In a media environment where engagement is currency, outrage pays.
“The villain doesn’t have to be real—just visible. Flags make the best blindfolds.”
When Hearst promoted Gabriel Over the White House in 1933—a film about a president dissolving Congress and ruling as a benevolent dictator—he called it “a prophecy”⁹. That film was backed by fascists. Moore’s was backed by comedians. But both asked the same question: what happens when the law becomes theater?
Moore’s movie wasn’t subtle. It was broad, messy, and too long. Theaters ignored it. History didn’t. Buried under slapstick was a savage truth: presidents don’t need real enemies. They need useful ones.
“Canadians walk among us,” says one breathless U.S. security official in the film, pointing out that William Shatner and Alex Trebek both passed for American for years. It’s a joke. But in 2025, the same logic powers school-board purges, state textbook bans, and election-denier campaigns. If the enemy can look like anyone—your neighbor, your teacher, your son—then anyone can be deputized to stop them.
“The machinery doesn’t need a villain—it just needs believers.”
The real irony? Moore’s movie imagines a nation distracted by invented fear while real problems—deindustrialization, inequality, mental illness—go untreated. That’s not a farce. That’s Tuesday.
And Bud Boomer, the earnest dolt with a badge and a baton? He’s not the villain. He’s us.
Sometimes I wonder whether Moore laughed when he saw the headlines catch up to his farce.
By the final scene, Bud has realized the war is fake. He tears down the propaganda posters. But the machinery grinds on. He didn’t build it. He just believed it.
The puck echoes again. Not in Canada—but in a sheriff’s locker room in Arizona, a war room in D.C., a school-board meeting in Ohio where the next enemy is being chosen by vote. The bleachers are still empty. But somewhere, another Bud is getting the call.
Outside, the surf keeps pounding against the rocks, steady as breath. The wind still howls. The same Atlantic that once swallowed a plane now swallows the sound of one more anthem beginning.
Bibliography
1. “National Emergency Powers.” Congressional Research Service, updated March 2020. Overview of powers available to the U.S. president under emergency declarations.
2. Katz, Elihu. “The Rally Round the Flag Effect.” Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 1, 1965. Early study on how crises boost public support for leaders.
3. Howell, William G., and Terry M. Moe. Relic: How Our Constitution Undermines Effective Government—and Why We Need a More Powerful Presidency. Basic Books, 2016.
4. Hersh, Seymour M. “Target: Sudan.” The New Yorker, 1999. Investigates the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant during the Lewinsky scandal.
5. Posner, Eric A., and Adrian Vermeule. The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic. Oxford University Press, 2011.
6. Reinhart, Carmen M., and Kenneth Rogoff. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton University Press, 2009.
7. Moore, Michael. Canadian Bacon. Universal Pictures, 1995.