Michael Moore's 'Capitalism: A Love Story'

TriumphantAngel wrote:

cincybearcat wrote:

Byrnzie wrote:

You love living in a country where people can criticize your government but when they do you call them fat, hateful human garbage.
Like I said, a dog chasing it's own tail.

"Michael Moore, Fried food, narcisism, & hypocrites: A Love Story"

I'll help ya make it jlew so long as we don't appear in front of the camera and just focus in on the topic at hand rather than pimp ourselves out...what do ya say?

will you both be wearing these?

Byrnzie wrote:

'Criticize the messenger and ignore the message'.

Always works well for people with no argument.

Byrnzie wrote:

'Criticize the messenger and ignore the message'.

Always works well for people with no argument.

MICHAEL MOORE: Mm-hmm. Yes, I did start making this movie about six months before the crash. And, I mean, I was like, I think, a number of other people who felt that what was going on on Wall Street was really a house of cards that had been constructed to create this illusion of wealth for the investor class, which they like to now—which they say, you know, Americans are all invested now in the stock market because of pension funds and whatever. And I just felt that we weren’t that far away from something happening. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I thought this would probably an excellent time to begin this film.


Before the crash, something happened in August. You know, in America, we don’t, in daily discourse, use the words “capitalism” or “socialism.” They’ve been kind of nonexistent words, I would say, amongst the general public. And then in August of ’08, Obama is walking down a suburban street near Toledo, runs into this guy, Joe—we’ll call him Joe—and he says to him that he, Obama, believes it’s good to spread the wealth around, which, of course, is the basic tenet of socialism. And immediately, the Republicans not being that stupid, picked right up on that and started calling him a socialist, and we heard this word every day, “socialist, socialist, socialist, socialist.” I’m like, wow, I’ve not heard the word used that much in quite some time. It was, you know, partially amusing.


But barely a month later, the crash happens. And what does President Bush do? He goes on TV, a number of times. He starts making speeches at the Manhattan Institute and other places about capitalism. Today’s topic is capitalism. You know, and I’m thinking, now, when in my lifetime have I seen a president of the United States use the word—or make it the topic of a speech, where everything is about capitalism, capitalism, capitalism? I’m going, wow, now this word’s being used.


And I thought, well, we should probably take advantage of this moment, that now—now these words are OK to say amongst the general public. They’re not, you know, scary words, or they’re not necessarily loaded with whatever that was before—I can’t really put my finger on it, but, you know, say, if I were on the Today Show or, you know, something like that, and I just started talking about capitalism, you know, two, three, four, five years ago, they would have looked at me like, you know, why are you doing this? Are you nuts? And so, it allowed, in a strange way, for me, this film, and all of us really, now to have this discussion.


And I think that this economic system that we have is an evil system. I truly believe that it is essentially designed to cause harm to people. It’s not an accident that this happens, because capitalism is, in its own way, its own Ponzi scheme. You know, we talk a lot about Bernie Madoff, and I guess he became a nice poster boy and a distraction from the real subject, but, in fact, capitalism, especially capitalism now as we know it, is a pyramid scheme, and it’s set up so that, again, the richest one percent sit on top of the pyramid. Their job is to convince everybody under them in the pyramid, all the worker ants, that they, too, could be at the top of the pyramid someday, when, of course, they know only a few people can sit on top of that pyramid. “If you just sell enough Amway, you can be up here with us.” No, that’s really not how it works. But it has worked for a long time, because a lot of everyday average Americans started believing this, this ruse that they, too, could be rich someday.


And so, I just—I just felt like it was time to just go after this and name it and not be afraid to name it and realize, OK, I know all the names I’m going to be called and, you know, this, that or whatever, and, you know, what I’m going to, you know, be dragged through, but I just—I just am tired—it really is—I am tired of having to dance around this or deal with this symptom of the problem or that calamity caused by capitalism. I mean, I could keep doing this ’til the end of my life, and I don’t think anything is really going to change that much. And I’d like to see change in my lifetime. And so, I made this film to just kind of, you know, go for it and start a discussion and stop these people, who are just blocks from us, who right now are planning today’s moves to make life miserable for millions of Americans and people around the world.