Moore was born into an Irish working-class family in the small town of Flint, Michigan. As he said in the documentary, his father was an assembly worker at the General Motors plant, and his childhood was happy because an American worker was a comfortable middle class at the time (it was too much like my childhood). Passionate about politics in high school, dropped out of college to start writing and became a producer and made many successful documentaries. Since he is in China, he cannot see all the films (documentaries) he made. "The Psycho", "Fahrenheit 9.11", "Bowling in Columbine", "Capitalism: A Love Story", these are the main and highest level documentaries that I watched seriously. I wanted to write an article about Michael Moore for a long time, but I didn't know where to start. Some recent events reminded me of a lot of Moore's thoughts in "Capitalism: A Love Story", so I wanted to start with this documentary. Moore's thinking goes on to talk about democracy, about resistance, and of course China.
After watching "Capitalism: A Love Story", many things there are very similar to what I have seen in this country. Its content and my memory seem to merge, and I always remember many details of the film clearly. Let me introduce the film I know first, "Capitalism: A Love Story" is Michael Moore's reflection on the US free market system or capitalism after the 2008 US financial crisis triggered the global recession. You know it's a big deal, and it's what Moore has always been good at. (I have always seen the shadow of the progressive movement in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States in Moore's documentaries, and I have seen "dung diggers", but Moore is not a small-scale person, he is thinking about big problems, and he is specific. Thinking about big problems based on observing and exposing the ugly. This makes him more like exploring and thinking than filming a documentary, which can be seen in many documentary expressions.) "Love Story", who's love, what story? Moore told us that was the love of American democracy, a story of awakening. The film begins with a comparison between the United States and the Roman Empire, and the message is self-evident that the United States is in decline and it seems to repeat the laws of history that are bound to decline: the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, the unskilled cannot be found Work, play to death, institutions fail, etc. So why did America fall here? Starting with a railroad worker who was kicked out of his long-lived home because he couldn't pay his loan, the anger of those helpless led to reflection on the economic system—what the hell is capitalism? It is greedy and plunders everything that can be plundered, like the metaphor of a company executive who sells losers' houses for profit: vultures, but don't spit on themselves. But as if it wasn't like it used to be, Moore recalls his childhood. The happy life of an ordinary worker: can afford a house, a car, have vacations and benefits, can afford the life of a family including a wife who does not work at home, can afford the cost of their children's college education, and can have a sufficient pension. At that time, the United States established a real middle class, and the rich were charged 90% of the tax, although even then they could still live a luxurious life, and a lot of taxes were used for the construction of public interests. And when did the system go bad? Does capital gradually become dominant instead of being tamed like power? Jimmy. Carter had warned America that the greed of capital would destroy America, but when Reagan, whom Moore hated, took office, he began to turn the country into a corporation and cut taxes on the rich. In the ensuing time, gradually the rich and their beleaguered politicians started simply laying off workers and destroying unions in order to improve efficiency in order to justify their wrongdoings. The economy appears to be growing rapidly but wages for workers are growing slowly and are instead encouraged to borrow to spend. Until the GM company where his father worked would face bankruptcy, which is an inevitable result of the gradual erosion of social connivance capital. Watching the father and son come to talk at the place where my father works, I sigh. You know that Moore's first documentary warned GM to lay off employees. Now GM's situation has made Moore return to GM's Detroit headquarters and start a Moore-style struggle. (These are somewhat artistic but straightforward behaviors that Moore often does in documentaries. He likes to challenge restricted areas and break through taboos. When maintaining an unquenchable enthusiasm, some anger at the truth needs to be relieved. It doesn't affect doing meaningful things and it's infectious to self and others. Our society is always suppressing, stigmatizing, and even terrorizing the expression of emotions, and it doesn't help anyone, even the oppressor. The same goes for itself.) But the crisis is getting bigger, and another of Moore's hated politicians, Bush Jr., is defending capital. Moore explicitly argues with examples that capital and free markets in particular can make people more human and happier. He exposed the hardships of the exploitation of practitioners in the U.S. airline industry, cited the government agencies that help juvenile delinquents and judges colluded to turn public welfare into business, and cited big companies (such as Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, etc. as we know them well) to take advantage of the death of employees And take out insurance to benefit yourself, not your family. All of this distorts life and human nature. So has the American system failed? Actually no, this is what Moore has been reminding the audience, the American system has the power to correct the