![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.occasionalplanet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Michael-Moore.jpg\")
<\/a>Should I recommend Michael Moore’s 2016 movie,” Where to Invade Next”? On the plus side, there are some really good jokes.\u00a0 The biggest laugh came when Moore asked someone whose alphabet does not include the letter \u201cW\u201d if they dropped the letter during the last Bush administration.<\/p>\nNo doubt Moore is really good at a certain kind of humor.\u00a0 The movie is also worth watching just to see parts of other countries we probably wouldn\u2019t normally get to visit.\u00a0 For example, a prison on an island in Denmark.\u00a0 Or the office of the president of Slovenia.\u00a0 Or the balcony of an Italian couple overlooking a lovely village.<\/p>\n
The downside of the experience is the shock of realizing how brutal our American culture is compared to more evolved societies.<\/p>\n
Moore visited a young Italian couple to find out what kind of vacation time Italian workers enjoy.\u00a0 He is a police officer.\u00a0 She is a buyer for a women\u2019s clothing firm.\u00a0 They described their summer vacation, their December holiday getaway, and the extra pay they receive in December to enjoy their time off work.\u00a0 The reasoning is that the workers have to spend the money they earn all year on living expenses which doesn\u2019t leave them anything to pay for a holiday vacation.<\/p>\n
Seriously.\u00a0 I\u2019m not making this up.\u00a0 By law, all Italian workers receive several weeks of paid vacation each year because they need time to nurture their minds, bodies and family connections.\u00a0 Healthier workers are more productive, and families that enjoy relaxed time together are much less likely to fall apart.<\/p>\n
This same attitude toward the importance of a healthy lifestyle was evident in two other countries Moore visited.\u00a0 He wanted to see the inside of a factory and talk to the CEO\u2019s.\u00a0 At noon, a whistle blows and the workers go home for a two hour lunch with family.\u00a0 Again, it\u2019s the family connections that are so important.\u00a0 The workers return to work refreshed and, usually, in a good mood.<\/p>\n
Workers are appreciated and given benefits even beyond what is required by law.\u00a0 Moore interviewed the CEO\u2019s of a factory that makes motorbikes.\u00a0 The man and his two sisters own and run the company.\u00a0 They think of the workers as their friends, and\u00a0 because everyone wants the company to succeed, workers feel free to offer suggestions if they think of a better or faster way to get the job done.<\/p>\n
Moore asked why the owners don\u2019t pay themselves more like the CEO\u2019s in America.\u00a0\u00a0 One of the women answered:\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s the point of being richer?\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0She said keeping too much wealth for themselves would put a barrier between them and the workers who are their friends.<\/p>\n
In one of the countries, it is mandated that half of the seats on company boards must be held by workers.\u00a0 Not just a token seat, but half.\u00a0 And they are listened to and respected.\u00a0\u00a0 Workers who have a vested interest in the success of a company will be more productive and enjoy better health in the long run.<\/p>\n
Focusing on well-being<\/h3>\n
In all of the interviews Moore conducted, the main goal in each case seems to be the health and well-being of the people.<\/p>\n
And it starts with babies and children.\u00a0 In one country, Moore discovered that women who give birth receive five months paid leave to bond with their babies.\u00a0 One new mother asked Moore how women in America can bond with their babies if they are not with them for those first important months.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have an answer.<\/p>\n
When those babies are old enough to go to school, they will be fed nutritious food and given plenty of time to build relationships with other children.<\/p>\n
Of course France was the highlight of the school lunchroom tours.\u00a0 Children have plenty of time for lunch and are served at round tables on real china with real silverware.\u00a0 No Styrofoam plates or plastic forks and spoons.<\/p>\n
Food is prepared by a chef with the help of several cooks.\u00a0 A food committee meets once a month to plan the next month\u2019s menus. The goal is fresh, healthy food, plenty of water, and time for the children to develop relationships with each other.\u00a0 Lunch time is considered to be another class where students learn to eat right and share food family style.\u00a0 Sharing and bonding with others seems to be at the heart of most of what Michael Moore saw in Europe.<\/p>\n
Moore showed the French children photos of what American children are served as school lunches, and the kids were confused.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t recognize what they saw as food.\u00a0 One child asked if American children really had to eat what they saw in those photos.\u00a0 The general feeling was sympathy if not shock.<\/p>\n
