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I finally got around to watching Michael Moore's anti-capitalist screed "Capitalism: A Love Story," and it left me unbelievably pissed off! Now, before you jump to any conclusions about what I mean, based on the language I use, let me just explain myself, and save you the trouble of trying to guess. Michael Moore is, first and foremost, a brilliant and successful producer of pure AgitProp, plain and simple. I recognize his work as such, and that is why I rightly call it a screed. Most of the time, I don't agree with Moore's view or point, but I always deeply respect the skill and talent with which his movies are made. The man is a master of getting his view of the world across in an entertaining and evocative manner, and no matter how wrong or right I might think he is, I have to acknowledge the brilliance of his work. None of this has anything to do with my anger, however. I am angry, because for over a decade I have ranted about how this country has become an undemocratic corporate feudal state. I have ranted, but I have also kept an open ear, and mind, as people who, supposedly, know far more than I do about the financial system, have explained to me that my view is naive, uninformed, simplistic, romantic, and just plain wrong. I have always kept at the forefront of my mind, that perhaps I am really not as clever as I think I am. Perhaps my post-punk sensibilities, and peculiar life experience, have left me with a skewed view, which causes me to latch onto statistics that seem to prove my case, yet means something quite different to someone who has more than my, admittedly limited, knowledge of the inner workings of the financial world. Perhaps in my zeal to rage against what I see as one of the greatest injustices in the history of humanity, I lost the perspective to coolly evaluate the motives and actions of the people I excoriate. Maybe, just maybe, I was ascribing evil intent, and a willful subversion of everything I think America once stood for, where there was nothing but business as usual, and the status quo. The reason this angers me, is because in Moore's film, he mentioned a single document. Nothing else in the film really mattered to me, but this one document set my mind on fire. I had to find it, and find it I did. It is called Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, and put quite simply, it is a product of Citigroup Research that not just proves every single argument I have made over the past decade, but glorifies it as a wondrous new opportunity for the rich. More to the point though, and thus the source of my anger, it clearly shows that every single one of the people who has lectured me about my unsophisticated naivete, was either less informed than myself, less intelligent than I am, or purposely attempting to mislead me, knowing full well that some of the brightest minds in the financial world (at least if we are to believe the financial sector model of intelligence, where the biggest earner must be the smartest person in the room), not only had come to the same conclusion I had, but were actively advising clients on how to capitalize on the situation. |