greed of capital but it seems that these things are distorted. Religious beliefs have been brainwashed by capital for a long time to change the society that was originally motivated by goodness and morality and replaced by profit maximization and the benefits of capital. In particular, democracy, the greatest weapon to check and balance capital (the Citibank report said in the film) is also deceived by capital. It convinces the poor that they can get rich too if they work hard enough, you are just a puppy at the dinner table and you will never eat as much food as your master. In the eyes of the rich, democracy is not a good thing, it is like "two sheep and two wolves decide what to eat for dinner", they prefer to implement dictatorship in the economy and business, that way they make rules and have resources and they will always be strong ! But in fact that doesn't deliver the benefits they say they claim, and Democratic businesses may be more dynamic. Moore interviewed such democratized companies in the United States and found that it was more alive and not collapsed in the economic crisis like GM. Moore said, in fact, the highest motivation of individuals in society should not be selfish profit maximization but should have higher pursuits (how many cars can a person drive in a lifetime?), such as democratic sharing, religious compassion, and scientific public welfare . But the fact is that capital in society is trying to push people into slaves of capital, such as making college students owe a lot of debt and then serve the financial industry. This is the same as the attitude of Chinese society towards college students, but it comes from something more traditional . The film goes back to its main focus, the trigger for this crisis, the financial derivatives. Moore exposes how the geniuses and regulators here exploit the people and gang up on their own in order to maximize profits. They first used your unprofessionalism to deceive you, used complex political and business relationships to modify the rules, and used their own resources for profit, and finally forced you into a predicament while you were regarded as a mob and an unruly and useless person. This makes people think about how the vested interests were formed in China's development history, how similar they are, and the hateful thing is that they are more direct. The regulators and big businessmen there keep getting richer in the process, and the FBI investigation (again, a mechanism) was swept away by 9. 11 interrupted. As a result, there is the current crisis, just like the dam failure in the movie is not formed in a day. And after crises, the makers of those crises and the politicians who represent their interests are kidnapping countries to pay for their greed. Here we see that democracy is distorted, and of course we also see the areas that need improvement in the American democratic system, such as whether companies should be granted citizenship? Is the media just being used by the rich with more resources to fool people in their pursuit of profit (which does not mean they are not independent)? Otherwise, how can democracy be distorted, why are democratic rights not used, and people are blinded? For the last 30 minutes, I remember, McMoore was calling on people to use democracy and the people had woken up. I clearly remember the excitement of the poor in the United States when Obama was elected President of the United States, that is their hope! That's what democracy is about, not just trusting people but protecting them. People need democracy, people need to protect the institutions that were established by the predecessors! People are awakening, and McElmore is also calling for people to be more awakened, to recognize the dirty and to protect themselves with democracy. What is the goal? Actually, when I was watching McMoore's documentary, I thought he must have loved Franklin Roosevelt so much, yes, the economic second bill of rights that America didn't build itself in the country America destroyed. The film repeats these hopes and the Internationale introduces, that's not communism, that's democracy!
After reviewing this film, we can clearly see McMoore's ideas of civil rights, his concern for the people at the bottom, and his hatred of the Republican Party and the rich. In his understanding, the rich and the politicians who represent them are distorting democracy, confusing the people, and imposing dictatorship and capitalism in various ways. They plunder wealth and confuse people just like the tyrants of the Roman Empire did! You know America is a model of democracy, even McMoore thinks that, they have democracy. Of course, that democracy is not in the institutional dimension, but in the depths of the spirit. This is often seen in his films. Those living at the bottom, the homeless, and ordinary workers have dignity, and they have nothing to do with it. And without self-confidence, they did not become slaves in the depths of their spirits. Those centuries of independence, freedom, and democracy in that country have melted into their bones. This is what makes America great, and this is McMoore's hope. Some might think that McMoore was too extreme against capital and their political representatives, but he became a man for Americans. In McMoore's eyes, the poor who are always plundered and the poor who are caused by injustice bear every disaster and the mission of maintaining the foundation of this country. What he wants to do for them, his greatest weapon is the movie! I refuse to live in this country, but I'm not leaving - Michael Moore, himself what made America a great nation. McElmore said that once the American people exercise those loves of democracy, all exploitation will stop, and those loves come from the efforts of the fathers, from the trust in people, from the love.
