Revolution came to town for a while–in the form of a movie, Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: a Love story.” It spent two or three weeks amongst us and then it was gone. For a revolution it didn’t cause much of a stir. In fact, after seeing it, I was amazed equally by the audacity of this exercise of freedom of speech and by the fact that it barely caused a ripple. Didn’t cause the sand beneath our feet to quake, didn’t blow the roof off any theaters. The paper didn’t have to devote a whole section to the controversy…Nuthin.
This movie is the most powerful and inspirational statement I’ve seen of what many, probably most, Americans are feeling about the truth about capitalism revealed in the financial crisis: that the bailout was a ripoff, that the money that went to failed corporations (including the notorious bonus money) should have gone to alleviate the tragedy of foreclusures; that it was strange logic to put those who profited by creating the money mess in charge of cleaning it up.That the emperors of Wall Street are wearing no clothes.
The movie includes outrageous little items like corporations taking out life insurance policies on employees so they can cash in on employee deaths.
In short the irrepressible MM pretty much blows capitalism in our time out of the water. How could such an explosive “j’accuse” be so completely contained in dark buildings?
Well, you say, we’re mostly choir here on Cape Cod, we don’t need preaching at. But have we no foreclosures, no laid off, no homeless, no Needy Fund? Has healthcare been wrested from the insurance companies? Is Cape Care,our own public option single payer plan, up and running?
There’s that phrase of the Left, “speaking truth to power. ” Watching that movie I felt (naively of course): Wow, how can Power survive this bashing by Truth? At the very least you’d think Power would be screaming: “Can’t someone stop him from saying these outrageous things about us? Here, you, here’s a billion dollars. Make another movie telling our side.”
But of course it won’t happen, any more than it has for any of his other outrageous exposes. Because Power doesn’t have a story. This is class struggle and the majority are losing it most of the time. Power could spin it differently, making deft use of such phrases as “free enterprise” and the “American way.” But they probably sense most of us wouldn’t go for it, any more than we would go for a draft in support of the war in Afghanistan.
No, Power takes comfort in the old saying, “sticks and stones will break my bones but words—even the words, and images of Michael Moore–will never hurt me.” And indeed, capitalism seems to have survived Moore’s latest assault.
Toward the end of the movie Moore runs a little known film clip of FDR in 1944, the last year of his life, the Great Depression a potent memory, laying out what he called a “second Bill of Rights.” The political rights of the first Bill—free speech, trial by jury and so on–have been essential, he says. But “these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness . . . true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” What is needed is a second Bill of Rights, including a job that pays enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation, a decent home, right to adequate medical care, adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
Who even knew of FDR’s second bill of rights?
Moore runs the whole film of this speech, commenting afterwards to the effect that all of the main combatants of WW2, including Germany and Japan, have every one of these essential rights guaranteed. The U. S. has none of them.
It’s an impressive moment.
Moore seems to think we ought to do something about it (other than electing Obama to do it for us).
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