‘Sicko’ no comedy

Speaking of humor: “Sicko” is full of laughs. They’re mostly the kind that burst from you when confronted by a lie so outrageous and obvious that the absurdity is overwhelming, but they’re real laughs. They get little or no mention in most of the reviews and op-ed pieces I’ve seen. — Twin Cities Daily Planet

Frankly, I understood the attempts of humor in this film. I would have smirked. I would have smiled or laughed, had I lived in some other country. But I live in America. As such, I could not smile or laugh. At times while watching it, I looked over at my wife and said something to the effect: “I know that’s supposed to be funny, but I can’t bring myself to laugh.”

I will be brutally honest here: At times while watching this movie, I was ashamed to be in this country. I wanted to hop on a ship and set up camp somewhere else. I had a sincere feeling of desolation. I had a sincere feeling that this country, in some ways, is no different than some like, let’s say Zimbabwe, that cares nothing for its own. One look at http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/ will show that, while we spend an enormous sum on health care, we are, in fact, far behind most industrialized countries in overall health. Yet, we have no universal health care system. Some accuse Michael Moore of painting too rosy of picture of those countries who have socialized health care systems, but the record speaks for itself. Currently, we are ranked #23 in life expectancy, right behind Bosnia. We are also behind Japan, Britain, France, Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, Iceland, Italy, Israel, Austria and the Netherlands.

As the “Universal health care” article in Wikipedia says:

The United States is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not have a universal health care system. The government directly covers a little over one-quarter of the population through health care programs for the elderly, disabled, military service families and veterans, children, and some of the poor.

To supposedly be the champion of all things democratic, honest and fair, this is sad and deplorable. We have the best military in the world, but just a mediocre health care system and one run by an insurance industry that is amassing great wealth off people’s suffering. Watching the film, one truly does get the sick feeling that, not only are we behind the curve, but we aren’t even on the graph. We’re the walking dead. We love our money, our fatty foods, our cars, our greed too much to let it go, yet it will be these things, especially this country’s greed, that may one day destroy it.

 Here’s Tony Benn’s chilling words from an interview with Moore for the documentary:

Well if you go back, it all began with democracy before we had the vote. All the power is in the hand of the rich people … and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote, and it moved power from the marketplace from the polling station from the wallet to the ballot. … If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people …. if you have power, you use it to meet the needs of you and your community. …

An educated, healthy and confident nation is harder to govern, and I think there’s an element in the thinking of some people. We don’t want people to be educated, healthy, and confident because they would get out of control. The top 1 percent of the world’s population own 80 percent of the world’s wealth. It’s incredible that people put up with it, but they’re poor, they’re demoralized, they’re frightened and therefore, they think that perhaps the safest thing to do is to take orders and hope for the best.