I Am Disheartened to See So Many Progressives Willing to Let the President off the Hook

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page

02 June 16

rom the looks of it, the comments to my last Facebook post, in which I criticized our beloved President Obama for betraying Flint by publicly drinking its water (and thus falsely implying to the world that it was clean and safe to drink), has caused a bit of a row. I was also upset that Michigan's governor still hasn't been arrested for poisoning Flint's children, and the president still hasn't sent in the Army Corps of Engineers to replace Flint's damaged pipes.

From the reaction to my words, I guess it's clear that us Obama supporters fall essentially into two camps:

•Camp #1: Those who support the president unconditionally and without question because not only has he done so much good for this country, he needs every single one of us to stand and protect him from the Congressional obstructionists who have made it their mission to stop him from doing any further good. They're right about that -- AND the fact that this Obama Hatred is most definitely a race-based hatred. But then they take this position: Anyone who says a single negative word about President Obama - including those who do love him - are only helping the enemy.

• Camp #2: Those like me who voted for him twice -- the first time in '08 with great enthusiasm and emotion (truthfully, I teared up as I voted in the booth that day for Barrack Hussein Obama). Camp #2 is full of people who give him great credit for what he's accomplished and consider him to be possibly the best president in our lifetime -- BUT we are also disappointed that he squandered his opportunity to accomplish so much more in his first term when, during those first two years, the Republicans did not control EITHER house of Congress. We are disappointed that he's deported more people than all past American presidents combined, imprisoned more whistleblowers than all past American presidents combined, and has our military conducting acts of war in SEVEN separate countries -- more continuous years of war than any president in our history (more than FDR, Lincoln, Johnson or Nixon, according to last week's NY Times). This second camp of Obama supporters believes it is our duty to encourage him to live up to his promises, offer criticism when he's wrong and aggressively support him when he needs our help to stay strong and do the right thing. But we're different in this one way: We have never blindly supported any politician, no matter how good she/he is, and we see our job as citizens is to keep them all honest (and protect the good ones when needed from the bigots and the haters).

I'm always amazed that Camp #1 goes ballistic when Camp #2 speaks up and offers any criticism of Barack Onama. Hillary Clinton has successfully exploited this, taking direct aim at the Black community with her early denouncing of Bernie Sanders as anti-Obama. Even though Sanders has probably voted for Obama's programs 95% of the time, the fact that he has dared to question the White House's lackluster policing of Wall Street or why GITMO is still open has led him to being painted as some guy who doesn't have the president's back. It was Sanders who risked bodily injury committing acts of civil disobedience as part of the Civil Rights movement in the '60s while Hillary was "evolving," eventually seeing the error of her ways as a member of the Young College Republicans, and evolving further in 2011 when she admitted the error of her years-long fight against gay marriage, and again in 2015 seeing the error of her husband's "drug laws" (which she had once enthusiastically supported) that kicked off 20+ years of ruthless mass incarceration of African Americans). But as long she keeps repeating her mantra that she'll continue doing whatever Obama is doing, implicitly promising "a 3rd Obama term," well, that definitely seems cool with Camp #1.

As to my Facebook post on Flint, I am disheartened to see so many progressives willing to the let the president off the hook: "He didn't cause the problem!" "He's doing the best he can!" "He's got more important issues to deal with than Flint!"

That last one is the one that stings. Of course he had nothing to do with poisoning the people of Flint. That was done by a Republican governor who only did what he promised the voters in Michigan he'd do: give the rich a billion-dollar tax break and cut services to poor cities like Flint. This crime is on him -- and on the majority of my fellow Michiganders who voted for him.

But that's why we have someone like Barack Obama in the White House, to protect us from those who would harm the voiceless and the defenseless -- NOT land in Flint and shake the governor's hand and tell the people all is well, "just make sure you get the right water filter." Wow. Then he jetted off -- and few have thought about Flint since. Admit it. Admit it to me. It's OK. There's lots of things going on in your neck of the woods that I'm not thinking about today - it's a big country, and there's so much shit that needs stirring and we're all just doing the best we can do.

But the people of Flint have been poisoned -- NOT by a delapidated infrastructure, NOT by bad environmental policy -- but by a decision made by the governor to cut corners and then pass the savings on to the rich -- all the while knowing full well that the poor and Black of Flint had no way to fight back. That's not cynicism on the part of the governor -- that's just cold, calculated racism, a hate crime in any other advanced country.

That night, after Obama left town, I was deluged with calls and texts and emails from people in Flint -- distraught, angry, abandoned, and resigned to their lives being ruined, their children with permanent, irreversible brain damage, their city, our city, destroyed. No one will move here, no business will bring jobs here, everyone knows what the true appraised value is of their homes: $0 (which the state won't cop to because, if they did, how could they ever collect the property taxes on $0?).

I love President Obama, and if his daughters happen to run across this post of mine on Facebook, I hope they show it to their Dad. I hope he knows that Camp #1, with their unconditional, unquestioning support of him might feel good, but it's those of us in Camp #2 who are going to make sure he actually lives up to the promise of who he is and why he wanted the job in the first place. We are the ones who want his legacy to be that, when everyone else gave up on Flint, Michigan, and everyone else allowed the rich to plunder away, he was the one had the courage to turn his back on his Wall Street supporters and say "ENOUGH" and stop the madness in Flint. THAT is the President Obama we believe is still there, the President Obama who will be remembered for saving thousands of children in a decimated town that was once the best place in the world to live.