Finland is recognized worldwide as offering the best opportunity for children to learn and grow into healthy, well-adjusted adults.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t always that way.\u00a0 When Finnish educators reworked their public education system, they\u00a0 focused on creating happy, healthy productive adults.\u00a0 Students attend classes only twenty hours a week, but the time is spent productively with the kids choosing how they want to learn.\u00a0 There are no standardized tests.\u00a0 In fact, when Moore asked the teachers what they would change about American education, they were adamant about getting rid of standardized tests.\u00a0 They said children don\u2019t really learn anything by memorizing facts that they will forget immediately because they have no connection to the students\u2019 lives.\u00a0 Learning experiences are actual experiences that leave an imprint on the brain.<\/p>\n
Moore visited classrooms where students were building things, learning to cook, and playing games.\u00a0 Yes, \u201cplaying\u201d is considered part of the curriculum.\u00a0 Again, the emphasis is on developing relationships and learning to care about others.\u00a0 Admittedly, this is much easier in a country with a smaller, fairly homogenous population.\u00a0 But what a great concept\u2026\u2026 producing happy, healthy adults with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed personally and contribute something to society.<\/p>\n
In Slovenia, Moore visited a university where tuition is free with open admissions and the classes are taught in English.\u00a0 Students from the U.S. are finding out about this free education and transferring there.\u00a0 One American young woman said she couldn\u2019t even afford to go to community college in the U.S.\u00a0 Another American student said he already had $9,000 in debt and didn\u2019t want to add to that.\u00a0 Moore asked the Slovenian students what kind of debt they had, and the students had to ask someone to explain the word \u201cdebt\u201d to them.<\/p>\n
Prisons<\/h3>\n
First off, there is no death penalty in European countries, and they asked what we think we accomplish by executing people.\u00a0 In Denmark, there is one prison that is on an island and every inmate has a job to keep the operation running.\u00a0 Their \u201ccells\u201d are small rooms such as we would see in an old-fashioned college dormitory complete with private shower and flat-screen TV.\u00a0 Each resident has the only key to his room.\u00a0 There is enough space for shelves where they can keep their books and other personal belongings.\u00a0 The longest sentence in Denmark is 21 years.<\/p>\n
Moore visited the father of one of the teenagers who was murdered a few years ago in that horrible killing spree at a youth camp on an island.\u00a0 Moore asked the grieving parent if he would want the killer of his son to be executed.\u00a0 The man immediately said no.\u00a0 Moore asked if he didn\u2019t want to kill the man himself.\u00a0 He answered that he wouldn\u2019t want to \u201cgo down that ladder\u201d and become like that murderer.\u00a0 He respected himself too much to want to kill someone, even the man who murdered his son.\u00a0\u00a0 That murderer received the harshest penalty of 21 years in prison with 10 of those in solitary confinement.\u00a0 What that means in Denmark is probably not what we picture as solitary confinement in the U.S.\u00a0 The Danes feel that keeping someone from their family and even from other prisoners is punishment enough.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese decriminalized all drugs and provide readily available mental health services for addicts wishing to quit.\u00a0 There are no drug gangs because there is no profit to be made by selling illegal drugs.<\/p>\n
The only country outside of Europe that Moore visited was Tunisia in northern Africa. The Tunisian women were instrumental in overthrowing the last dictator and establishing a representative government. In a Muslim country, the Islamic political leaders stepped down voluntarily when they saw the people were serious about wanting more power over their lives.<\/p>\n
Financial systems<\/h3>\n
Moore\u2019s final stop was in Iceland which suffered the collapse of most of its biggest banks in the 2008-2009 meltdown.\u00a0 The men who ran those banks into the ground and lost millions of other people\u2019s money were tried, convicted and sent to prison.\u00a0 What a concept !\u00a0 The only bank that didn\u2019t collapse was one run by three women.\u00a0 Moore interviewed those women and asked why their bank was immune.<\/p>\n
