Written by Doug Wilson   

I’ve often been disappointed in Michael Moore’s movies, though I appreciate what he’s trying to do: Wake America Up. To my eye, Where to Invade Next is his best movie, more consistently entertaining than others I’ve seen. The movie questions why America is the way it is and explores many European countries. In each one he focuses on a particular issue and shows how they have a vastly better way of doing things than we do. For example, in France he investigates how children learn to eat excellent, healthy food in a civilized way in school lunches. Finland has the best school results in the world, yet kids only go to school four hours a day. The Finns want kids to play, preferring to let kids be kids, which is how children learn. Many other examples are presented in a clear and entertaining way, because Michael Moore has learned to make good movies.

This movie got me thinking about the legacy of the New Deal: from the end of WWII until 1980, the collective wealth was widely shared. The working and middle classes were cut in on our collective prosperity, though hatred of FDR and the New Deal was commonplace with the 1%. With the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans in 1980, the owners and their corporate partners began to take back control of the wealth of America they were forced to share during and following the Great Depression.

After WWII the United States became the dominant empire in the world, harvesting massive wealth from the Third and Fourth worlds. Looking for new markets, they began to see the American people as a lucrative target. In the "good old days," people had to go to a bank to borrow money and a banker would often say, "You can’t get a mortgage, you don’t have the income to pay us back.” In the 1980s credit cards became widespread. If you pay them off each month they are a very good deal, but tens of millions of people have rung up massive debts. They have to pay massive interest rates, which the banks love. A recent article in the Atlantic said 47% of Americans couldn’t come up with $400. In the vernacular, they "don’t have a pot to piss in.”

Most of the people we know are upper middle class and are doing pretty well. They (we) still have money to eat in restaurants and buy a car now and then. Lots of people, some say 20%, are doing very well, they don’t want things to change, and they have power.
With massive cuts in the spending of states, many subsidies for college education have been eliminated. The bankers came to realize that college tuition was a new way to turn young people into cash cows. College debt, added to credit card debt, have created time bombs that do not bode well for our future.

Our prevailing economic model requires endless growth, so we’re devouring our planet. To keep things going, we have rampant consumerism. We’re choking on our stuff. There are alternatives and the Europeans have found many of them. It’s enlightening to see it all laid out clear as day. Though the current system is unsustainable, the famous phrase, "Apres moi, le deluge…” prevents us from implementing any alternative, any real change. That is where Michael Moore’s movie has something to offer.

Along with consumerism, our rarely questioned militarism has turned into perpetual war that enriches our military industries and destroys the civilizations of the countries we invade. When they fight back, we bomb them. Our nationalism, America First, prevents politicians from questioning our massive subsidies to “the military industrial complex.” We have been taught to hate government spending, but guess what? The U.S. military is a government program.

The economic system is going to collapse again. It is inevitable, since the same ideological fools who were running things in 2008 are still running things. This is detailed beautifully in The Big Short, a great movie that is a must see. It is scarier than any horror movie.

The people of Venezuela and Brazil, of Uganda and India, are used to poverty. They know how to cope with it. But the American people, after over 70 years of prosperity, are being wildly misled by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times. I fear that the American people are going to have a collective nervous breakdown. This will generate a misguided rebellion, of which the rise of Donald Trump is just the beginning.
No one wants to call a spade a spade, but we are digging our own graves.

The consumer society has consumption. Cough cough Kafka...

Doug Wilson
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it