Michael Moore has proven again and again that he has a remarkable feel for where the zeitgeist is heading. He's like a zeitgeist divining rod.
Roger and Me was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the auto-industry. Fahrenheit 9/11 was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the house of cards the Bush administration used to lead us to war in Iraq. Sicko was way ahead of the curve on the collapse of the US health care system. And now, with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, he is riding the wave of the collapse of trust in our country's financial system.
The film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, and all across the country on October 2nd, is a withering indictment of the current economic order, covering everything from Wall Street's casino mentality to for-profit prisons, from Goldman Sachs' sway in Washington to the poverty-level pay of many airline pilots, from the tidal wave of foreclosures to the tragic consequences of runaway greed.
Watching the film, I felt like Michael had climbed inside my head, made a list of all the things that have been obsessing me for the last 12 months, and brought them horrifyingly to life. It's one thing to know these things are happening; it's another to see them happening in front of your eyes.
Right from the beginning -- after a funny set-up juxtaposing End of Empire Rome and Modern America -- Michael goes directly to the beating heart of the economic crisis, showing a hard-working, middle class family being evicted from their home. The knot in your stomach starts to tighten -- and the outrage starts to build. Watch for yourself in this exclusive clip:
And so it goes throughout the film, with Moore successfully walking a cinematic tightrope, alternating between a punch-to-the-solar-plexus critique of the status quo, heart-wrenching portraits of the suffering caused by the economic crisis, and laugh-out-loud social satire.
The film also turns the spotlight on some underreported gems: an internal Citibank report happily declaring America a "plutonomy," with the top 1 percent of the population controlling more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent; an expose of "dead peasant" insurance policies that have companies cashing in on the untimely deaths of their employees; and amazing footage of FDR, found buried in a film archive and not seen in decades, calling for a Second Bill of Rights that would guarantee all Americans a useful job, a decent home, adequate health care, and a good education.
And Moore underlines the irony of Larry Summers being put in charge of fixing the crisis he helped create. A little like asking Kanye West to plan a Taylor Swift tribute.
While taking no prisoners, and directing equal doses of ire at Republicans and Democrats alike, the film also features a number of heroes, including bailout watchdog Elizabeth Warren; Wayne County, Michigan Sheriff Warren Evans, who announced in February: "I cannot in clear conscience allow one more family to be put out of their home until I am satisfied they have been afforded every option they are entitled to under the law to avoid foreclosure"; and Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who took to the House floor and offered a radical solution to the foreclosure crisis: "So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don't you leave."
In the film, Michael describes capitalism as evil. I disagree. I don't think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.
In capitalism as envisioned by its leading lights, including Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, you need a moral foundation in order for free markets to work. And when a company fails, it fails. It doesn't get bailed out using trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. What we have right now is Corporatism. It's welfare for the rich. It's the government picking winners and losers. It's Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It's socialized losses and privatized gains.
Which is why -- although you can bet many will try -- Capitalism: A Love Story can't be dismissed as a left-wing tirade. Its condemnation of the status quo is too grounded in real stories and real suffering, its targets too evenly spread across the political spectrum. Indeed, Jay Leno, America's designated Everyman, was so moved by the film he insisted that Moore appear on the second night of his new show, and told his audience that the film was "completely nonpartisan... I was stunned by it, and I think it is the most fair film" Moore has done.
After a preview screening last week (at which I did a Q&A session with Michael), he came over to my home for a late night bite. Over lasagna, he told me about an incident that occurred while he was filming that exemplifies how the economic crisis cannot be looked at through a left vs right prism.
It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.
While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go."
The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."
There is a real sense of urgency to Capitalism: A Love Story. I asked Michael what impact he hoped the film would have. He chuckled and said that, in some way, he had made the movie for "an audience of one. President Obama. I hope he sees it and remembers who put him in the White House... and it wasn't Goldman Sachs."
At the Q&A I did with Michael -- and, indeed, wherever he goes -- people who see the film are asking: What should I do to make a difference?
There are obviously many things people can do. At HuffPost, we are asking everyone to bear witness by putting flesh and blood on the tragic human cost of the greed and corruption that have brought us to where we are.
Tell us your story -- or the stories about people you know whose home has been foreclosed, whose job has disappeared, whose kids can't afford to go to college, whose credit card interest rate has been jacked up to 30 percent, etc, etc, etc. And tell us the positive stories too: the heroes -- judges, lawyers, volunteers -- who are helping people stay in their homes, the neighbors who are coming together to alleviate the pain and make their community a better place to live in. You can tell these stories in words, pictures, or videos. We'll collect them on a special Bearing Witness 2.0 section.
When people are given the facts and shown the reality of what is happening, they will almost always do the right thing. Help us keep showing that reality.
Follow Arianna Huffington on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ariannahuff
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The problem with Moore's final message that democracy is more important than capitalism is his trust in the American people. Thomas Jefferson said that "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government". One could make the argument that this is what the movie is trying to do. However, for democracy to work, people need to act in their own interests. What has happened in the US is that half the people are in a place where they would rather stick to a particular ideology even if it AGAINST their personal interests. When you can be convinced to do and say things that are against your own good, democracy breaks down.
In a country where 1/3 of the people are convinced that being offered a better deal for healthcare insurance is a bad thing, democracy is a very tenuous thing.
