important thinker (!), whatever I may think of him. (Same with Coulter). But there are so many good books to read! I can only hope that Moore's books really are funny, (and pray that they are short).

Bjørn,

Don't waste your time reading Moore's rantings. Time is too short to waste on garbage. Much better to read Road to Serfdom for the 10th time or Atlas Shrugged for the 11th time... :-)

Also, I find myself urged to defend Coulter once again. She is in my opinon both intelligent and thoughtprovoking (Moore is neither). Which could be the reason Miss Coulter appears on American TV news-shows almost every night, while Moore does not. Moore is irrelevant.

What exactly is so shocking about the now infamous quote "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity"?

First, it should be noted it was written just 2 days after one of her friends was murdered in the September 11 attacks. Context is important.

Secondly, all she said has come true!:
1. We invaded their countries (Iraq & Afghanistan)
2. We killed their leaders (Hussein brothers ++)
3. We are converting them to Christianity(http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,443800,00.html)

So, if you are "shocked" by her statements, you must also be "shocked" by the reality of current events.

I've heard the "convert" quote so often now that it has lost it's shock value, but take a look at some of the other things Coulter is writing:

"This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack. Those responsible include anyone anywhere in the world who smiled in response to the annihilation of patriots like Barbara Olson."

"The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or "religious" profiling."

"People who want our country destroyed live here, work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty."

"We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

She's saying it doesn't matter who exactly carried out the attack - she _knows_ instinctively that everyone who "smiled in response" are equally guilty, and are now America's enemies, (to be invaded, converted, etc.). And she's speaking of most of the Muslim world, not just Iraq and Afghanistan. Arab immigrants are like the Wehrmacht, the US has been "invaded". She advocates flattening the cities of these enemies to the ground, like the Allies did with Germany, with no regard for civilian casualties.

Do you agree with this? Not "would this be acceptable if we toned it down a bit and inserted a few qualifiers", but do you agree with what she wrote the way she wrote it?

I'm sure Ann Coulter has some good points. So does Michael Moore. But there are people who make those good points without screaming at the top of their voices from the bottom of a battlefield trench. Why not pay attention to them instead?

It is possible that I'm wrong about Coulter. It was, as you say, two days after September 11. If she has apologized for or retracted that statement, (or any similar statement, for that matter), I'd like to know. But last I heard she reacted to being kicked from National Review by sniping they liked to throw a bone to the liberals once in a while. That wasn't "oops, maybe I went too far", that was "damn them all, I'll fight this war alone if I have to".

As for missionaries coming to Iraq, that is far from what Coulter wrote. Don't play tricks with words here. "we should .. convert them to Christianity" in a war context is not the same as "we should make their countries free so that they, like all free countries, will be open to missionaries of all religions".

Bjørn, I have to agree with Johan here, at least partly. Although I do not agree with everything in this article, a lot of the quotes you put up as shocking aren't really. Like

"The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or "religious" profiling."

That is absolutely the case!

"People who want our country destroyed live here, work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty."

Again, this is a good description of reality and a strong case for ethnic profiling at airports, something that is routinely done in other countries.

I agree with Johan that you have to see this in the same context as "The Rage and The Pride", also written shortly after 9.11.

Lars: But is it correct to speak of an _invasion_? The implication is of a large number of people who have arrived on American soil, with the intent of destroying their nation. She's not describing al-Qaeda, she's describing Arab immigration. She compares immigrants to Wehrmacht soldiers.

This is not about ethnic profiling. The benefits and costs of profiling are pretty clear. Young Arab males are more likely to be terrorists than white grandmothers, so security personnel will find more terrorists if they look closer at the first than the second, but at the cost of offending an ethnic group. The benefit may or may not outweigh the cost - I haven't made up my mind - but the choices are clear enough. I'm not offended by cases for either side unless they're based on bigotry or dogmatic anti-racism.

What I object to is the image she conjures up to make the case for profiling. The word she's looking for is not invasion but infiltration. The US has been _infiltrated_ by a fanatical, murderous cult. A more proper (but probably ahistorical) WW2 analogy is with Nazi spies working out of German immigrant communities. There are many backsides of Muslim immigration to the US and Europe, but to speak of an invasion of fanatical murderers is hysterical.

We can argue of course that this obviously wasn't what she meant, that the wording was unfortunate, but that the underlying case is strong. We just have to filter out the hyperbole first. But why should we have to do that? Why listen to people like Ann Coulter when others make the case for profiling without hysteria? To turn the tables, we often object when people speak of the United States as a terrorist state. And yet many of the things American forces have done can only be defined as terrorism, such as the nuking and carpet bombing of German and Japanese cities. Let's leave aside for now whether this was justified, but it was, by any objective definition, terrorism, the murder of civilians to erode their support for their political leaders. So if it is essentially correct to say that the US has been invaded by a fanatical murderous cult, is it not also essentially correct to say that the US is a terrorist state?

