It was pretty funny last night to see Fox News (Rupert Murdock and Friends) struggling to downplay Michael Moore's surprise appearance in Wisconsin, calling him a clown and insignificant, etc.
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| Michael Moore |
Simple.
Because he matters. Because Wisconsin matters. Because every word Moore breathed is true. Because some people in the United States are finally waking up and smelling the stench emanating from corporate America—from the morbid greed in which American democracy is slowly putrefying and from the rotting corpses that the corporate American machine leaves daily in its wake at home and around the world.
Don't just listen to the edited version of Moore's speech that the big business media are flogging. Read what he really said in full and in context. Here's the whole speech, as delivered at the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison, on March 5, 2011 :
“America is not broke.
“Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
“Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
“Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
“And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.
“I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inverters, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs.· That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.
“The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It's part of the Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.
“The truth is, there's lots of money to go around. LOTS. It's just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:
“1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart -- because you -- yes, you, too! -- might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep your head down, your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.
“2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin' awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. "Here! Take our money! We don't care. We'll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!"
“The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).
“Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It's just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!
“So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.
“Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job. That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he's stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare airport. That's how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he's just another slob.
“And that, my friends, is Corporate America's fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement -- a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don't understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. "Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!
“‘There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you...?’
“America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!
“Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.”
Michael Moore has always shown the ability to break down the complex lies that we are spoon fed daily into simple, mostly awful truths. And he brings those truths to us in the form of straight talk and brilliant satire. What he says makes sense because the truth behind the lie is easy to understand once the extraneous crap is stripped away. That’s what Michael Moore does, cuts the crap, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude.
4 comments:
Moore is an overweight marxist blob. His movie SICKO isn't even allowed to be shown in Cuba, for fear of the Cuban people demanding
the kind of health care the movie is talking about.
Newland is spouting the old, worn out liberal bullshit. Argentina was a thriving country once, but then socialism arrived and ran it into the ground. The Perons and the union thugs finished it off.
Nothing can replace capitalism and profit making. The Soviet Block finally learned it and western Europe is re-learning it right now.
Bye-bye, comrade Newland
Hi Dan! This is a long overdue visit to your excellent blog. I've just finished reading the previous entry, but would rather comment here as I have nothing new to say about de facto governements. I do have lots to say about autocratic ones, such as we're experiencing now in Argentina, but that's not the point here either.
Or yes, but in the U.S.!
Indeed, capitalism & profit making can be replaced or evolve into the most ghastly totalitarian governmental systems, creating highly unfair sociopolitical situations. You may not believe this, but way back when the Berlin Wall fell (a good thing, natch), I remember that my first thoughts were: "But now who will keep Capitalism in check? Who will kerb their hubris?" Not the long-dead scotsman Adam Smith, whose book on Ethics & Morals has been read by 0 people, and anyway economy students just carry The Riches of Nations under their arms to show off, never to study thoroughly. Neither did the average, content U.S. citizen read J. Kenneth Galbraith's books. So who, indeed, will check neocapitalism, if not the people, as evidenced by the Wisconsin events? A paradox, if any, especially as I'm still enthralled with Marx's thinking, plus the realization that Marx himself was only a very light shade of pink...haha...and did, indeed, represent the early socialist ideals way back in the 19th. Century. Perhaps I'm that kind of socialist, full of idealism about universal (almost) equality, something that doesn't seem to have been built into humanity's mentality way back when we rubbed stones to light fires. I do wish the term Stalinism or Leninism or whatever would be used in place of Marxism, whenever hatred of anybody with slightly left of centre thoughts speaks up. I want to point out right here and now that Marx DID NOT back conversion to socialism in Russia, because he considered that it would be indeed bloody, violent & brutal. Marx proposed that socialism be built on solid structures, i.e., that of capitalism! Not medieval feudal, barbaric "systems" such as that in Russia. Marx gazed longingly at countries such as France & Germany, which already had Constitutions and functioning republican systems, or else England, even tho' it's a parlamentary monarchy. In short, after admitedly siding with some extremist thinkers, he finally became horrified with pre-bolshevik fanatics and withdrew to London to spend his last years peacefully writing his books, mainly Das Kapital.
He outlined the manner of peaceful revolution (transition) to socialism in the highly unfair and mostly private-run industrial factories in Western countries. Marx's ideals have had a highly strong influence in Europe, especially in the more nordic areas, even tho' those countries are unwilling to admit it. So much so that they, too, have been blinded by capitalist consumerism, take the example of Ireland, which has been sadly arm-twisted into receiving "help" from the E.U. And so on...
I appear to be adding my own ideas to Dan's exceptionally clear-sighted articles; hopefully mine is not stuff that might muddy the waters, instead of adding a dainty grain of sand...haha..MICHAEL MOORE IS NOT A PINKO OR A COMMIE!!! He's a seeker after truth and fairness, and a brave man whom I admire greatly. May God protect him in a country where many brutal rightists (or mentally unstable people) might have him in their "cross hairs"...Thank you, Dan, and sorry for the ramifications, you know me! BTW, did you get to see "Winter's Bone"?
Obviously, Sylvia, no apology necessary. It fact, as usual, your interventions are a powerful dose of intelligence, knowledge and clarity in a world were people's mouth's are too often in fifth gear while their brains are in neutral. Thanks for stopping by. You know you're always a welcome guest.
Thanks for your comments, Mr. Weidekat. Obviously Cuba, as a dictatorship, imposes censorship, like all dictatorships do, no matter what color their flags may be. The fact that the Castros and their ilk would ban Mr. Moore's movies bears witness to the power of the ideas that his films contain, not to their irrelevance. I point this out because, in your uber-rightist zeal, you seemed to have overlooked this clear fact.
I should point out too, that I'm not a socialst, but indeed an American-style liberal. I define this as 1776 conservatism,e.g., belief in the ideals of the founding fathers of the United States...before corporations became the owners of the world and siphoned off all of the middle class's resources.
I doubt you think of yourself as an intolerant authoritarian jerk, even though you sound a little like one to me, and I, for my part, don't think of myself as anybody's "comrade". In fact, I have a distinct dislike for totalitarian communism, so I guess that makes us about even in our perceptions of each other (or at least our first impressions).
This said, it wasn't early socialist ideals (namely, the rights of workers to health care, proper working conditions and decent wage levels instead of the abject poverty and abandonment to which they were previously condemned under the modern brand of medieval feudalism then practiced in Argentina) that wrecked that country's thriving economy. It was, instead, over 50 years of pendulum swings between weak quasi-socialism, populist neo-fascism and military authoritarianism, accompanied by the corruption and chaos that all of these spawned, and that continues today under the KK autocracy. Perón's unions have never served as real unions but rather as part of a sometimes recalcitrant political machine. Comparing Argentina's case with that of the United States is a ludicrous comparison, not just of apples and oranges, but of, say, turnips and elephants. In other words, there is no point of comparison, nor are the situations even remotely similar.
Thanks again for reading my blog, Mr. Weidekat. I'm always open to intelligent debate and well founded ideas.
Don't hesitate to stop back, should you ever have any.
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