I’m sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight to Phoenix. (Can you believe? I go much further west from Indy in order to go east?) — and enjoying a locally-sourced salad of kale, beets and shaved broccoli. Oh my!
Was sitting in a large theater yesterday in Indy with my friend Ted, set to watch the new Michael Moore movie. Ted had seen it the first time on Saturday afternoon and tells me there were only 25 people in the audience. Monday afternoon, even fewer, say 15? — originally; but then two couples left after the first scene where Michael Moore is shown lecturing the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Hilarious. We laughed out loud just as the four of them beat a hasty exit. I imagine them as Fox News Republicans, disgusted to see their military being made fun of.
Do go see it. Let’s build a populist groundswell for this film which shows us what’s possible — on many many different levels. How do I know? Because these innovations are already being done successfully elsewhere — and many of them were originally ideas developed in the U.S.A.!
But now, here we sit on our fat behinds, somnbamulistic and distracted, we citizens — oops, no, “consumers” — in the great ol’ U.S.A. of the “American Dream” where 59% of the federal budget goes to feed the ravenous Pentagon maw and more and more of our people are homeless, imprisoned, chronically ill and addled, addicted to substances and screens, enslaved by meaningless jobs, enormous debt, and dulling down of the spirit through what they still, wrongly, call “education.”
Michael Moore takes us to countries where they do things differently, and it shows; people are both happy and connected.
The contrast couldn’t be more jarring, and more instructive.
Thank you, Michael Moore.
You’re right. This film just might change America.