That sort of rhetoric is only good for one thing, rallying people around your flag as you charge the enemy hill. Not much good for anything else.

Bjørn, I certainly agree that "infiltration" may be a better description than "invasion", although you could argue that while "invasion" carries a connotation of a great horde, "infiltration" carries a connotation of just a few people, which is equally far from being the case.

But would you then agree that the US (and Europe) has been infiltrated by (thousands of people from) a fanatical, murderous cult?

Lars: I would. That's how al-Qaeda operates. And al-Qaeda operatives are most likely a tiny minority of the millions of Muslims in the West.

The problem with the _other_ Muslim immigrants is partly sympathy with terrorism or at least with terrorist causes, partly that many get on the defensive when anyone tries to do something about terrorism, (as well as backwards traditions, but that's another issue). This is a problem. But it's a _different_ problem from an invasion of fanatical murderers.

Spinsanity, who is one of the more fair and unbiased sites around, have written about the "Dude" book and exposed quite a few errors and distortions:

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20031016.html

Like Bjørn I have a distrust for people who make everything into a total black and white culture war. Many (most?) people actually agree with leftists about some things, and rightists about others, and have to decide the lesser evil when they vote. People who dig trenches and try to make Bush or Clinton into total demons without any human qualities don't deserve all the attention they get.

I too agree but:

"you can argue that liberals were dangerously naive about the Soviet Union without calling them traitors."

The problem is there were Soviet agents and there were liberals who supported them - there were plenty who were plenty dangerous and not a bit naive.

>

Correct. The problem IS most of the Muslim world. There is no central imperial power enforcing totalitarianism on Muslim countries like there was with Eastern Europe - it springs from within the culture once Islam takes hold. Why is that so hard to accept?

>

Yes, once the muslim population reaches sufficient size, exactly like the Wehrmacht in India, Sudan, Arabia etc. The degree of ethnic cleansing muslims have accomplished in the Arabian peninsula especially would be the envy of the Wehrmacht.

>

Why not? The conventional, and usually sensible, view of this is that it is morally wrong and makes lasting enemies of the conquered people. But what if the enemy culture is so diseased that it believes massacring infidel civilians (the more helpless and harmless the better) is a good, and profoundy noble act, and regards one's failure to do so as an encouraging sign of weakness? Far from making enemies of Germany and Japan, bombing their cities crushed these two incorrigible totalitarian empires, turning them into economically productive allies of the USA. They have been meek as lambs for the last 60 or so years, saving countless lives on all sides. This is morally wrong? By questioning these PC taboos, screechers like Coulter render an important service in addition to their entertainment value.

>

Not every part of every sentence. But one thing you fail to mention about Coulter is the fact that she is an entertainer who is often genuinely funny, not a campaigner trying to convince people, making her relatively useless for gaining converts to the cause. Like the best comedy, her writing is intended to be at least nominally shocking to those who don't share her world view. In this she is just like Michael Moore, only funny.

>

Correct. The problem IS most of the Muslim world. There is no central imperial power enforcing totalitarianism on Muslim countries like there was with Eastern Europe - it springs from within the culture once Islam takes hold. Why is that so hard to accept?

>

Yes, once the muslim population reaches sufficient size, exactly like the Wehrmacht in India, Sudan, Arabia etc. The degree of ethnic cleansing muslims have accomplished in the Arabian peninsula especially would be the envy of the Wehrmacht.

>

Why not? The conventional, and usually sensible, view of this is that it is morally wrong and makes lasting enemies of the conquered people. But what if the enemy culture is so diseased that it believes massacring infidel civilians (the more helpless and harmless the better) is a good, and profoundy noble act, and regards one's failure to do so as an encouraging sign of weakness? Far from making enemies of Germany and Japan, bombing their cities crushed these two incorrigible totalitarian empires, turning them into economically productive allies of the USA. They have been meek as lambs for the last 60 or so years, saving countless lives on all sides. This is morally wrong? By questioning these PC taboos, screechers like Coulter render an important service in addition to their entertainment value.

>

Not every part of every sentence. But one thing you fail to mention about Coulter is the fact that she is an entertainer who is often genuinely funny, not a campaigner trying to convince people, making her relatively useless for gaining converts to the cause. Like the best comedy, her writing is intended to be at least nominally shocking to those who don't share her world view. In this she is just like Michael Moore, only funny.

Clem: The quotes you're responding to got lost somehow. Perhaps a repost? But:

On carpet bombing: "By questioning these PC taboos, screechers like Coulter render an important service in addition to their entertainment value."

