Posts tagged Middle Ages

How We Got Here

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is the latest film by Michael Moore, the Academy Award–winning documentary filmmaker, and if you know anything about Moore, you can guess that this very good film will be entertaining and informative and that the title is ironic.

By that I don’t mean just the part about “Love Story,” but also the part about “Capitalism,” which in the United States has turned our economic system into something more resembling feudalism in the Middle Ages, but with modern corporations taking the place of lords and the nobility.

In fact, at one point Moore talks about insurance policies that some corporations take out on their employees, naming the corporation as beneficiary if an employee should die, and in the business these are known as “dead peasants”
policies.

Let me emphasize that: Corporations refer to their employees as “peasants.”

At another point, Moore says, “This is democracy, a system of taking and giving–mostly taking.”

The movie opens with an unusual request that certain people should leave the auditorium before the movie even starts, because what they are about to see might be too much for them.

Then we see a nice comparison between the Roman Empire and what caused its downfall with present-day United States, followed by disturbing videos shot during the forced evictions of homeowners from their homes.

We then get a history lesson of the career of Ronald Reagan, the star of B movies before he became a television spokesman for corporate greed and then continued as a spokesman for corporate greed after becoming president.

Moore says that the country was run by corporations and it was done for sort-term profits and destroying the unions, and we see and hear how corporations and banks wanted to remake America to serve them instead of the people.

The messages and examples are so upsetting that you would cry if you weren’t laughing at Moore’s commentary and his filmmaking tactics for making his points.

In the end, however, the film is very patriotic, and you will cry for joy at the hope that still remains.

However, be sure to stay for the closing credits to learn more interesting details about information in the film.

CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY is an eye-opening and entertaining lesson in where we are and how we got here.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”