Review: Capitalism, a Love Story

I finally got around to watching Michael Moore's film Capitalism, a Love Story today. I'm not really a big fan of Michael Moore's style, and I wasn't expecting too much. Being something of an anti-capitalist, however, I was anxious to see what Moore had to say about the current manifestation of the doctrine of profit-maximization. And the movie was just about what I had anticipated.

Moore provides some serious, if uncomprehensive, critiques of capitalism by focusing on the most glaring of its inhumanities. The segment featuring "dead peasant" life insurance policies taken out by employers on their employees without the knowledge of those employees was among the most egregious. Moore document numerous instances of corporations listing the death of employees on their profit sheets in addition to memos bemoaning the death rate of employees not living up to expectations.

The segment on the bailout that came from Congress was also done well, although Moore made more than subtle allusions to the type of conspiracy that sounds better suited to a John Grisham novel or a Central American country's political turmoil.

Nevertheless, there seems to be a fatal flaw in the documentary. The last half-hour is dedicated to the triumphs of the people. And in between clips of a successful strike scene at a factory in Chicago, clips of a group of low-income families sending away the representative from the bank and the police as they attempted to evict residents from foreclosed homes, and clips of protesters outside Wall St. are interspersed clips of Obama campaigning and people rallying at his rallies. But what has Obama done to distinguish himself from his predecessors. Sure, he campaigned on a message of change, but Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner are two of his chief economic advisors. Obama has populated his team of advisors with all the people who used to be in Washington.

Those who argue that the system has changed politically will point to the passage of the financial reform bill last summer as proof that the Obama administration is serious about tackling these issues, and maybe he is. Those of us firmly on the left, however, remain mostly disappointed with a president who campaigned on a message of wholesale change and has brought minor reform at the most. Moore portrays Obama as the man emblematic of the people's desire to profoundly reshape the country. If Obama was such a figure, then it will surely be more than just a few radical leftists who are disappointed.

What Moore could have highlighted to a greater extent was a changing social psyche regarding the power of the people. While I may condemn the Tea Party consistently for its anti-intellectualism, intolerance, and short-sightedness, it is representative of this newfound belief in the power of the people to be heard. Tea Partiers are upset just as much as leftists by the bailouts given out to the banks. They're populists, and so don't make much distinction between government elites, business elites, and academic elites.

I have said it before and I will say it again. What the country needs is an equivalent movement on the left to the Tea Party - a radically democratic movement that demands a certain standard of living for everyone in the country. In that sense, Moore did well to end with FDR's Second Bill of Rights. It highlights many of the concerns of our society today.

If you haven't seen Moore's film, and you're upset about what's happening to the country, give it a watch. If you think socialism is a dirty word, you probably already hate Michael Moore, but you should watch this anyway. It might show you that socialism in moderation isn't as bad as you thought it was. And if you're a leftist, you should watch this to know what ideas are out there on your side.

The Anti-Tea Party Call for Political Reform

If you believe the rhetoric of politicians, journalists, pundits, and evangelicals, the United States is on the brink of total ruin. A rising China threatens our global hegemony both economically and militarily. Even with the fragility of the European Union called into question the US dollar is still weak against the Euro. While the US is mired in two wars and three interventions from Libya to Pakistan, China is investing heavily in African resources and advanced technology. North Korea may have nuclear weapons. A war to crack down on drugs headed to America has left 40,000 dead in Mexico. And the economy still hasn't come back to full throttle after the economic collapse of 2008. All the while, those people we expect to lead us away from the disaster on our doorstep are mired in tribal bickering that makes monkeys throwing excrement at each other look like the nuanced dialogue of an advanced civilization.

How can we avoid descending into the type of tribalism to which we so often resort - think about the assassination of Osama bin Laden or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. These are not times to fling poo at our rivals. These are times to lead - to start the difficult discussions the country needs to have and to make the tough decisions the country needs to make. But when we are engaged in a two-sided war, competing for the power to wield the power, the political game is the only game that matters.