The answer will probably not be surprising to female readers of this little movie review.\u00a0 The female bankers did not feel the pressure to outsmart each other in order to achieve \u201ctop dog\u201d status.\u00a0 They said that men are too concerned with power and their \u201crank\u201d among their male peers.\u00a0 Women don\u2019t have the hormonal drive to be the richest, most important \u201cking of the hill.\u201d\u00a0 They value and want to achieve success, of course, but not necessarily at the expense of their customers or clients.\u00a0 Banking and investing is not a game to them.<\/p>\n
When the movie ended, we were asked if we had any comments.\u00a0 There was so much to think about that we needed time to digest what we had seen.<\/p>\n
Some noted that we definitely need more women in positions of authority.\u00a0\u00a0 Others said what most of us were thinking.\u00a0 The United States of America has not evolved as much as some countries have in terms of reaching a more just, humane, and nurturing society.<\/p>\n
Michael Moore showed scenes from some American jails where men, mostly black men, were being treated worse than most of us would treat a wild animal.\u00a0\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t help turning away from those scenes.\u00a0 Why have we allowed the \u201claw enforcement\u201d and \u201ccorrectional\u201d systems to become so dehumanizing?<\/p>\n
Moore believes that white, privileged Americans with the power to do it, reacted to the civil rights protests and, particularly, to the militant Black Power groups, with the purposeful objective of \u00a0destroying black families with illegal drugs.\u00a0 The vehicle?\u00a0 Crack cocaine.\u00a0 I vaguely remember something about the CIA bringing drugs back from Central America, selling it and buying weapons for the Nicaraguan Contras.\u00a0 How much of that is true, I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But, if someone wanted to tear apart a community, encouraging gang wars would certainly be a good place to start.<\/p>\n
And was it just a coincidence that, when women were pushing to add an Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the reproductive rights issue surfaced?\u00a0 Roe v Wade was in 1973.\u00a0 The ERA fell short of ratification by three states.\u00a0 The anti-abortion issue has been front and center ever since. I doubt that most men in positions of power back then cared one way or another about abortion, but they realized they could use that issue to convince voters to send them to Congress and state legislatures where they could push their free market, anti-tax agenda.<\/p>\n
What’s the matter with America?<\/h3>\n
Thomas Frank spelled this out in \u201cWhat\u2019s the Matter with Kansas\u201d years ago.\u00a0 People will vote against their own interest and that of their families when they are stirred up emotionally about a particular issue.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve been electing anyone who promises to lower our taxes which ultimately means weaker and weaker bonds that hold us together.\u00a0 While we are arguing over having to pay too much for governmental services and screaming about \u201cbig government\u201d taking away our freedoms, our lives are becoming meaner and less secure.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about rebuilding our infrastructure although we are decades behind more developed countries in that regard.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just about the good paying jobs that rebuilding creates.\u00a0 It\u2019s about whether we are a society that takes care of ourselves and our neighbors or not.\u00a0 Do we really want an \u201cevery man for himself, dog eat dog\u201d society?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that what we supposedly left behind when we established a representative government with the goal of minding the \u201cgeneral welfare\u201d?\u00a0 Michael Moore told folks in Europe that \u201cwelfare\u201d is a dirty word in the U. S.\u00a0 They were shocked.<\/p>\n
We could have the same level of civilized society as most European nations\u00a0 if we paid more in taxes.\u00a0 But we\u2019ve trapped ourselves into believing we shouldn\u2019t pay a penny more in taxes than we absolutely must.\u00a0 And millionaires can stash their wealth in other countries without penalty.<\/p>\n
The movie included a graphic showing the level of taxes we Americans pay and the much higher level that Europeans pay.\u00a0 But then the costs we bear were added to the U.S. column, and it jumped to the top of the screen.\u00a0 We don\u2019t think about how much we pay for health care, education (especially post-secondary) or other things that are included in the European tax system.\u00a0 If we paid our schools enough to offer healthy food and if women could stay home and bond with their babies and workers were given enough time off to take care of their health and happiness, what a different society we would have.<\/p>\n
