"Clever, Classless and Free"

Our house sale closes this week on John Lennon's birthday. My mind shouts that this date might be a bad omen.

Nervous energy this week keeps me up late and makes me get up early. The escrow countdown does that to my feeble constitution. Four days to go and the sale will be complete. All issues have been resolved so there should be nothing to worry about, but being the stew-kettle I am the pervasive nagging dread drips all over my plate of possible outcomes.

Took in a movie Sunday to try the two hour escape route and ponder different scenarios of someone not trapped in my bubbling cauldron, but even Michael Moore's excellent new endeavor, Capitalism: A Love Story , couldn't get the noodle-of-nagging-doubt off the noggin.

The movie differs a bit from other Moore efforts. I'll say straight out I am a big fan of Michael Moore, and will never understand the vehement vocal histrionics that mercilessly attack a guy who tries to help and educate the common man. If this were one hundred years ago he might have been locked up for sedition like Eugene Debs was by the Wilson Administration. Still, the vitriol from people who disagree with Moore's point of view shocks the sensibilities. And what is truly discouraging is that those who disparage his films rarely have seen them.

There is one small fact found in the nearly two-hour examination of capitalism that hits at the core of our economic crisis. The fact that 1% of the US population has more combined wealth than does 95% of American citizens. The fact that this does not outrage everyone in the 95% feeble bracket of American economics also hits at the core of our financial problems. You cannot change things if people refuse to change.

When did America become a rut nation? Stuck between the muddy sidewalls of lies for several generations now people seem trapped within deep grooves of bitter denial to thwart any effort to try something different.

Talk to anyone about health care and every one will agree the system is failing too many people. The vast majority of citizens believe our system should be changed. Nothing gets done this year, just as nothing has been done since Harry Truman tried to take one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 2nd Bill of Rights and make it his own in 1945 with a proposal for universal health care for all Americans.

A few months back when the market was truly in the tank, with the Dow-Jones index hovering in the mid 6000 range, I was hopeful that we would actually get some legislation done that would effect new directions to break the hostile status quo of economic slavery perpetrated by the wealthiest on the most vulnerable. But as stock portfolios have begun to improve the grooves of repetition rise again, and those who have dug in seem to have convinced themselves their grip on the wheel is once again secure, nothing of substance happens to make any difference.

Michael Moore posits a number of ideas on why so many working Americans of every stripe continue to buy into an economic system that only rewards the very few. Is it because so many aspire to a spot where they can become one of the privileged few and live above the peasantry? There are some very shocking bits of news, that never made it to big media pundits or headlines found in Capitalism: A Love Story. A memo from Citigroup puts into plain language what the top financial tier thinks of all those not in the inner sanctum of wealth, and how they should best continue to shake the losing class down.

It is ironic to hear little bits of fear creep into print and other media about the perception that so many liberals hate the rich, and through language are trying to perpetrate class warfare on America. The irony finds so many of the politically conservative actually waging the class war today with the Bush Tax Cuts, the drive to privatize Social Security, the unrelenting war against organized labor and the benefits formerly won but now in peril for American workers, and the outsourcing of manufacturing and jobs to Third World countries (who have failed to see their standard of living rise over this period).

The film was good, but also did nothing to settle my worried mind. I tried putting on some Lennon music but got stuck on "Working Class Hero." We really have been stuck in the same place for a long time. Sure hope the house closes and everyone can move on.