Fact Check

Slacker Nation: Fact Check

“I’m going to be in 60 cities between now and election day,” says Michael Moore as he opens his new documentary, Slacker Uprising (2008). “Our goal is to get as many of the 50% who don’t vote to come out and vote this year.”

It soon becomes clear, however, that the objective of Moore’s campaign was not so much to ‘rock the vote’ as it was to get people to vote against President Bush.

The campus rallies in the film consistently feature strong anti-Bush and anti-Iraq war sentiment. Moore attempts to perpetuate these sentiments during his campaign to influence people to vote for Kerry – or rather, not so much for John Kerry as against Bush.

Kerry and his policies themselves are rarely mentioned.

Throughout the documentary, one common thread is that Iraq War veterans as well as their families are consistently featured, and in every case the veteran or their family is implicitly against the Iraq war and Bush. While it is never outright stated, the implication on Moore’s part seems to be that overall throughout America, most veterans and their families are against the war.

However, according to Gallup, this is not the case.

In a study titled, “Relatives of Military Service Members Divide on Iraq War,” it is revealed that 58% of people who have no close relative in the military say the Iraq War was a mistake. A distant 40% say it was not a mistake– an 18 point difference among non-military families.

On the other hand, the poll reveals that of people who are part of a military family, only 51% say the war was a mistake, while 47% say it was not – a four point difference in military families, compared to 18 point difference among non-military families.

In other words, military families are more likely to support the war.

Additionally, Moore features actual veterans of the war who speak out against it and are actively ‘for’ Kerry, suggesting that ‘even the soldiers don’t support the Iraq War,’ and therefore by extension, don’t support Bush. But is this accurate?

No.

According to a USA Today article, ‘Troops in survey back Bush 4-to-1 over Kerry,’ written a month before the 2004 federal election, the vast majority of serving military personal supported Bush at the time of publication. 73% said, “they would vote for Bush if the election were held today,” only 18% saying, “they would vote for Kerry.”

The conclusion can therefore be made that Bush, in fact, held a formidable lead in veteran’s support during the election, with Kerry never coming close to Bush’s numbers.

This is a stark contrast to the insinuation in Moore’s Slacker Nation that military members and their families are overwhelmingly against Bush and the war.

Another area of concern with Slacker Nation is the repeated notion that it is ‘the poor’ who are sent off to fight the Iraq War. At one rally, Moore asks a group of pro-war protesters, “If you love that war so much, why aren’t you over there in Iraq? Why don’t you wanna go? Because you’d rather send the poor off to fight that war!”

But is this true?

Do the ‘poor’ do a disproportionate amount of the fighting in Iraq compared to the rich? According to an extensive a Center for Data Analysis Report led by Shanea Watkins, Ph.D., it is the opposite.

“Members of the all-volunteer military are sig­nificantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods,” the report states. “Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits... came from the poorest one-fifth of neighbourhoods, while 25 per­cent came from the wealthiest.”

The report essentially concludes that Moore is entirely incorrect when he directly asserts that the poor are being ‘sent off’ to fight the war for the rich. It is in fact the rich who are disproportionately represented in the Iraq war.