Pamela's Blog 49

Sunday, October 4, 2009 – Saturday, November 7, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma”

by Pamela Satterwhite

I’ve been mulling Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story, trying to put some flesh on this sadness I’ve felt since seeing it. It’s hard to disentangle, in the experience of any artistic work, the emotions of the recipient from those of the artist. It’s a mysterious intercourse…with unknown progeny.

Michael Moore says in the film, essentially, that the ball is now in our court…

…that it’s time for we, the citizenry, to step up.

He leaves the impression that it’s almost irrelevant what we decide to do as long as we get active. But that conclusion felt premature to me…presumptive...

…a truncated argument…stillborn.

There’s a twisted-Hitchcockian presence * hinted at, referred to, flat-out admitted into the scene of “democracy’s demise” with the phrase: “a financial coup d'état.” But as soon as we think we see it…it retreats from view…leaving, in me at least, a residual frustration…cognitive coitus interruptus.

And I’m not singling out Moore’s film for hitting this dissonant note.

There’s an ominousness behind every discussion I’ve heard of the financial “meltdown”…generally belied by the cheerful voice providing the commentary from the media industry. We’re treated to apparently inexplicable sequences leading to apparently “irrational” results: crumbling, untended homes bringing down property values all round; financial behemoths biting the dust; bankers forced to make “No Income No Asset” loans they don’t want to make…

…all at the behest of behind-the-scenes subverters of “democracy” (like it ever existed)…

…but why? What’s their game? This question screams to be answered…and yet Michael Moore apparently exhausted himself with the preliminaries.

Curious…coming from the man who gave us Bowling For Columbine, in which he embraced the mystery and followed its questions. That Michael Moore surely would have seized the opportunity offered when the priest answered his question, “What would Jesus do about capitalism?” with:

“He'd refuse to be a part of it.”

That was a door opened to Moore. Why didn’t he choose to go through it?

If he had, the obvious next question he would have found is: “How?”...

…which he could have shopped around the same way he shopped around: “Why are we so violent?”

He would have unearthed amazing ideas – unthinkable thoughts…

…that many of us are now thinking.

But Michael Moore – and we – all of us are faced with a serious dilemma. The sheer size, scope and nature of the vampire is daunting – its nature being to turn everything into itself.

Subliminally and sometimes consciously we're all aware that 'Power' is a closed system and that we're stuck in it...so subliminally and sometimes consciously we despair.

By the time you get to our age, Michael Moore and me, if you have his 'heart,' you've tried many times to break that circle down...while noticing it nonetheless continues to go round and round.

In Waking Up I argue that the only way to stake this vampire is by accepting the necessity of long-term planning and organizing – i.e., we have to have a plan, and we have to organize.

I mean, really, we've tried "pick-an-issue," we've tried "make-your-job-your-political-commitment," we've tried "do-your-own-thing." Only our united hands joined can strangle this thing...

...with consciousness.

And as planning is key, those who accept this work can start the "figuring-out" for those who come after.

So the key questions are: "how do we develop this necessary consciousness?" and then, "what are the next challenges to 'figure out'?"

In answer to the first question: I believe a few of us have to choose it...choose to become conscious...

– i.e., a few of us have to make this our work...

...and let our example shine on others...expanding the realm of "the possible."

And in terms of the second...see (in progress):

The 4 Ruses – 3

The Responsibility Of The 'Intellectual'...(Or Perhaps The 'Poet')

Wading Into The Muck Of State

Seeing The Communal Alternative

Becoming The Function (How The Job Is The Booster Shot)

* The English film director Alfred Hitchcock liked to slip himself behind a scene.

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Nas2EndWork "Pamela's Blogs":

Pamela's Blog 49

Sunday, October 4, 2009 – Saturday, November 7, 2009 by Nas2EndWork.org

“The Hidden Malevolence: AKA Michael Moore's Dilemma”