Today I asked my US history students (community college) if anyone had seen Michael Moore's new movie, and no one had.  I did my best to encourage them to see it.  We are studying the Gilded age and the populist movement of the 19th century, and I told them that Moore is making basically the same arguments these people were making more than 100 years ago.  I told them Moore is the same guy who made Bowling for Columbine and Sicko, which most of them had heard of or seen.  I hope a few of them will be motivated to scrape up the $10 to go see the movie soon.  Lumbering giant, for sure.  It seems to me that this mass of young twenty-somethings is not ready to challenge the status quo.  There is a lot of critical thinking and questioning just below the surface, most are working hard, and doing long hours at low pay for employers who just skirt the law, or don't, in their treatment of workers.  For them, it is just the way it is, and they all have bills to pay and classes to keep up with.  Questioning and challenging for them is just too much at this point.  The near economic meltdown of last fall is not something they are directly feeling; the unemployment just means it might be a little harder to find a minimum-wage job; and house prices and foreclosure, medical bills and bankruptcy are their parents problems.  My students are more worried about keeping their crappy cars running and maybe whether or not they or their friends will have to go back to Afghanistan soon.

That being said, I wonder if Michael Moore is Thomas Paine, and his movie the "Common Sense" of our day.  I wish he had gone into the history of unions more because I think that would be really inspirational.  Basically, the message of the movie is Corporations: who are these people and how did they manage to take over our government?