In an election year, we hear endless promises of what our politicians will do to help the people. But are the ideas we’re hearing from Bernie Sanders and others — like Medicare for all, free college tuition, paid family leave — just slogans to pander to voters suffering under stagnating wages and burdensome debt? Could those ideas ever actually take hold?
If you want to see what a people-first agenda looks like in action, check out Michael Moore’s latest movie Where to Invade Next. Moore plants a flag in one country after another to “claim their good ideas.” In the process we meet a lot of people who are truly enjoying life.
In France, Moore joins children in a public grade school who are eating in the cafeteria. Their lunch that day is lamb kabobs over couscous, with a choice of cheeses on the side. And when the child of one of Moore’s crew emails pictures of her school lunch that day in the United States, the French kids peer at the photos, and exclaim in disgust. Moore says the sumptuous French lunches cost no more than the average school lunch in the United States.
In Italy, Moore asks a couple, who think they might like to live in America, if they know how many days of paid vacation the government requires. They refuse to believe that it is zero. And even when he explains that the typical paid vacation in the United States is two weeks, they are aghast. They get eight weeks.
When he asks college students in Slovenia about their student debt, they don’t quite understand the question. Debt? What debt? College is, of course, free. And by the way, it’s free for foreigners too.
At a German pencil factory, Moore asks the workers how many have a second job. They fall silent, looking puzzled. No one raises a hand. In a Norwegian prison, Moore asks an inmate if he’s ever been raped in the shower. The prisoner says that couldn’t happen, and shows Moore the private shower in his well-appointed cell.
The film is full of cringe-worthy moments for a patriotic American like myself. Most painful were the scenes of American prison guards mercilessly beating prisoners. These are difficult to watch under any circumstances, but especially when interspersed with clips of smiling Norwegian guards who see their job as rehabilitation, not punishment. I cringed too when a CEO in Iceland says you couldn’t pay her to live in America. She wouldn’t live in a place where so many people are left to go hungry or homeless. (And I doubt Iceland’s latest financial scandals will change her mind.)
I sighed in despair when a Portuguese policeman warns Moore that if Americans want to “claim” the idea of decriminalizing all (yes all) drug possession, we better first have universal health care. The Portuguese government hasn’t sent a single person to jail for drug use in 15 years, yet drug use in the country has gone down. That’s because users get treatment through Portugal’s universal health care system.
The countries Moore visits, of course, have their problems. As Moore says, he went to “pick the flowers, not the weeds.” Regardless, none of these countries is economically richer than the United States, yet their people have benefits that we seem to think we can’t afford. We see people savoring their food. Relaxing with their newborns. Relishing their vacations. Enjoying college. All without the underlying financial anxiety that afflicts so many Americans.
Where to Invade Next shows us that what may seem like far-out promises we hear at election time can be real. But we need a Congress that will work with a president on a people-first agenda. To get there we must rid ourselves of the idea that the government is something “other” than ourselves. Something to be feared and shrunk. The government is us. It doesn’t have to work for big corporations and billionaires. Moore’s film shows it can work to help us all have healthier, more fulfilling lives.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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