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Book ReviewsDownsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American |
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Book: Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American
Written by: Michael Moore |
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Average Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5
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More Humor Than Substance
Rating:
4 / 5
Michael Moore's first book is old enough now for a review through hindsight. How did Moore's predictions hold up, and was "Downsize This!" sufficient to galvanize public opinion against Republican attempts to completely dismantle our nation's hard-fought business and environmental controls as well as against Democrat Party appeasers?
History has shown that the American public lost this fight; if anything, "Downsize This!" is eerie in its prescience, however, like the metaphorical iceberg, Moore could only expose what was either on the surface at the time or else shallowly concealed below-what lay much deeper still was serpentine and sinister. Downsizing now seems prosaic when compared to Outsourcing, and NAFTA seems more like an amateur diversion in the face of the current Chinese-Wal-Mart hegemony. The motive for all of this undoing is greed, greed at every level of corporate and political life. Moore connects the dots between the rise of Reagan and the influence peddling of Clinton and the New Democrats. Today, of course, those dots paint a full picture, but at the time it was still possible to hope for a presidential candidate who would put a stop to all of this. Americans are optimists after all (well, perhaps not any more).
I have found that older political books seldom hold up very well, and "Downsize This!" is no exception...except that political life in America has become surreal and Michael Moore has kept himself within the thick of it-he has grown in both wisdom and skill; his writing and films are now more biting than sarcastic; more angry than flippant. In "Downsize This!", Moore seems like a man at his wit's end with the transparent ridiculousness of the forces of greed in our country. He uses silly humor to vent his disdain upon the powerbrokers who appear to be able to have their way with us unchecked. But today, Moore's work has a hard, pleading edge to it-his humor does not distract from the terror he feels for our future. "Downsize This!" is worth reading if for no other reason than to witness this evolution within Moore, and to laugh at his few references to George W., as we know now, Moore's nemesis to come.
Downsize Michael Moore!
Rating:
1 / 5
Everytime Michael Moore writes a "book" or makes a "movie", he only proves that he's the "Limbaugh of the left", but only in the sense that he's everything the left says Limbaugh is -- especially fast and loose with the facts.
This book is no exception. Every America-hating whackjob will want to have a copy -- after all, believing Michael Moore is much, much easier than thinking.
How we're living now......
Rating:
5 / 5
The valuable work Michael Moore does forms the visuals that were once used by network news shows like 60 Minutes and Nightline to highlight the "consumer graft" that took place in our loose bureaucratic system, but applied to government. Government graft is much more fertile soil, however, and easier to report upon, and probably easier to locate - whether Republican or Democrat. The large media networks have given up on the stories, or could be considered part of it, now, so people like Moore are necessary to pick up the slack. It would be interesting to show how well government graft pays in relation to consumer graft, to see how former officials have catapulted themselves to the level of luxury to see how our tax dollars continue to work for them, long after they've left office. Those reality shows aren't typically run, however; it's much easier to appeal to the more important aspects of who needs what now, regardless of whether it is ever delivered through tax dollars. The field of dreams of broken promises to the public looks more like the yellow brick road to a deceptive OZ and the men or women behind the phantom mask that can't or won't deliver from behind the smoke screen that has become government today, well rooted in government yesterday. If government was voluntary self service, not a soul could be found to do it, very likely. So, we tolerate a system of people working for government, its perks and pensions, rather than government helping people survive and flourish. What is civil service about that? If corporate executives and authoritative organizations run the government show, we certainly don't need the "warm bodies" that fill the apparently plush official seats we have to announce their votes. That can be done from the hall of business rather than government. That elected officials, themselves, have become little more than rubber stamps in a rubber stamp world of fundraising for re-election to keep highly sought after golden pedestals is the permanent problem of American democracy (or any government) that no one challenges sufficiently to curb or contain it; yet all know it is the huge mushroom cloud it is that leaves nothing in its wake except cleanup and continuing cost cuts by consumers to keep up with the spread of its radioactive waste. First it was low taxes; now government wants social security cut to feed its exhorbitant appetite for luxury. Perhaps, more Michael Moore's need to be writing about the limits of government graft and how willing the U.S. is to indulge it - to its own demise, and certainly, to curb its own comfort in favor of the few who would convert the principles upon which it is founded to their own privatization campaign of "me first." Government pensions and lifetime salaries cannot help but bury America as government continues to burgeon. Why does no one look at those costs?
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