For over two decades actor/director/producer Michael Moore has been using documentary films to rebél against the popular culture in America. In Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, Sicko, and more recently Capitalism: A Love Story, he respectively rebéls against Corporate America, the culture of violence, the war in Iraq, the American health care system, and now Wall Street.
He has an uncanny grasp of the essence of American capitalism. Moore understands full well that the U.S. government is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America, and that the American Empire is the largest, wealthiest, most powerful, most materialistic, most racist, most militaristic, most violent empire in history. He truly gets it!
And it has not eluded Mr. Moore that in order to avoid public scrutiny, government regulation, and the possibility of prosecution, Wall Street created a Frankenstein-like monster – a complex, ingenious, international network of hedge funds, derivative contracts, credit default swaps, and exchange-traded funds all based on sophisticated mathematical models. This greed driven maze was supported by a network of interconnected financial institutions linking every country to every other country and everyone to everyone else. So complex was this unwieldy monster that literally no one understood how the separate components fit together.
Moore is fully cognizant of the fact that the American economic machine is driven by money, power, speed, and greed. Unfortunately, he is a lot less savvy in his grasp of the problem of size in America. Moore appears to be oblivious to the fact that our country, our government, our cities, our corporations, our schools, our churches, our military, and our social welfare system are all too big, too powerful, too intrusive, too insular, and too unresponsive to the needs of individual citizens and small local communities.
However, his ability to poke fun at the system is without equal. The scenes in Capitalism: A Love Story where Moore is driving around Wall Street going from one megabank to another in an armored car seeking the return of government bailout funds is unspeakably funny. He is a very bright and witty guy!
Notwithstanding Moore’s blind spot when it comes to the problem of size, I would still give him an A+ for his definition of the problem of American capitalism. But not so for his unimaginative approach to the solution which differs little from that of any other knee-jerk liberal. Moore lays most of the blame for runaway capitalism at the feet of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He appropriately targets Goldman Sachs as a major culprit contributing to the demise of the U.S. economy.
Unfortunately, Moore does not seem to realize that the only thing that has changed with the election of Barack Obama is political style and rhetoric not substance. With the coming of Obama, Moore believes we are experiencing the “farewell to old America.” But Goldman Sachs is still in charge.
Michael Moore embraces the liberal panacea of campaign finance reform. All we need do is pass tough political campaign finance reform laws and all or our problems will fade away. But this is pure fantasy. Wall Street and Corporate America like things just the way they are, thank you. They will never allow tough campaign finance reform to be passed. Not only has our government lost its moral authority, but it is truly unfixable. Michael Moore has yet to confront this reality.
On the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in a recent interview Moore was asked “Do you have any heroes?” He responded, “Abraham Lincoln.” Apparently Moore is unaware of the fact that President George W. Bush learned most of his dirty tricks from Honest Abe, the father of American imperialism.
According to Thomas DiLorenzo in his provocative book, The Real Lincoln, President Lincoln invaded the Confederate States without the consent of Congress, suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned thousands of American citizens without a trial for opposing his policies, censored all telegraph communications, imprisoned dozens of opposition newspaper publishers, nationalized the railroads, used Federal troops to interfere with elections, confiscated firearms, and deported an opposition member of Congress. All in the name of freedom and democracy.
Finally, Michael Moore is also a fan of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a world class apologist for the American Empire.
Although Moore is a severe critic of the American Empire, he seems to subscribe to the view that only the Empire can be counted upon to fix itself. Regrettably, this means that Michael Moore is just another left-wing statist, just another American loyalist.
If Michael Moore were really serious about fixing the Empire, the title of his next film would be “The Second Vermont Republic: Alternative to the American Empire.”
Rebél
Thomas H. Naylor
September 12, 2009
