By Ian Tuttle
Monday, December 21, 2015
In case this election season had not endured enough
stupidity, Michael Moore has gotten involved. Last week, the documentarian — a
word here stretched to its breaking point — posted on Facebook an open letter
to Donald Trump and a picture of himself standing on the steps of Manhattan’s
Trump Tower with a sign proclaiming, “We Are All Muslim,” which he is
encouraging supporters to use as a hashtag on social media.
This from the writer of a film called “Canadian Bacon.”
Whether Moore gives a pulled-pork sandwich about Trump’s
proposed “Muslim ban” is anyone’s guess. He’s got a new film out next week — Where to Invade Next — and he needs
publicity. But that being said, it was probably only a matter of time before
Moore took on Trump. Vadum vadum invocat,
or: One obnoxious self-promoter calls to another.
To be fair to The Donald, though: He has not yet reached
the nadir of inanity that is “We Are All Muslim.” Nor is he responsible for
what is surely one of the most puerile sentences ever to shame the English
language: “Just as we are all Mexican, we are all Catholic and Jewish and white
and black and every shade in between.” Or, in its moronic Platonic form: “We
Are All Everything.”
This is, of course, nonsense. But it’s also instructive.
This is exactly what diversity-mongers have in mind when they conjure
“tolerance” as the solution to conflicts in a pluralistic society: not a
respectful acknowledgment of our differences, but a ruthlessly enforced neglect
of them. Exhibit A, from elsewhere in Moore’s epistle: “We are all children of
God (or nature or whatever you believe in), part of the human family.”
Translation: “Everyone get along! We’re all carbon-based lifeforms!” Someone
tell ISIS.
Genuine respect is a far more complicated notion than
what titillates the neurons of Michael Moore. Unlike his mush-headed mantras,
it actually embraces the individuality of persons, the unique constellation of
attributes and opinions that makes them them
and not someone else. I am not a woman, an Ethiopian, a cancer survivor, an
Olympic mogul skier, a Miss America contestant, or a lover of kale — and it is
not helpful, but deceptive, if I claim that I am. Likewise, I am not a Muslim —
and it doesn’t help me forge a real, meaningful relationship with Muslims to
claim that I believe the shahada (the
core statement of faith that is the center of Islam). Contra Moore’s preferred
metaphysics, we’re not all the same uniform expiration of the Oversoul. We’re
radically distinct persons, and the challenge of an open society is to find
durable common ground on which to relate. Being featherless bipeds is not
enough.
This is, of course, hard work, and it gives rise to the
eccentricities and frictions that make societies difficult to steer — hence
liberals’ preference for homogenizing categories, for transforming communities
of unique persons into malleable blobs. Moore’s tagline is just liberalism’s
totalizing inclination brightly packaged. It’s for this reason that his
mindless stunts require a response.
Thankfully, doing so can be enjoyable. After all, Moore’s
heft has always been decisively of the non-intellectual variety.
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