ABSURDO FOR PSYCHOS

The Corporation is a brilliant movie, whose main force is that it both supports a real left-wing stance but carries it in a universal language that honest right-wingers can accept, and with some help from sensible capitalists and capitalists with a soul. But this force is part of Michael Moore’s, whose contributions to the movie are besides amazing and quasi-inspired (concise, impartial, accessible, close to home, to the bone, only the essential), and The Corporation would never have existed without the warnings, the imagery and the articulate criticism he patiently elaborated in Roger and me, Downsize This and The Big One before he felt called on to an even higher destiny.

The most clever point made by the film was that a corporation is a psychopathic person as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV). Again, the comparison between a corporation and a psychopath appears in outline in all of Mike’s early works, under different forms : the description of the obsession of profit over everything else, of the corporates as “aliens”, of the schizophrenia of the workers who lay off before they are laid off themselves, of the cynicism of the responsibility game…

The three works that I quoted are exhibits A, B and C for Moore vs The Corporation. They form a consistent whole. Downsize This is the extension, systematization and formalization of his personal experience with GM in Roger and me. The Big One shows the propagation of said extension and depicts of the walls that you meet when you break the silence, and particularly censorship. It's incredibly percipient, deadly logical and powerful... It's not only sound, it's permanent and with always more consistence and evidence. The Corporation is only a spin-off of one of his themes. An excellent one, an important one, but a spin-off. Everybody owes it all to Michael Moore anyway, as Jonathan Demme recently acknowledged it. Everybody. I mean, all those who chose to deal with the essential.

Here is an excerpt from Downsize This, which shows where the origin of the whole idea of the insanity of corporations comes from, down below. And not only that : also, how to fight it.

Fire with fire. Madness with madness.

Apart from the fact that it’s a magnificent text and one of the best he ever wrote, everything’s there – everything.

Excerpt from "Why Doesn't GM Sell Crack?"

DOWNSIZE THIS, Chapter 33

by Michael Moore

Today the guy in the seat next to me is the owner of an American company that makes office supplies-in Taiwan. I ask the executive, "How much is 'enough'?"

"Enough what?" he replies.

"How much is 'enough' profit?"

He laughs and says, "There's no such thing as 'enough'! "

"So, General Motors made nearly $7 billion in profit last year-but they could make $7.1 billion by closing a factory in Parma, Ohio, and moving it to Mexico-that would be okay?"

"Not only okay," he responds, "it is their duty to close that plant and make the extra $.1 billion."

"Even if it destroys Parma, Ohio? Why can't $7 billion be enough and spare the community? Why ruin thousands of families for the sake of $.1 billion? Do you think this is moral 7'

"Moral?" he asks, as if this is the first time he's heard that word since First Communion class. "This is not an issue of morality. It is purely a matter of economics. A company must be able to do whatever it wants to make a profit."

Then he leans over as if to make a revelation I've never heard before.

"Profit, you know, is supreme."

So here's what I don't understand: if profit is supreme, why doesn't a company like General Motors sell crack? Crack is a very profitable commodity. For every pound of cocaine that is transformed into crack, a dealer stands to make a profit of $45,000. The dealer profit on a two-thousand-pound car is less than $2,000. Crack is also safer to use than automobiles. Each year, 40,000 people die in car accidents. Crack, on the other hand, according to the government's own statistics, kills only a few hundred people a year. And it doesn't pollute.
So why doesn't GM sell crack? If profit is supreme, why not sell crack?

GM doesn't sell crack because it is illegal. Why is it illegal? Because we, as a society, have determined that crack destroys people's lives. It ruins entire communities. It tears apart the very backbone of our country. That's why we wouldn't let a company like GM sell it, no matter what kind of profit they could make.

If we wouldn't let GM sell crack because it destroys our communities, then why do we let them close factories? That, too, destroys our communities.

As my frequent-flier friend would say, "We can't prevent them from closing factories because they have a right to do whatever they want to in order to make a profit."

No, they don't. They don't have a "right" to do a lot of things: sell child pornography, manufacture chemical weapons, or create hazardous products that could conceivably make them a profit. We can enact laws to prevent companies from doing anything to hurt us.

