Capitalism: a Love Story

Seen at: the Lyric Cinema Cafe, a couple weeks ago at an afternoon matinee (Lyric doesn't give tickets)

When I walked out the Lyric after seeing this movie, my reaction was "brilliant...and braindead." The brilliant part was Moore's examination of the corruption of Wall Street. There was also some good on-the-spot documentation of people getting their homes confiscated during foreclosure.

The braindead part was when Moore actually tried to draw conclusions. According to Moore, capitalism is "evil" (actually wording). He flat out pushes Communism at us as the solution, showing us footage of Stalin while implying how foolish we were to think that this is what Communism is about.

At one point he goes to Washington, D.C. and looks at the original document of the Constitution, notices that it says "We" and "People" and concludes that it is not a capitalist document but sounds a lot "like that other ism." That pretty much sums up the depth of his thinking on this issue.

A lot of hilarious idiocy is woven through, most of it in trying to do gymnastics to defend his personal savior Obama (He-Who-Must-Be-Adored). For example, Moore goes through the list of revolving-door Wall Street cronies that filled the Bush Administration. He includes Timothy Geithner in that list, implying Geithner was a Bush appointee. But it was good old Obama who appointed Geithner. Like I said, braindead.

At one point, he implies that the entire prosperity of post World War II America was because we had bombed our competition into the ground. Then later he implies it was because of strong unions, and we need to get back to that. Which is it, Michael?

We are told profit is evil, and shown the solution: a bread factory in California where the workers are the owners. We are told that profit motive is now banished in decision making. I nearly fell out of my chair. That's capitalism, Michael, staring you right in the face!

Moore is not about logical arugmentation, but about feeling. All solutions are about how they sound and feel. And this leads us right to the end, where he asserts that everything would have been perfect if we had just adopted FDR's Second Bill of Rights which basically makes poverty Unconstitutional. The solution was easy all along! I was surrounded by middle-aged and elderly liberals in the audience who were weeping and clapping as FDR appeared on screen at the end. Then the credits roll while we hear a Vegas nightclub version of the Communist Internationale hymn.

I know Moore doesn't give a damn if his arguments make logical sense. He's going to make lots of evil profit off this movie that will give him a chance to make more movies. The problem is that I do indeed care that arguments make logical sense. To anyone who does, Moore's movie will be utterly infuriating, mostly because people are actually listening to him.

As the emoting liberals left the theater, leaving me alone in the auditorium, I sat with my bad containing the copy of The Gulag Archipelago I was reading. If you want to read about people getting their homes confiscated, as well as tortured, and killed by the system by the millions, it's a good read.

Verdict: hypocritical and illogical.