Why Michael Moore?

I enjoyed “Roger and Me”, “Downsize This” and “Capitalism: A Love Story”. Nice stunts – especially the crime scene tape around Goldman Sachs (was it?).

But apart from enriching himself – while wearing a faux-loser slobcap – has Michael Moore changed anything? What industrial jobs has he saved, what bankers brought to justice, what pharmaceutical company greed punished?

Along comes Donald Trump, a genuinely crass populist, but one who as soon as elected starts to take action about the haemorrhage of reasonably-paid factory work. Now, citing national security, he’s also put a temporary moratorium on arrivals from a list of “countries of concern” drawn up under the previous administration.

Moore wishes us to treat him as deplorable – but the attempt to do a “Je Suis Charlie” is a stretch. We are not all Muslims, Muslims are not at all the same thing as terrorists, the ban is not on Muslims, and not all Muslim-dominated countries are on the list.

You don’t have to like Trump to get a little suspicious of Moore. He’s good at making us cheer his ineffectual sallies at the rich and powerful, but really, if it were up to him, would anything actually get done?

For the economic issue it may be too late, anyhow – tools and equipment shipped abroad, skills rusting and lost, money flitting elusively round the world like a Jack-’o'-Lantern – but a combination of sideshow virtue-signalling and mob-inflaming isn’t going to put that or any other matter right. Many Facebook users appear to be losing their minds, insta-reacting with screams to every new issue, and Moore is happy to photobomb America’s existential crisis to wind up excitable idiots and make an extra buck or two.

I wonder whether, in private, Moore thanks his Maker for Trump’s election to the Presidency.