And downsizing is one of those things that is hurting us. I'm not talking about legitimate layoffs, when a company is losing money and simply doesn't have the cash reserves to pay its workers. I'm talking about companies like GM, AT&T, and GE, which fire people at a time when the company is making record profits in the billions of dollars. Executives who do this are not scorned, picketed, or arrested-they are hailed as heroes! They make the covers of Fortune and Forbes. They lecture at the Harvard Business School about their success. They throw big campaign fund-raisers and sit next to the President of the United States. They are the Masters of the Universe simply because they make huge profits regardless of the consequences to our society.

Are we insane or what? Why do we allow this to happen? It is wrong to make money off people's labor and then fire them after you've made it. It is immoral for a CEO to make millions of dollars when he has just destroyed the livelihood of 40,000 families. And it's just plain nuts to allow American companies to move factories overseas at the expense of our own people.

When a company fires thousands of people, what happens to the community? Crime goes up, suicide goes up, drug abuse, alcoholism, spousal abuse, divorce-everything bad spirals dangerously upward. The same thing happens with crack. Only crack is illegal, and downsizing is not. If there was a crack house in your neighborhood, what would you do? You would try to get rid of it!

I think it's time we applied the same attitudes we have about crack to corporate downsizing. It's simple: if it hurts our citizens, it should be illegal. We live in a democracy. We enact laws based on what we believe is right and wrong.

Murder? Wrong, so we pass a law making it illegal. Burglary? Wrong, and we attempt to prosecute those who commit it. Two really big hairy guys from Gingrich's office pummel me after they read this book? Five to ten in Sing Sing.

As a society, we have a right to protect ourselves from harm. As a democracy, we have a responsibility to legislate measures to protect us from harm.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/dogeatdogfilms/whydoes.html

The absurd is not absurd. It's a devastatingly efficient logical tool for rational and honest minds. In philosophy, reductio ad absurdum, or "reduction to the impossible", is commonly used and an old favorite of Aristotle. It's a type of logical argument where one assumes a claim for the sake of argument, arrives at an absurd result, and then concludes that the original assumption must have been wrong, since it led to this absurd result. This is also known as proof by contradiction.

In Mike's text, the premise is not his, but a statement made by the owner of an American company that makes office supplies-in Taiwan : "Profit is supreme".

Good. The writer takes this premise and follows it until a contradiction shows that it was false. If profit is supreme, why doesn't a company like General Motors sell crack? he asks. Crack is a very profitable commodity.

This contradiction shows the necessity of the ethical factor, which would be invisible otherwise. It shows even more : its very existence, since GM CANNOT sell crack, more than it doesn't want to.

Therefore, the use of formal logic allows the author to show us how precious are those "obvious" and invisible existing limits, put by the government, and how INSANE it would be to allow them to be shaken.

Personally, I think this method actually changes people's minds. And Aristotle does too.

Rational and honest minds, of course.

Fire with fire = water. Madness with madness = reason. Less with less = Moore. Porno for pyros. Absurdo for psychos. And if it doesn’t work, don’t be surprised, and don’t lose heart : you should have known from scratch that rational and honest minds are hard to find.

.....THEN COMES COLLECTIVE VIOLENCE.

It doesn't surprise me in the least bit that the distributors of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" should stir up this kind of very ugly poop. It's a pattern whose truth I have personally and thoroughly experienced : you tell simple, obvious, basic but forbidden truths. Without thinking. Not because they are forbidden. Just because they are simple, obvious, basic. And because you naturally tell the truth when you see it.

That in 1966 the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.

That Bush is unfit for command and therefore dangerous.

That a part of the international Western left has betrayed itself and absorbed Bush's values after Bush won.

Then you realize that such truths are forbidden.

They are forbidden because they are simple, obvious, basic, and therefore impossible to refuse. They are forbidden because they break the vicious circle of intellectual dishonesty. They are forbidden because they are truths that EVERYBODY KNOWS.

Then comes collective violence.


Film shows government plot against Lennon

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 16 (UPI) -- The upcoming film "The U.S. vs. John Lennon" is set to expose a plan by the Nixon administration to kick the Beatles singer out of the United States.

The Independent reported that the documentary on Lennon's life -- from the distributors of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- is based in part on more than 281 pages of FBI files, and will reveal how government agencies worked together in an effort to deport the outspoken singer.

Lennon sparked outrage when he compared the Beatles to Jesus Christ and was a highly visible critic of the war in Vietnam.

