It's one of the BIG questions of adult life - the collective version of the profound "who am I?" And it's inevitably followed by "Who do we aspire to be?" and "What to do with the gap?"
Michael Moore has painted a sometimes ugly picture of us - and, unfortunately, it usually resonates. We're the ones who would rather buy cheap junk than demand that workers get paid a fair wage, the ones who make a lot of money manufacturing and selling lethal weapons all over the world and whose children grow up to use them on each other, the ones who make huge profits off the desperation of the sick. We're the racists, the fear-mongers, the celebrity-worshipers, and the ones with our heads stuck happily . . . in the sand. It's a wonder anyone watches his movies at all. It's hard to look at - especially on a big screen.
So, after a day of partying at the Blue House (it's the nine year anniversary of the Gainesville Catholic Worker), John and I had to kind of drag ourselves to see Michael Moore's latest: "Capitalism: a Love Story." We knew it was going to be rough.
It was. I felt sick during some of the stories about innocent people being taken advantage of, stolen from, and generally duped by the Big Money that actually runs our country. And sick, too, by the fact that no one (that would be us) does anything about it.
And then he started telling the other stories - about those who DO do something about it: the workers who demanded (and got) their part of the bailout, the evicted family who refused to leave their foreclosed home (and with the help of their neighbors drove off the bank), the sheriff who ordered his officers to stop evicting people (Detroit), the Catholic priests who spoke out against a system that impoverishes so many for the benefit of so few. These stories give me hope.
In my little corner of the world this year, the University of Florida shut down the only hospital on the east (poorer) side of town because it wasn't profitable enough, faculty members lost jobs at the same time our football and basketball coaches got raises (they already make millions), and a couple of downtown developers, Ken and Linda McGurn, succeeded in having the number of meals served to the poor at St. Francis house reduced to 130 per day. We don't have to be this.
I'm grateful to Michael Moore for showing us the possibilities, for bringing to light some of the good people out there working to change who "we" are. There are courageous people in the world struggling to overcome the odds our plutocracy has stacked against them. The lives of these people light a fire under me to be more diligent in recognizing the systemic injustices happening right under my nose, and to work more intentionally to prevent the greediest and most self-serving of us from having the final say in answering that Big Question.
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