Michael Moore Kills Capitalism With Kool-Aid

http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=4005

In a faux-soothing voiceover narrative dripping with sarcasm meant to lull with its gloved malevolence, clownish Michael Moore (Sicko, 2007; Bowling for Columbine; Fahrenheit 9/11; The Awful Truth; Roger & Me) carries the spear yet again for his soapbox. (Not to mix metaphors.) (Too late.)

He plays gotcha with banks and Wall Street institutions, capturing security men impassively holding him off at Goldman Sachs, Merrill, outside Lehman, piteously holding empty money bags for the Market CEOs to toss down money to repay the taxpayer.

A native of Flint, Michigan, where his father worked the GM assembly line, he does close-ups on unemployed Detroit workers and their echoing warehouses and abandoned factories. But while he castigates the headmen at car companies, Moore fails to note that the industry died not because of greed on the part of the car industry, but because the very unions he lionizes in his nasal smart-alecky way charged more than the traffic—literally—could bear. The Japanese and Germans he rhapsodizes over—omitting the finicky point that they waged war to the death with us in the 40s, so their industry went understandably belly-up—are now back on track, charging less because their workers expect less, make less, and have fewer womb-to-tomb satisfactions doled out by their union HQ. They deliver the cars the public seems to want. It wasn’t beauty killed the beast, Michael.

Moore focuses his lens on the crying men and women being foreclosed. Their petite protests calling for the banks to stop ‘hounding’ them are covered in loving close-up. But not once does he discuss the meltdown from its ACORN-, Chris Dodd- and Barney Frank-encouraged mismatched underpinnings: The families could not afford these houses to start with, and foreclosure was an unfortunate foregone conclusion. It wasn’t all due just to the MBS people on Wall Street. These noble people squatting where they are no longer paying back their debts are simply caught red-handed as they tried to rip off the system. Oops! Our bad! pays few dividends in comfy home and hearth. To be sure, many are the culprits behind the meltdown, but this fairy tale is not the exegesis he thinks it is.

He gets cheap laughs throughout by quick, almost subliminal montage cuts of Palin, Cheney; longer and deeper excerpts of Bush 43; and all things GOP. He shows the tearful joy of students when the new guy is elected, shows his overhyped “Change” speech cuts. Taking aim further back, he mocks and derides Reagan for his movie and ad background.

But Moore elides all mention of the corruption that is now emerging, in the $835,000 handed out like Good’n’Plenty to the operatives and thugs of SEIO and ACORN. He gets in a few digs at Madoff, so we know he was tweaking the movie during recent weeks. While he shows the rise of the popularity arrow from candidate McCain to the so-so relative heights of the new guy, he somehow misses showing the equally fast plummet of his chosen in the past months. Fails to show the massive, much larger protests against the new President in townhalls or Washington, DC; fails to even mention that the people who shoe-horned the election results have been definitively exposed, are now disgraced and defunded. Fails to demonstrate the least journalistic responsibility on what might be the positives of Capitalism. Fails to show how, if the first bailout was a snake-oil deal, the recent doings of bailouts and porkulus bills are far more costly, and far more imperiously shoved down the public gullet.

Moore on the current occupant of such deals? He will have none of it.

Of his own millions, his apartment in a tony building in the City, his new office in Michigan, his fat bank balance owing to the same perilous capitalism? We hear nothing, nor any acknowledgment.

Of all the carefully sculpted half-told tales and stuff he pushes, there is one news gobbet that might be viewed as a scoop: He calls into question the dreadful custom of many large corporations of insuring their young workers in case of death. Untold workers died without their wives or husbands being at all aware of the heavy insurance policies their companies had bought against them. This was unconscionable.

This custom stopped, became public knowledge, before the film was complete. It should never have been allowed, and it does seem an unforgivably ghoulish and icy way to add gravy to the bottom line.

Moore also points out how shockingly underpaid many new pilots are; they need to supplement their incomes with waitressing or serving at MacDonald’s. But this is not news.

He has nothing good to say at all about this country, nor has he excavated any positive aphorisms on this exceptional country, from Ben Franklin to our day. He interviews radical priests in their richly appointed and gilded churches, unaware of the irony of these lavishly supported religious criticizing the institution of capitalism. Like Keith Obermann, who never dares entertain a guest who might disagree with him, Moore does not deign to interview anyone who might have a good word for the system that made him the modern Mr. Chutzpah, unshaven and richer than his entire lineage. By a country mile.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY, is divorced. From reality.

marion d s dreyfus is a movie reviewer at Rotten Tomatoes .

 

I understand that but GS is about as true capitalist as you can get. They are using their influence & power to get ahead and rob the people, once again. It's just business for them.

 

Nature is also balanced, has limits, and has no nepotism. Very different from capitalism.

The pyramid of capitalism is not far from the pyramid of Monarchy or Feudalism.

Market elements belong in most aspects of society but not all. Pure capitalists believe in "free market" for everything, including water and even air (if it was possible). Look up Bolivia and water privatization, does it look like capitalism is an awesome system?

You can also look at the Healthcare system in USA, which is pretty capitalist. Its primary purpose is profits, while patient care is just a problem that needs to be marginalized. Does it make sense that the industry of Healthcare strives to deny care to those who need it?

 

You confuse gangsterism with capitalism. Capitalism is a very good thing. But left unregulated, it tends to morph into gangsterism, just as cell multiplication is necessary to sustain life but, left unregulated, forms a malignancy. Consider the countries that recently found "democracy" and "capitalism" but without the checks and balances that help ensure honesty, responsibility and accountability. Not pretty.

 

govt regulation of capitalism :eek: ..
doesn't that move capitalism to the 'left" double :eek:

 

I think we NEED guys like Michael Moore to "stir the pot" if nothing more. Get people thinking again. And becoming proactive again. This isn't a level playing field, is it? 1% , the wealthiest in this country is dictating policy for christ sake. THEY set the definition and scope of "capitalism" :eek:

 

He wants those FDR principles put in place. I don't consider that stirring the pot.

Also, I am not sure how the wealth of the Google guys, Soros, Buffett, Gates, etc. affects you? So what that they made all that money...you have the opportunity to go try and make something happen too.

 

I don't think capitalism as properly thought of means having an unfair and unequal control over government to your economic benefit. GS has that.

 

Well, maybe you should read history and learn about the foundations & beginnings of capitalism. You can also learn more about the famous American capitalist families like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbuilts, Warburgs & Morgans. Check out how they held & established their monopolies, then you can really see what unfair is.

 

The process should be like in Mises' "Human Action". Clearly, we are not in the right direction.