Excerpt of Stupid White Men by Michael Moore
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Chapter One
A Very American Coup
The following message was intercepted by U.N. forces on 9/1/01, at 0600 hours, from somewhere within the North American continent:
I am a citizen of the United States of America. Our government has been overthrown. Our elected President has been exiled. Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.
We are under siege. We are the United States Government-in-Exile.
Our numbers are not insignificant. There are over 154 million adults among us, and 80 million children. That's 234 million people who did not vote for, and are not represented by, the regime that has placed itself in power.
Al Gore is the elected President of the United States. He received 539,898 more votes than George W. Bush. But he does not sit tonight in the Oval Office. Instead our elected President roams the country without purpose or mission, surfacing only to lecture college students and replenish his stash of Little Debbie's Snack Cakes.
Al Gore won. Al Gore, President-in-Exile. Long live El Presidente Albertooooooo Gorrrrrrrrrrre!
So who, then, is the man that now occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? I'll tell you who:
He is George W. Bush, "President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief.
It used to be that politicians would wait until they were in office before they became crooks. This one came prepackaged. Now he is a trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. If I told you this was Guatemala, you'd believe it in a heartbeat, no matter what your political stripe. But because this coup was wrapped in an American flag, delivered in your choice of red, white, or blue, those responsible believe they're going to get away with it.
That's why, on behalf of 234 million Americans held hostage, I have requested that NATO do what it did in Bosnia and Kosovo, what America did in Haiti, what Lee Marvin did in The Dirty Dozen:
Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!
I have sent a personal request to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to hear our plea. We are no longer able to govern ourselves or to hold free and fair elections. We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops, U.N. resolutions!
Dammit, we need Jimmy Carter!
We are now finally no better than a backwater banana republic. We are asking ourselves why any of us should bother to get up in the morning to work our asses off to produce goods and services that only serve to make the junta and its cohorts in Corporate America (a separate, autonomous fiefdom within the United States that has been allowed to run on its own for some time) even richer. Why should we pay our taxes to finance their coup? Can we ever again send our sons off into battle to give their lives defending "our way of life" -- when all that really means is the lifestyle of the gray old men holed up in the headquarters they seized by the Potomac?
Oh JesusMaryAndJoseph, I can't take it! Somebody pass me the universal remote! I need to switch back to the fairy tale that I was a citizen in a democracy with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happy Meals. The story I was told as a child said that I mattered, that I was equal to every one of my fellow citizens -- and that not a single one of us was to be treated differently or unfairly, that no one was to wield power over others without their consent. The will of the people. America the Beautiful. Land that I love. Twilight's...last...gleaming. Oh, say, can you see -- are the Belgian peacekeepers on their way? Hurry!
The coup began long before the shenanigans on Election Day 2000. In the summer of 1999 Katherine Harris, an honorary Stupid White Man who was both George W. Bush's presidential campaign cochairwoman and the Florida secretary of state in charge of elections, paid $4 million to Database Technologies to go through Florida's voter rolls and remove anyone "suspected" of being a former felon. She did so with the blessing of the governor of Florida, George W.'s brother Jeb Bush -- whose own wife was caught by immigration officials trying to sneak $19,000 worth of jewelry into the country without declaring and paying tax on it...a felony in its own right. But hey, this is America. We don't prosecute felons if they're rich or married to a governing Bush.
The foregoing is excerpted from Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022
