Michael and Me: A Fat Nostradamus in a Red Hat

In 1989, he said that outsourcing would ruin the manufacturing base of the nation. In 2005, The World is Flat is first published.

In 1997, he said that despite record corporate profits, large scale layoffs were permanently damaging the American economy while the rights of an individual were eroding under the weight of the corporate superstructure.

In June 2004 he criticized George Bush’s response to the September 11th attacks, as well as the failure to adequately protect America during the preceding summer, when the intelligence community was buzzing about the impending threat. On July 26, 2004, the 911 Commission report is published, which confirms many of these objections.

Also, in June 2004, this man predicts the difficulties and the atrocities on the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He claims that George Bush lied to launch the war, and that weapons of mass destruction will never be found. In November, 2004, Bush wins re-election. In 2008, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that his administration “misrepresented the intelligence and the threat from Iraq.”

In 2007 he predicts the collapse of the American Health Care System. This becomes a major issue during the summer of 2009 as part of Barack Obama’s agenda.

Radical? Liberal? Socialist? What is the correct label for a guy who’s usually right?

I haven’t seen Michael Moore’s newest film, Capitalism: a Love Story, but Arianna Huffington has. In her latest post, she argues that while most Americans are busy dismissing Moore’s over-the-top antics, his point is being lost on the American people, and those people are paying for this mistake with their own blood.

As Moore’s newest movie points out, the real problems (and their perpetrators, and their solutions) are being lost in the haze of partisanship, ignorance, corporate smoke screens, and bitter bickering. While Americans are busy fighting about where Obama was born and whether he’s a socialist (definition: state owned industry to benefit the common man), the Hawaiian born President was busy giving money to corporations that built their fortunes on the backs of slaves and backing down from a single-payer health care system that would help the individual at the expense of the corporate oligarchy.

Huffington argues that capitalism isn’t the problem, however. “I don’t think capitalism is evil. I think what we have right now is not capitalism.” She goes on to say that what we really have is corporatism, a system where the corporation has rights and the individual has few, big business makes the infrastructure that we’ve built our nation on. Huffington compares it to, “welfare for the rich. It’s the government picking winners and losers. It’s Wall Street having their taxpayer-funded cake and eating it too. It’s socialized losses and privatized gains.”

Maybe this time we’ll listen to a man who’s right more than he’s wrong, and who predicts the future of the average American better than the profits or the Mayans ever did. Until then, I’m off to check my account balance at bankofamerica.com