Oh come on. Massmurder of civilians a _PC taboo_? How about the PC taboo on cutting thieves' hands off, or the PC taboo against fascism? Let's throw all that PC stuff out the window, every belief that also happens to be held by left-wingers.

Terrorism is wrong. World War 2 was an evil time, and the evil things the Allies did drown in a sea of evil and madness. But deliberately reducing Germany's and Japan's cities to rubble was wrong. We should not do anything similar again.

Terrorism is wrong, _and_ it rarely works. Remember that it did not work against Germany. The terror bombing started in 1943, if I remember correctly. Germany only gave up in 1945 when their leaders told them to, when their _army_ had been crushed. Whether the terrorism contributed to Germany's resistance I don't know, but it didn't do any good. Terrorism may have worked against Japan, but it was nuclear terrorism that achieved this, carrying with it the threat of the total annihilation of Japan. The conventional but more destructive bombing of Tokyo did not have the same effect. Are you prepared to nuke Arab cities to make them pro-American?

The whole ww2 comparison is of course invalid. The Arab world is not like Nazi Germany. Wahhabism and related forms of Islam are somewhat like Nazism, but the context is different and requires a different solution. Terrorism is not part of that solution.

On Coulter: "Like the best comedy, her writing is intended to be at least nominally shocking to those who don't share her world view. In this she is just like Michael Moore, only funny."

I agree. That's exactly my point, exactly why I dislike her. She's not _just_ like Michael Moore - there may be other, better mirror matches on the right than her - but she symbolizes and encourages the same faults. At the moment, her form of conservatism is new and fresh, she's a radical where left-wingers are often reactionaries. But a right-wing movement that has Ann Coulter as a flag carrier will age just as badly as the Vietnam-age left has.

I would advise to stay away from Moore AND Coulter. I saw Coulter on TV and even though I think she is more fair than Moore, she still goes a little too far.
Moore is a disgraceful liar, deceptionist extra-ordinaire, and not to mention a hypocrit.
Bowling for Columbine was one large reel of lies, deceptions, and what we call BULLshit. Some points of the movie were funny, yes. That cartoon about slavery, "white folks", the NRA, etc. was funny. It was mostly funny because it was utterly ridiculous.
I don't see how that movie got any kind of award for being a "documentary". That, is ridiculous.

"People in Canada don't lock their doors, see?"

No shit dumbass, no one locks their doors in the middle of the day when they're at home!

That made me laugh. That's what was funny about his movie, Moore trying to prove something, and making himself look like a moron.

Yet, the worst thing of all, is that people actually believe in his lies. That's the most dangerous part about it all. If there ever was a reason to abolish Freedom of Speech, that would be it.

I don't think Coulter's article is shocking at all. What is shocking to me is that people don't realize that they ARE in a war. Does it have to get really, really, really, really bad before we will wage serious war? I begin to think that even 9/11 wasn't enough to wake people up in the U.S. When even more horrific attacks occur, we will wish then that we had been more resolute and done more to raise the price of complicity with our enemies. Right now that price is not very high.

The Japanese were unspeakably cruel and determined to resist at the cost of huge American casualties. If civilians were killed in the process of crushing Japan's military it's too bad but we didn't start it . . . and the Japanese were quite content to slaughter civilians -- up close and personal.

It's rare for the terrorist of the last 40 years to have attacked anything BUT civilians. It's the so-called Palestinian national pastime at the present moment, with the added refinement of using children to do the dirty work. Restraint is commendable so long as it's not a formula for national suicide.

Precision in war is desirable too but when people have their loved ones slaughtered they tend to focus less on the precision and more on killing those who were directly and indirectly responsible. Who can blame them? Were those German civilians not ardent supporters of the Nazi war machine?

Moreover, it's not a choice between killing civilians and doing nothing. There are huge numbers of combatants and facilities that can be attacked with but minimal civilian casualties.

I am continually amazed at the cognitive dissonance it must require to find Moore repugnant because of his problems with the truth and not seeing that Coulter has the exact same problem. Both of them play so fast and loose with the truth I wonder why anyone bothers with either of them (although Moore is actually kind of funny, especially when he is less political and more social. Coulter is just nasty.)

Coulter only seems nasty and all that to people who have been so sheltered from politically-incorrect truth that they get the equivalent of the 'vapors' when they hear it.

Moore is a dense, dishonest, Madeleine Murray O'Hare lookalike (and think alike) through and through. He hates America, he hates God, he hates Christians, he hates white people who are Christians, he hates his own fat being, he is all about stupidity and hate. A thorough waste of anybody's time. Anybody with an I.Q. and understanding of the world above the Ted Rall level...

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