CAPITALISM – A LOVE STORY, THE MOVIE

MICHAEL MOORE’S MOVIE CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY

I finally got around to watching the movie “Capitalism, a love story” that is Michael Moore’s latest film among many…Moore is a social crusader, but he also is an entertainer, whose films critiquing the Bush administration (Fahrenheit 911) and the nation’s gun culture (Bowling for Columbine) have earned him decent money.

Moore drives an armored bank truck up to the front doors of American International Group and Goldman Sachs Group offices looking to collect the taxpayers’ money that the firms received from the $700 billion government bail out. He then proceeds to wrap the offices of AIG, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase and the New York Stock Exchange in yellow crime scene tape and attempts to make a citizens’ arrest of various CEOs. Moore is perhaps at his best when he doesn’t say anything at all, as when a former Lehman Brothers executive tries to explain what a derivative is and Moore just looks understandably baffled.
At times, the movie is raw and emotional, regardless of Moore’s politics. There is a story of a family that loses their house in foreclosure and then is paid $1,000 by their lender to clean out their belongings. It’s a job usually left to a private contractor but the family needed the money. Or the story of how Wal-Mart Stores profited from a life insurance policy it took out on a young woman who died unexpectedly leaving behind her young family. The family of course got nothing, not even to pay for the funeral.
The movie is supposed to expose the suffering caused by the Wall Street profit machine, which had been facilitated by systematic and pervasive deregulation during the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations. The final insult was the financial rescue of 2008, which Moore says was a ploy to enrich the likes of Goldman Sachs, led by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and with the help of the Congressional Democrats, who stoked fear there would be mass chaos if taxpayers didn’t shell out billions of dollars for the banks.
There is absolutely nothing I didn’t know that Moore exposes in this movie. It is a harsh, only one sided view of a very complex problem that we are facing in our country. There are other mitigating circumstances and equally valid reasons for the economic meltdown like the irresponsible home buyers who took out mortgages they could not possibly afford.
What I got out of watching this film is that Moore’s message is something hopeful, that the American people will somehow find it within themselves to gain strength and fight with their votes and their ability to muster up grass root organizations to assert their superiority over the rich and the corporations. But I say: good luck; the rich and the corporations are not going to let go of their teat and will continue to suck that cow until it is dried up and falls over dead from dehydration.
The way our society has been functioning is to take away from the poor and the middle class, the rich will continue to take action to protect themselves from the rift-raft trying to deprive them of their ill gotten riches. In some cases they will be cruel and ruthless. We now have a new Supreme Court decision that gives the corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns. We also have the involvement of religious organizations not only providing funds for this or the other political causes or candidates, violating the long held concept of the separation of Church and State.
The movie leaves you with some hope that perhaps with the election of President Obama things might be changing. But one year into his Presidency we see that the realities are very different. President Obama has fought one of the most energetic and vilest fights ever seen in American politics just to pass one piece of legislation that ended up being watered down and imperfect. In his desire to be inclusive and bi-partisan, he gave in to the many demands from the opposition and got nothing in return, on the contrary, all he got was more obstructionism and opposition and the promise of more obstruction to come from Republicans.
I really don’t see how we can have even effective government if the premise that the opposition has is that “the best government is that which governs the least” and “government is the problem” a long held Reagan idieology like “trickle down economics” which is flawed and erroneous. I really don’t see how Obama and the Democrats will be able to fight again and again for much needed legislation. We are tired and we are sick of gridlock. We are disgusted with the Republicans and with the Tea Baggers. Some of us on the liberal progressive side unfortunately have a very bleak outlook for our nation.