Michael Moore: 'We have the power to crush Trump'

The director’s latest film, Fahrenheit 11/9, is a broadside against both the president and the Democratic establishment that failed to defeat him. He explains why a leftwing comeback is on the cards

It falls to Michael Moore’s empty stomach to help explain to me the difference between hope and optimism. “Right now, I’m hoping that somebody will feed me today,” he says. But that hope is passive. It may whet his appetite, but the disappointment will be all the more crushing if it isn’t satisfied. On the other hand, he explains, optimism is constructive, strategic. “I’m in a first world country, and somewhere I have a wallet with a credit card and some money in it. So the optimist in me has credibility, because it’s safe to say I will eat. Does that make any sense?” I mull it over, and I think so. While hope is passive, optimism determines the actions we will take.

Throughout our conversation – mostly in a London hotel as he munches on vegetarian dumplings – he scrambles around for these illustrations: some work, some don’t, sometimes he gets lost down a rabbit hole. But it is an insight into the mind of one of the western left’s great communicators: an almost obsessive desire to popularise political issues and causes, to trigger an emotional reaction among audiences that spurs them into action.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OtRCuK
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