These are more or less the words that Michael Moore uses to close his latest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. They are urgent words, asking us, the American people, to step up and do something about corporate greed. Of all of the films Mr. Moore has ever made, this is the one he's been really waiting to do, and examines a subject that we really shouldn't be idle on much longer.
Mr. Moore's movie is scattered all over the place, though. The economic system, our meltdown, capitalism, is such a huge topic, that it would take three or four hours to fully cover the entire subject effectively. With the two hours he has, Mr. Moore presents effective and not-so-effective arguments for...well, I'm actually not sure what he is arguing for exactly. The downfall of capitalism? The uprising of socialism? Neither, I think, but maybe for corporations to stop being greedy...
The movie follows Mr. Moore's usual tactics of trying to meet with CEOs and being denied by security guards. You almost feel sorry for those guys having to deal with what the CEOs should come down and face (though that is what security guards are for). And there are scenes of weeping Americans, and yes, it is pretty horrifying that anywhere from seven to nine police cars show up to evict a family from their house.
Probably one of Mr. Moore's best examples of capitalism run amok comes in a story about a Pennsylvania Juvenile Detention Facility, where kids are sent there for nearly a year for doing crimes as petty as setting up MySpace pages joking about how the Assistant Principal sucks. That the judge is paid millions for sentencing these kids (none had a chance, as several of them recall) is a crime too horrific to be true, but it is.
Another very shocking revelation comes in life insurance policies taken out by companies on their employees, so that if an employee dies unexpectedly, the company will be the primary benefactor in that employees death. Even more offensive is that this practice is referred to as "Dead Peasant Insurance." How is this legal? It was explained, I think, but Mr. Moore points out that it shouldn't be because it's the same principle as taking at a claim against your house burning down because then you would want...that house to burn down!
And if you really want to get pissed off all over again at the bailout, perfect for you because it happens again. Though what pisses me off most about the bailout is that there was never anything stipulating how the money was supposed to be handled. So AIG gave it's employees bonuses and sent its CEOs or whatever on multi-million dollar vacations.
Mr. Moore doesn't offer many solutions, but there is one shining example of the Chicago factory workers whose building was shut down with only 3 days notice, and no severance given to any of the hardworking employees. Those employees refused to leave the factory until Bank of America came down and resolved the issue. It's uprises like that that show how much power the average American holds. We just don't realize yet.
Probably the most chilling section of the movie comes from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's final State of the Union address, which he gave via radio because he was too sick to do it public. However, he had the cameras film him saying that he proposed a second bill of rights in which every American would have the right to a home, a job, healthcare, and education.
I find the musings of both liberals and conservatives on the issue of Michael Moore amusing. Most commonly he attacks the Republicans, but he is also a strong critic of Bill Clinton, and though he sings the high heavens to Barack Obama in the movie, he would easily turn on Obama as well. People have different outrageous opinions, but here is a movie that I think you can't highly disagree with, at least on the most basic level. That corporate greed has run amok is no secret, that Citigroup planned to take over the world back in 2004 should have been reason enough to tear their building down brick by brick, and that our money that was supposed to fix the economy has been mainly used to benefit CEOs, and has not reciprocated to us, should cause us to march on Wall Street and demand, like Mr. Moore, every cent of our $700 billion back.
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