The frustration at seeing our politicians, our leaders, our representatives, descend into such petty mud-wrestling is what has fueled the vitriolic anger of the Tea Party movement. In fact, the Tea Party is so popular because even people who do not agree with their policy proposals associate with the movement because it so accurately expresses their anger with the established politics of the country. Many people have extraordinarily little faith in the government, and there are no other political alternatives.

But the Tea Party is reactionary. While it rightly becomes exasperated with Washington, its solution is to drastically cut the power that resides there. And while it might be appropriate to laud Tea Partiers for their commitment to the cause of governmental reform, a haphazard slashing of power so that politicians can make less of a mess of it is far from the type of considered, calculated, reasoned, rational response the country needs.

Mickey Edwards, a former congressman from Oklahoma, laid out a six-step plan to fix Congress. It hits at some of the issues of partisanship, to be sure, but it doesn't get at the underlying problem of tribalism in our society. Edwards offers a handful of solutions, but fails to put forward anything resembling comprehensive reform. And we are at a time when comprehensive reform is the only solution. Unfortunately, none exists.

But what if there were? What we need instead of slow changes to a comprehensively broken system there existed a committee of former politicians to tackle all of the issues of governmental reform. It could be lead by one Republican and on Democrat but would have the goal of doing away with all of the incentives towards two-party stagnation. Perhaps two former presidents would do the trick. Clinton and one of the Bushes? And the committee would necessarily have to comprise former members of all branches of government. And while it might be easy to find former congressmen, such a task for the judiciary might be more difficult. The committee could then look to scholars and academics, who should be incorporated across the branches anyway.

It is a bold solution, and it would be a bold move for any politician or ex-politician to support such a movement. But if such a movement does not gain traction sometime soon, either the Tea Party will do away with most of the benefits we now derive from the government altogether or we will continue in the same political gridlock that has brought us this close to the cliff. I don't know how long we can continue in this political inertia that draws us ever nearer to the precipice, but I don't think anyone wants to find out.

Jon Huntsman - A Respectable Reasonable Republican?

Since the Democrats came into having possession of both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2008, the country has dive-bombed to the right. While under George W. Bush's leadership, Democrats were left frustrated by both his domestic agenda and his foreign policy, many would most likely now prefer him to many of the Republicans on display in the primary. One exception to this rule might be Jon Huntsman.

While the rest of the Republican party has bolted straight for the right in a quixotic quest for purity of ideology, Huntsman has remained moderate and civil, a stance that Dana Milibank of the Washington Post suggests will doom him to failure. Milibank may be right, but being doomed to failure in this Republican field may leave Huntsman looking positively peachy for 2016.

Huntsman rejects the premise (expressed by many of the candidates at the Republican debate in New Hampshire) that Obama is an American-hating Europhile. Huntsman refuses to support Tea Party candidates just because they win Republican nominations. His family contributed substantial amounts of money to Harry Reid's campaign in Nevada. And he believes in civil unions for homosexual couples as well as human-caused global warming. Add that up and, as Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic rightly points out, Huntsman is an absolutely anti-Tea Party candidate.

But when the country comes back to its more moderate senses, which is already beginning to happen as negative attitudes towards the Tea Party increase, Huntsman may be the man to restore some semblance of credibility to the Republican party. While most of the party has decided to embrace its right-wing induced LSD trip to the fanatical, Huntsman has managed to avoid the mess by being a continent away as Obama's ambassador to China. And with the Democratic field not looking particularly strong for 2016, Huntsman may well have a chance at the general election.

Of course, he could get excoriated by the crazed right-wing candidates now to the extent that his political career is over. Or his campaign could be such a disaster (misspelling his own name and the state for the press release about his candidacy) that he can't run again in 2016, but if neither of those things happens, Democrats should be concerned because he could be a quite viable candidate for five years down the road.

Well, actually, Democrats should only really be concerned if they are Democrats of the pre-Obama era, when Democrats stood for liberalism, for increasing the social safety net, for higher taxes on the wealthy, and were against hawkish military intervention abroad. But if we're talking about new-fangled Democrats of the Obama variety, they might not have anything to worry about at all. In fact, they just might vote for Huntsman.