IGM Mikey

Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Mikey
9-7-09


Well, here he comes again. The Hetman of Hypocrisy, the Ayatollah of lie-a-lolla, the Demigod of Duplicitous, the Sheik of Shabby, the Dictator of Disingenuous, the Lord of Ludicrous, the Sultan of Sleaze, Michael Moore is back in town. This time he has chosen none other than Capitalism itself to set between the myopic, unfocused lenses of his foggy vision and his dog-pound level IQ.
Moore will be premiering his latest flick, Capitalism: A Love Story at the Venice film festival Sunday. I assume we are all waiting with baited breath to be bored out of our minds again with his vapid, sophomoric attempts at logic and his famous reliance on editing-slash-lying, rather than reason, to get his ever-so-nebulous points across. (I will graciously admit that now and then Michael has moments of clarity and makes sense. But they are isolated and no doubt accidental.)
Do I sound bitter? Not at all! Is it gauche to write a review before the premier of a documentary? Well, usually, I admit, but in this case we hardly need to wait to know what Mike has up his sleeve.
Let’s see what gems he has in store for us this time, shall we?

"Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil," the two-hour movie concludes.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that Moore will be picking on the banking industry, investment firms, insurance companies . . . big business in general, claiming that everything they do is evil, anti-American and bad for business. My guess is that Michael (like all of us) was hit pretty hard by the recent recession and the loss of investments. Except—and correct me if I’m wrong here—most of that stuff was due to Criminal activity, and improper, unnecessary governmental meddling.
Calling Capitalism evil, and blaming everything bad that happens on it is beyond silly. Once again Mr. Moore will be showcasing his less than stellar intellect and tenuous grasp on reality.
I guess we could use his logic on lots of things couldn’t we? Let’s see . . . Marxist Communism is responsible for the deaths of what? 200 million people in the last hundred years? Massive poverty, institutionalized pollution? I guess Communism is evil. There have been a few million deaths in the name of various religions, so all religion must be evil, right? Apparently carbon dioxide will be (inadvertently) killing millions of people any day now, so CO2 must be evil. TNT has killed a lot of people so never mind the miracles of engineering it has engendered—it’s evil. What about machines? Killed a lot of people over the years. The Industrial Revolution is evil along with all machines. Food? Kills people every day. Evil. Doctors? Evil. I could go on . . . and on and on.
Too many people take this moron seriously and its time we woke up and stopped paying the man any attention. Once again he will be blaming the criminal activity of a few people—highly placed to be sure—on an entire industry. Any precocious 5th grader can tell you that Capitalism, like any other ism, is neither good nor evil. People who embrace the isms are capable of good and evil, but not the ideas themselves. Mr. Moore remains a tragically confused individual. The fact is that Capitalism (which has never actually been allowed to be tried) has not only produced the single-most successful economy and nation in the history of the world, it has done so by managing to absorb far more abuse than other systems. Like some of those wonderfully tough WWII era fighter planes, it took hit after hit and kept on flying. This while trying to do its job with one hand tied behind it’s back. No other economic system has ever been shown to be even a fraction as successful under a fraction as much duress. When Mike looks at the thousands of millionaires Microsoft created almost overnight, I can see how he might rant about the rampant poverty that created. I think most of this whining is about jealously more than anything—everyone wanting theirs regardless of merit. Capitalism works. But Mike doesn’t care. He wants his fortune back. That’s what this is really about. Remember, he has made millions by participating in the capitalistic system. And criminals—criminals—who purposefully abused the system managed to do a lot of damage recently—to my wife and I as well as poor little Michael and everyone else—you too I’m sure. Now Michael will make a plea to the American public that our money needs to be protected. Well gosh, everyone wants that, right? Wrong. Guarantees destroy profits. Lack of profit destroys growth. Lack of growth destroys all dynamic systems. Look it up. Profits are no more evil than Asparagus. (I hate asparagus.) Profits gained through criminal activity will always be at the expense of other people and that is evil. But risk is the heart of the American Ideal. If we don’t understand that, if that notion frightens us to the point we are willing to do away with all risk, we really need to move to some country where risk has already been done away with. (Go ahead, name one . . . .) Guarantees are an illusion people, get used to it.
Are there problems? My, yes. Do some people take advantage of others? Constantly. Just thinking about Bernie Madoff makes blood shoot out of my eyes. But if I’m not mistaken that happens under any and every other economic system out there as well. Some people will always play the angles. We catch them and put them away and start over. The Soviet Union was designed to be abused from the git-go. It was a power-grab, not a revolution, and anyone who doesn’t know that by now . . . well, doesn’t know that by now. Why would we want to switch to that kind of protectionist racket? We are experiencing a power grab now as well. Two of them actually. One by certain factions of the banking and investment and real estate industries, in collusion with certain factions of government (left and right), which didn’t work out so well, and another by the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat party which is undermining the very fabric of our society. I won’t mention any names, but party affiliation is not an issue here. And I do not for a moment think that this faction has the hearts and minds of the rank and file Americans of either party. (right now the far-right, fascist wing of the Republican party is pretty much out of gas).
Someone once said that “America is great because its people are great.” I guess we really do get what we deserve, and right now, we have Michael Moore and Al Gore, And their ilk. Think about it.