Every time I see a new Michael Moore movie, America looks a little different to me. I feel an odd mixture of hopefulness, anger, and spiritual fatigue. I just saw Moore's latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, this week and it's deja vu all over again.
If you believe Michael Moore and the folks featured in this jawbreaker of a film, last year's financial crisis was a coup d'état arranged at the highest levels of government--a carefully planned give-away to the friends of Dick and Dubya who got to shake down America for all it was worth and then some.
If you believe Michael Moore, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was poised to put America on the road to a just and equitable society with a second bill of rights (there is never before seen footage of FDR's famous speech), but died before he could make it happen.
If you believe Michael Moore, religious leaders think corporate America is an unmitigated evil, few lawmakers in DC are not on the take, and we're all chattel in something larger than life, and so obvious as to be invisible.
If you believe Michael Moore, there may soon be a popular rebellion against the rich in the United States of America.
Capitalism: A Love Story deftly limns the story of an economic system in decline. The film opens with footage of an old movie about ancient Rome just before it fell juxtaposed against contemporary shots of America and the spoils of economic empire.
A bank memo to top investors of a leading bank refers in bland terms to the plutonomy of America where the few become unimaginably wealthy at the expense of nearly everyone else. Various tales of corporate malfeasance march across the screen as Moore narrates with a carefully cordial sarcasm.
The human wreckage covered here is intense; there are foreclosed homes galore; the prison in Pennsylvania that turned the peccadilloes of children into a lucrative swindle pulled off by a crooked judge and an entrepreneurial politician; publicly traded corporations taking out life insurance policies on employees (unbeknownst to them) and collecting millions on so-called "Dead Peasant" policies; airline pilots so poorly paid that they have to wait tables at a greasy spoon to make ends meet, or accept pubic assistance. The parade of economic cruelties inflicted on the many by the few are painful to watch, a perfectly executed Peter Finch caterwaul that will end with moviegoers screaming out of their bank-owned car windows, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
The carrot that capitalism holds out--its best propaganda--is that everyone has a shot at financial success. It is a great piece of marketing for a system that, as Moore points out, is 99.99% closed to the masses. He drives this fact home hard, in the hope, it seems, that it will inspire popular revolt.
But while the reality is grim, there is hope. Scenes from a co-operatively run bread company are alive with hope and suggest a solution to the capitalism problem. Moore's detractors tend to miss it, but all his films provide a solution.
Want to fix this? Watch the movie. Demand regulations--a level playing field created by education, health care, and the rest. Stand up for yourself.
continued>>>
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beau-friedlander/will-michael-moores-capit_b_295744.html
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