Michael Moore, bet noir of right wing, Christian fundamentalist, quasi fascist, nutcase America, has a new book coming out. It’s called, ‘Here Comes Trouble: Stories From My Life’ and make no mistake, Michael Moore has had more than his fair share of troubles over the years. You don’t take on the National Rifle Association, the US Health Insurance Industry, the entire Bush Administration and the associated US military-industrial complex, Fox News and their religious fundamentalist lunatics constituency, to name but a few, without making a few enemies. It is a fair bet to suggest that Michael Moore has received more death threats than Fidel Castro. He must be doing something right.

Years of round-the-clock security from ex US Seals suggest that these threats are more than just fanatical hot air. The right-wing in America want Michael Moore dead and they probably won’t rest until they achieve their goal. That’s the nature of US politics today. For all these reasons, Michael Moore has zoomed right to the top of my short list for World President. This man is on the front line and leading the counter-attack against corporate, war-mongering, gun-totting America, oblivious to the bullets flying all around him.

For a taste of what it is like to walk twenty-four hours in Michael Moore’s shoes it is well worth getting a copy of ‘Citizen Moore: An American Maverick’ by Roger Rapoport. It’s all in there, warts and all. Moore’s dynamite Oscar winning acceptance speech, which really got the right wing, patriotic hate mongers fired up, went like this: I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us. they’re here in solidarity with me because we like non-fiction. We like non-fiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fiction of duct tape or fiction of orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush, shame on you. And any time you’ve got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much, Citizen Moore’ P6

Now that’s what I call an acceptance speech. Bowling for Columbine, a direct hit against the National Rifle Association and the gun culture that they promote, was the first documentary, since Woodstock won best documentary in 1971, to win an Oscar. The acceptance speech coupled with the anti-gun culture of the film made Moore an instant hate figure in the highly charged atmosphere of Bush’s ‘war on terror’. The follow up documentary, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11 further cemented his traitor status amongst the rabid right. If that wasn’t enough, two explosive books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where’s My Country elevated Moore to Number One national hate figure. For the rabid right it was almost a patriotic duty to assassinate this anti -American devil. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox news stoked the fires of hate 24/7.

Rapoport digs up a quote from an old 1960’s counter-culture poet John Sinclair, which nicely sums up Moore’s power to influence and infuriate in equal measure. Sinclair explains: That’s one of the reasons Bush people and the big corporations hate Michael Moore. They hate him because he is powerful in the realm of ideas where no one else has any. They want you to be stupid. If you can demonise a whole population you can get away with anything. That way when they say go invade Iraq, people will say, ‘Good, I’ll send my son’. Moore goes against the grain in a country where you can buy a Congressman for two hundred thousand dollars. The President doesn’t cost a whole lot more. What it’s all about is less people getting more money. Now they don’t want to pay taxes. ‘Citizen Moore’ P315

I particularly like Michael Moore’s writing style. It’s hard hitting straight to the point with dollops of bar room humour and without all the pseudo academic waffle that clutters up so many texts that makes them all but unreadable save for a handful of likeminded academics. Moore can reach the working class citizenry of the United States in a way that few other commentators of the left can do. Moore is the working man’s Noam Chomsky.

In his Dude, Where’s My Country? Moore does a thorough demolition job on the Bush clan and their friends in the oil and military-industrial complex that is the real government of the United States. In the book Moore spells out the ‘special relationship’ between the Bush Clan and the Saudi royal family oil men all. In particular, it turns out there are extremely close links between the bin Laden family and the Bush family links that the US government would rather we knew little of. Moore asks President Bush the following highly revealing question: Were you aware that while you were governor of Texas, the Taliban travelled to Texas to meet your oil and gas company friends?

Moore provides the answer to his own rhetorical question: The Taliban, as you know, were invited to come to Texas while you were governor of the state. According to the BBC, the Taliban went there to meet with Unical, the huge oil and energy giant, to discuss Unical’s desire to build a natural gas pipeline running from Turkmenistan through Taliban controlled Afghanistan and into Pakistan. As you know, in the former Soviet republics east of the Caspian Sea, there’s hundreds of billions of dollars worth of natural gas and oil just waiting to be tapped. Everyone was trying to get in on the rush, and the US government was more than eager to help them. The trick to getting our hands on all this booty was in beating the Russians to it and we had to find a way to access it without having to build a pipeline through hostile Iran’ P27/28

Ah, now were getting close to the real essence of the US war in Afghanistan. Oil and gas baby and loads of it. It’s the same story in Iraq and again Moore does a magnificent job in exposing the lies, deceits and cover-ups in that little dirty oil war. A war that, according to Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, has cost the American tax payer some three trillion dollars. Little wonder the world’s largest economy is buckled and rudderless under the crippling weight of its national debt.

Michael Moore is signed up to do a stand-up tour of Britain next month and while I can’t afford a trip to America right now, I might just settle for the next best thing and snap up a couple of tickets to listen to the future President of the World.