"We want to be denied health care!"
"We want to die of pre-existing conditions!"
"We want to pay more!"
The prospect is bleak for something like money when people can be manipulated into fighting against their own health.
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Went back to paying cash. That would be a strong message.
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But what I want to say is that after the lights went on I saw that even though many were well dressed the majority were the old lefties from the sixties and a big group forned all of us saying the exact same thing, we who were once the activists--WHAT DO WE DO?
I know Arianna is trying to address this, but learning from this film and espcially noting MM's last query as he's putting the yellow crime scene tape around Wall Street--JOIN ME--and I'd love to. So many are willing to do work to change this society but equally we, who once knew so much, have no clue.
Please link to what one can do esp as many of us are young-seeming retirees and ready to do anything to change the system as it now makes far too many among us suffer.
This is too appalling to leave to the politicians, it's for US to join Michael. HOW?Anyone?
Life insurance policies, on and on.
I went door to door for Barak. I hate going door to door, it feels creepy, invasive, and I am afraid of dogs but I still did it.
I am so disappointed with his hiring of Geihtner and dealing with corps the way he is, the way he isn't speaking out for health care clearly enough but most important, the war.
I agree with MMoore that we need to be the voice for him to lean on,
Why arent we up there rallying stronger. I ask myself this.
I think because what makes us so peacefull is our passiveness. Passiveness does not fight these idiots that are destroying us.
Turning the other cheek work but you have to do it as a group and do it in public.
For instance, these banks would hate it if we all tore up our credit cards,
Went back to paying cash. That would be a strong message.
1.) One thing I already did was change my voter registration from democrat to INDEPENDENT/NOT AFFILIATED, and I encourage everyone I know to do the same. That would definitely send a message to the representatives who have sold out on us. We are on OUR SIDE - not on Wall Streets and not on the side of the two established parties who don't do a thing for us.
2.) We need to take our demand to the Marketplace "Tea Party"-style!!! When I found out that each 200 employee Wal-Mart Supercenter was responsible for $420,000 A YEAR in taxpayer dollars (multiply by 2600 locations in the U.S. - that's more than 1BILLION a year in taxpayer dollars), all I could think of was a mass boycott in front of Wal-Mart stores across the nation with big signs that say :
GET WAL-MART OFF WELFARE NOW!!!!!!!
How can a company with the biggest gross revenues in the world (upwards of 250 BILLION a year) force its own workers onto FOODSTAMPS, SECTION 8 HOUSING, CASH ASSISTANCE, AND MEDICAID/MEDICARE, because it doesn't WANT TO pay them a living wage????
It's simply OUTRAGEOUS - but we allowed this to happen...
We need to change our lifestyles in a major way (and fast)...
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Take over your local Democratic Party. ...Getting a third party going and viable isn't going to work as well or as fast as cleaning house in what is supposed to be the populist party.
Michael Moore set out a list of 15 things - right here on HufPo. Here it is:
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This was the second half of the 1960s. We were at war in Vietnam. We had lost JFK and later that year we were to loose both MLK and RFK. The Cold War was in full tilt.
And there I was asking people to define and clarify, compare and contrast these two terms and help me understand them. To my astonishment, noone seemed able to give any meaningful distinction between "democracy" and "capitalis
So, I am not at all surprised today when many people seem to think capitalism and America's system of governance are one in the same, inextricably linked as we are with the fact that our state is supposed to be a democracy. Thus I will not be surprised at criticism of Moore's film based on this cognitive dissonance; for many people it will put them in a rubber-room for a while.
Meanwhile, I sure hope he pushes the point home that we have become a fascist state because I think this realization is the most likely to help people awake and rise to action.
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Michael Moore does not propose a solution and in fact states he has not even read Marx. He may not be a communist, but we are! And if this movie moved you to want to know more, to get into a critical debate about the future of humanity, human nature, and the fact that there is actually a real, viable and desirable alternative - COMMUNISM - then you need to tune into an amazing evening with Maoist political economist and communist Raymond Lotta. "Behind the World Economic Crisis: System Failure and the Need for Revolution" will be a live webcast on September 29, Tuesday, 7:30pm EDT. For details go to http://rev
People seem to have confused their "citizenship" with their "consumership" and I can't understand it either. It's one of the reasons the Ron Paulers and Libertarians creep me out:
I always love your posts but I have to quibble with one single word choice.
You used the word "Corporatism" when the proper word is Fascism. I would like people to use this word when it is the correct term because it is vital that people break their preconceived notions of who and what we are and see the truth - and the word fascism is jarring enough to most Americans to help them wake up. That is to say, we formerly were not, but now are a fascist state and it's vital that people get that if we are ever to recover from this situation.
Thanks for your attention to this little but important detail!
RTIII
Unfortunately, the elitists (left and right) in Washington are so afraid they will upset their own applecarts they are afraid to take a chance on the regular public unless it is voting time. There is not now nor will there be any real change in America until we have a world wide global depression that takes the rich down along with the poor, because, like I said earlier they don't have the guts to make real change.
i grew up across the street from the old studebaker car plant. i remember the union telling studebaker that when their employees no longer earned enough to buy studebakers that the plant would close. that is exactly what happened.
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