"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" is being backed by Lions Gate Entertainment, which distributed "Fahrenheit 9/11," The Independent said.


http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060716-071742-6658r

LOSERVILLE

I don't like Leonard Cohen. For lack of a better word. But I need a better word. For there ARE people who actually like him. Enough of them to have made him famous, even. But not enough of them, or not well enough, to have prevented him from retiring in a Greek monastery where he will keep his wretched Jewish mouth shut and his truths of absolute desperation roughly to himself at last.

I wonder what people who like Leonard Cohen like about him. Me I’m not afraid of death but I’m afraid of Mr Grim Reaper. His stone face who won’t lighten up, ever, and is not even a mask. His low-fi, bleak, defeated tombstone voice free of anger and free of hope. His useless, unwanted ghosts who can only be persecuted more and endure always further persecution because they tell about a brand of evil so impossible to face that the only way to handle it is to pretend that it’s not evil but something more daily, more ordinary – or just crush it as being the evil itself.

The only way ? No, I don’t think so… Just the Good Germans’ way. The Good Germans were good. They were just not heroes. They were “just men”.

Heroes like Michael Moore grant you the right to be “just a man”. They accept the apologies of the people who once crossed the street to spit on their truthful, lonely self. They accept the redemption of war criminals like Wesley Clark, and they would accept Bush’s or Cheney’s supposing that it was to happen. But sulking kids like Leonard Cohen don’t. When all is said and done, they just move away from the pulsebeat.

“Everybody knows” is about intellectual dishonesty as a means of survival. It must be his grimmest, gloomiest song ever. It tells about the necessity of mental death to face material life for those of us who like to see themselves as “just men”.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

This Casino Royale is the property of the Devil, and this Chiffre is 666. Poker isn’t based on candor. And it’s not true that you play just to be part of. You play to win. But it’s not true that anybody can win. It’s not true that the game is poker. It’s not true that cleverness makes you win. It’s not true that it all can still be called a game. There is no such thing as a game where everybody loses but one in a million. Michael Moore said that the American dream is dead. Bad news bringer.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Oh dear what can I do, baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue, tell me oh, what can I do. We know we should avert the disaster, but now the window pane is broken and the water is flooding in. We’re all in mourning of what mattered the most to us and that we collectively killed : our compass and our fidelity. We need love and consolation for having been so stupid, no smart ass accusers, who are they to feel innocent of the mess anyway ? Surely they have to be for something in it. Who knows if it’s not entirely their fault after all, that’s what I say.

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that youve been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows youve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Ever wondered how a bunch of cruel, suicidal fools such as us has ever managed to survive over the ages – even if these ages are in fact ridiculously short and should soon meet their end anyway ? Well, it’s because love is real, real is love, love is feeling, feeling love, love is wanting to be loved. In our darkest hour, there’s always someone, somewhere, who loves us tender and loves us true. And the people who can achieve that – have mercy on the Untouchables and love the Untouchable in a worldly moron – are naturally sincere and everybody’s friends. They behave in life as open bridges. Such a shame they sometimes mistake themselves for whores.

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Yeah, but what to do, Grim Smartypants ? Uh ? What to do ?

And everybody knows that its now or never
Everybody knows that its me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when youve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black joes still pickin cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

War.

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that its moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But theres gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

This is a song about dying and rising, this is a song about the death and resurrection of Marx and Engels, this is a song about the death of honor and fidelity, this is a song about the rise of fascism and the rise of the prostitution which opens to it a French boulevard, this is a song about Michael Moore who has disclosed what everybody knows.

Who has disclosed
What everybody knows.

And everybody knows that youre in trouble
Everybody knows what youve been through
From the bloody cross on top of calvary
To the beach of malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Saint or scumbag, hero or coward, Resistant or Good German, we’re all in the same boat and chew on life’s gristle at the same table. We’re all deep in shit, we’ve all been through more pain than we could ever tell, we’ve all been crucified and we’ve all been baking under the sun. But Christ’s heart is the only one left that still has the pity, and it’s so full of lonely sobs that surely it’ll soon blow.

Everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
Thats how it goes
Everybody knows

Yeah, but what to do, Grim Smartypants ? Uh ? What to do ?

Everybody knows

To accept to know
What everybody knows.