Democracy, democracy, democracy! There are too many misunderstandings about democracy in our country and society, which has caused many absurd and unexplainable things to happen in China. First of all, it is not who created democracy. You cannot find a few things and say that there is democracy only with them. If you have to say who produces democracy, that is civilization! Democracy is definitely an issue that can be considered in the dimension of philosophy. It interacts with other issues in that dimension, but the dimension of external realization reflects the sequence of enlightenment, science, free economy, resistance and democracy. And after a long period of development, this civilization that puts democracy into the inner meta-dimension that everyone has has changed from a minority to a majority in the West. There may be various reasons why some people are not aware of it, but it has been subtly injected into everyone's bone marrow. Just like Chen Danqing said that everyone he saw in the United States has a face that has never been bullied. That is how civilization has developed. Performance. Democracy in the highest dimension is love, kindness and trust, and in the real dimension, it protects the weak and maintains fairness and justice. Democracy can be distorted in reality, but democracy itself cannot be slandered. Democracy is love, you can't abandon love, that's not the direction of human evolution. Achieving democracy is a process of having love, like McElmoore said, it's a love story, and I resonate deeply with Moore . Secondly, some people in China are taking the attitude that may not be as drastic as Moore's to prove that the western system is not good either to prove its grey theory or the ideas that stale autocrats often have and have institutionalized by the autocrats, such as human nature. Evil is especially the human nature of the poor. The West has come a long way and is still moving forward today. That society is civilized, there is democracy, so you will feel that the most loving people in the modern world are produced there. Although, as I said earlier, capital is eating away love, and the democratic system still has loopholes, it is a higher-level issue, about human nature and suspicion of people. The most anti-establishment Americans like Michael Moore are also saying that American democracy can work, as long as the poor use democracy, the exploitation of the rich will not continue, but that democracy is distorted. The most typical representative is to slander workers and ordinary people as lazy and incompetent when Chinese capital is on the rise. This view is also heard from American capitalists and their representatives. It is even more ridiculous when the American capitalists and their representatives. When trade unions and workers protest against Chinese capitalists, the society and government that do not protect workers and recognize workers in this way have also become enemies with workers across the ocean. You know that the workers on both sides are not what the capitalists and dictators say. I am the son of a worker, just like Moore. What I have seen is that they are all able to endure hardships. Especially when they say that the Chinese are lazy, it is a bastard. It is caused by the system. of low efficiency. And the method of improving efficiency does not mean that the sudden wealth brought about by the unfair concentration of resources and the abandonment of social interests can be as successful as it can be. It is short-sighted and has no future if such results prove to be destroyed together. And capital efficiency in a democracy does not deny competition but also protects the weak. It is sustainable and brings about a virtuous circle, as reported by Michael Moore. For example, after World War II, when capital was at its weakest, Franklin Roosevelt worked hard to build a secure society. Although incomplete, it has achieved 50 years of prosperity. Just imagine without those guarantees, would the son of an auto worker grow up free to drop out of college to become Michael Moore? Will there be a Silicon Valley generation? Will there be a CEO and an economic upgrade? It's just that the beneficiaries are destroying the foundation that produces all of this, turning society from M to A. Finally, there is a logic in China that "we are like this, others are like that", for example, China has poor people and the United States has it; China has corruption, and the United States has it; China has political problems, and the West has it, and so on. I've never been able to figure out what this sentence means, and there's something wrong with the sentence itself. First of all, the problems faced by these two societies are not at the same level, although the universal problems are the same. Second, if it is a problem, it is to be solved. How do other people learn or you don't think about how others think from the things themselves The way to solve it, Lao Mei and Michael Moore never said that China also has such a problem, or that China also has such a problem, so what should be overturned will not be overturned. In the end, the person who I want to say these words wants to say that since every system in the world has such a problem, is there no problem if you overthrow one and establish the other? The funny thing is that even the Western system in their binary stagnation is being transformed by the anti-system, where there is an "other" template. This is the very absurd idea that I started to talk about, which is caused by the idea of maintaining the system under the authoritarian authority that does not solve the problem from the matter itself or is taught by people. In their eyes, there are no problems and pain. The thinking process of solving problems is only the result. If you are dissatisfied with this, you need to build that, and if that is not good, it is better to reform this. The previous thinking is blank. If there is no internal dimension, it can only be subtly educated to maintain a system that cannot produce how to transform itself. If it can be transformed like the society across the ocean, only some people can propose it. Anti-establishment claims like Michael Moore's and not the system cannot generate reform momentum.
