How many more times does this have to be explained?

The real central message in the film [”Capitalism: A Love Story”], and the one we should all be sharing around on Facebook, is that democracy and capitalism are NOT the same thing. We have suffered for the past eight years under a president led by a spin-master who purposely tried to define American Democracy as run-amok corporate capitalism. “Liberty” to Bush meant chasing down Saddam Hussein in a spider hole. “Freedom” meant allowing a private corporate contractor, Halliburton, to rape and plunder and make off with Saddam’s gold.

It may seem like a cheap trick, but when Moore goes to the US Capitol and searches the original copy of the Constitution for any mention of words associated with capitalism, and can’t find them, that is an essential message that ought to be taught in our elementary schools.

Here’s where Moore falls short, and where I hope to remedy our dialogue in a documentary of my own in the not too distant future. American democracy was conceived in a revolution designed to fight monarchy and what writers such as Thomas Paine then called “mercantalism,” the monopolies of the British tea companies and such.

In other words , the original dream for America was an egalitarian society with a strong middle class, not so much ruling elites and peasants. That’s what most of the people came to these shores from Europe to escape. But that is back where we find ourselves after eight years of Bush, who ran the country like a king in charge of a multi-national company led by a pope.

Public enemy number one in some ways might very well be the government, when Republicans are in charge at least, but the real public enemy number one in this land of the not so free anymore are the mega-corporations. That’s what people need to begin to realize.

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After the movie, I met a restaurateur right down the street who was raised in Trussville, and would tend to be a political conservative because of it, but he gave me some hope about the folks around here when he said he would go see the movie, mainly because he is concerned about what happened to the bailout money. He also feels screwed as a small businessman by certain corporate interests, including insurance companies and Alabama Power, which has a monopoly on the electricity business in these parts - and a government-guaranteed profit margin.

“I’m paying a $3,500 a month power bill,” he said, a rate based not on his power usage, but by the previous tenant in the building. When he asked them to actually read his meter and charge him each month for power he actually uses, they basically laughed at him, he said, and gave him the run-around.

Sometimes, in other words, corporate bureaucracy is worse than government bureaucracy. Sometimes, as in the case of Southern Company, which is supposed to be a quasi-government entity anyway, what you have is both. They basically run it like a corporation, but it runs the government. In the case of domestic spying and AT&T, at least according to some courts, the phone company is considered part of the government .

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For additional perspective on this, here Steve Fraser writes on The Crisis of Capitalism