Americans are proud of the myth of \u201crugged individualism.\u201d\u00a0 We reward success and appreciate incredible talent.\u00a0 That\u2019s all well and good.\u00a0 But we have also evolved to the point where we know that we are all better off when no one is left behind.\u00a0 The Progressive Era in the early 1900\u2019s was one of those periods.\u00a0 We instituted the income tax and gave women the right to vote.\u00a0 We gave government the responsibility of protecting our food supply.\u00a0 We established the Federal Reserve System to avoid financial chaos.<\/p>\n
The Great Depression showed us that we needed to take better care of our most vulnerable citizens including the elderly, orphans and the handicapped.\u00a0\u00a0 After another period of stepping back to digest the changes, we pushed ahead again in the 60\u2019s and 70\u2019s for more civil rights, a cleaner environment and subsidized health care for senior citizens.<\/p>\n
We were due for the next progressive era in the 1980\u2019s or 1990\u2019s, but it didn\u2019t come.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 One reason was the well-organized and well-financed strategic plan by free market Republicans to infiltrate the various levels of political power and take the reins of government at the highest level.\u00a0 I refer anyone who wants to read the outline of their plan to look up the Powell Memorandum online.<\/p>\n
As we become more and more selfish as a society, we also increase the fear\u00a0 that someone will take away what belongs to us.\u00a0 As we become more afraid of each other, we become more prone to violence against others and ourselves.\u00a0 The suicide rate among middle aged Americans increases every year.\u00a0 These are people who used to be comfortably middle class, but the rug was pulled out from under them by the \u201cGreat Recession\u201d and subsequent changes in the job market and economy.\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019ve always known that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, but it\u2019s not just a truism anymore.\u00a0 It\u2019s dangerous to the point of lethality.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump is the grotesque end result of decades of well-organized, well-funded propaganda that has convinced us to take care of \u201cnumber one\u201d and to hell with everyone else.\u00a0 We want and need scapegoats because we realize we can never make up what we\u2019ve lost financially.\u00a0 We feel helpless as the rich and powerful suck more and more life out of our sense of self-worth.<\/p>\n
Climate change deniers control Congress while we suffer the consequences of the decades we\u2019ve lost when we could have been building a healthier energy system. What happened to the 1970\u2019s push to save Mother Earth?<\/p>\n
What happened to \u201cno more war\u201d?\u00a0 And the right of women to control their own bodies?\u00a0 And the Montessori system of educating children as individuals instead of as cogs in a machine? \u00a0\u00a0What happened to the movement to include the history of women, African-Americans and Native Americans in our textbooks?\u00a0 Have we really ever come to grips with the sins of our fathers?\u00a0 In Germany, children are taught about the Nazis, the Holocaust, the personal horror suffered by Jews, homosexuals, Gypsies and other targeted groups.\u00a0 The names of those who died in concentration camps are embedded in the city sidewalks so they can never be dismissed or forgotten.<\/p>\n
How have we allowed ourselves to be trapped in this tea party nightmare?\u00a0 Some speculate that Trump will lose badly, the Democrats will gain control of Congress and our long national nightmare will be over.\u00a0 Sen. Bernie Sanders and his legions of supporters have pushed the Democratic Party to include more progressive ideas in the party platform.\u00a0 They plan on attending the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia to make sure their demands are met. \u00a0Is this the beginning of the next Progressive Era?\u00a0 Does Bernie\u2019s \u201crevolution\u201d start soon?\u00a0 There are signs that the tide is turning (recent Supreme Court decisions, the \u201csit in\u201d by House Democrats\u00a0 for gun violence legislation, the anti-Trump coalition of different ethnic groups.)<\/p>\n
The main editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on July 4, 2016 is about Thomas Jefferson\u2019s belief that we all owe a \u201cdebt of service\u201d to our nation.\u00a0 This is something to think about as we celebrate on the 240th<\/sup> anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.\u00a0\u00a0 We may never reach the level of concern for our fellow citizens that the Europeans have developed, but we certainly can make life safer and healthier for everyone living within our borders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Should I recommend Michael Moore’s 2016 movie,” Where to Invade Next”? On the plus side, there are some really good jokes.\u00a0 The biggest laugh<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":628,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2581,1315,1726,255,2582,273,384,2347,784],"tags":[2639,351],"yoast_head":"\n