How to achieve democracy? This is based on a correct understanding of democracy, or is it that you don’t learn from universal experience and practice in concrete practice, but always emphasize special features on big issues and small issues, stressing the universality, which will make people suspicious of you sincerity. In "Reflections on the Philippines", I wrote about the two ways that late-developing countries can achieve democracy. Twenty-one years ago, China's system was moving in the right direction. In such a nation with a thousand-year-old authoritarian culture, it has transformed its nationality and modernized human nature. A dominant force is needed, and no matter its name is the Communist Party or whatever, it is legitimate as long as it takes on this responsibility. But 21 years ago, power was not tamed, and capital was unleashed indefinitely and became the dominant force. China has no checks and balances at all. What a terrible primitive accumulation, the rapid economic growth on the basis of unsustainable exploitation, and the complete destruction of human nature. Power and capital have brainwashed and educated young people in various ways, just like Michael Moore said in the movie that capital controls young people, producing all kinds of weak and self-righteous ideas to maintain the system, which is like a doomsday carnival. What's even more terrifying is that these people are talking about reform, but they are resisting the real reformers. They only think about themselves and hate others, have no sense of security, and have bad morals! The democratization in China is even more difficult, and that path is much like McMoore's summoning of the love of democracy in the hearts of Americans, but it is more difficult here, not just to summon but to build. We can't even doubt democracy itself, so what else can we trust. In fact, no matter how difficult problems can be solved, as long as you transform people, you trust human nature! We are more like America 150 years ago, but someone has to do it, or our future will really be doomed. Those who are truly observing the society and thinking and studying independently will be very worried, like President Wen.
Finally, I want to praise Michael Moore, I resonate with you from the bottom of my heart, we are all doing one thing about love: democracy. Let us remember the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the goal of the world:
we have come to realize that without financial independence and security, there is no true individual freedom. 'The poor are not the free', the starving and unemployed are the raw materials for the creation of dictatorships.
In our time, these economic realities have been acknowledged as self-evident. We have embraced what is arguably a second Bill of Rights, according to which a new foundation of security and prosperity can be established for all people - some status, race or creed. These rights include: the right to
perform useful work and remuneration in our industrial enterprises, shops, farms or mines; the right to
earn an income sufficient to provide adequate clothing, food and entertainment;
all farmers producing and selling products sufficient to secure themselves and their families in The right to a decent living; the right of
all business owners, big or small, to trade in a free environment, free from unfair competition and control by domestic and foreign monopolies; the right of
all families to a decent home;
full medical care and adequate Opportunity to obtain and secure the right to a healthy body; the right
to be fully secured from financial worries about old age, sickness, accident and unemployment; and
a good education.
All of these rights mean security. And after this war is won, we must be prepared to achieve new goals of human happiness and well-being in the realization of these rights.
(Translated by Guan Zaihan, Selected Works of Roosevelt, p. 467, Commercial Press, 1982 edition)
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