thoughts on Sicko

an incredulous moore - "So you got no paper rolls, paper tissues or uh kitchen towelette rolls?"

cool french/canadian/brit - "what do you mean?"

moore - "so how do you wipe your ass?"

cool french/canadian/brit - "oh they come and wipes our asses for us"



This little caricature pretty much summarizes Michael Moore's Sicko.

As familiar as I was with the horrors of American medical care there were still jaw dropping moments in that documentary (polemic or not).

Then a few thoughts hit me.

How is it that the biggest bully (the biggest richest nation) in that block of germanic nations we call "The West" has such depraved inhuman health compared to the other western nations ?

The US has always struck me as a sort of large scale (continent-sized) human experiment in nationhood, social and political order.

To a large extent it is, but it is not one for its own sake by any means. It seems more and more plausible to me that the happy Europeans with their universal health coverage and significantly less stressed lifestyles are the real beneficiaries behind this experiment of the US.

The US as it were serves merely as the whacking club to be used by the Europeans to secure their position and advancement in the world and in history.

It is thus that we find the repressive totalitarianism and inhumanity of the social order in the US , in order to cow its population into compliance with implementing Europe's big stick in the world.

It is thus that that belligerent rich big nation treats its citizens so ruthlessly. It is more of a tool in the hands of its real masters and beneficiaries, Europeans.

Another thought. It is this model of society that is being pushed at the "third world" with pervasive ubiquitous cultural encroachment through their "world-class" mass media / entertainment industries.

It is thus that Oliver Stone, Spielberg, Woody Allen are better known throughout the world than Claude Chabrol or Ingmar Bergman or Michel Ocelot or Hayao Miyazaki or Kurusawa.

It Seems that promoting Hollywood and its projection of the American socio-political order is what matters more than promoting the "real" culture being produced in Europe.


another thought. How with such a film out can the rotten politicians still perform their dirty play on the people? And how come the people still take. And just who are those fucking tools in political party conventions cheering and clapping and glorifying those same crooks that have robbed the terrorists (americans) of their humanity ????


Another thought. I am actually one of the stupid people because since my mid-teens it was the US and its culture that commanded my attention and aspirations, not the better more civilized societies in western europe. I was duped largely because no other culture was promoted around me so forcefully but I also fell for it like a brick because I did not know better, was not better discerning.

Only by the time I reached my late twenties did I realize that the country or society I had looked up to , was not the best one. It was the wrong one. There were better societies and cultures to be found in europe and Canada (as far as modern urban societies go). But by then it was too late for me. Too much had been invested by me, mentally, socially, ideologically , that I was left with no resources to switch to a new direction. When the inevitable ideological and financial break down came, the only way was back to where I came from - a place which rejected me upon arrival.

yet another thought. How is it that Americans have come to this? It is a question that Moore asks after sampling how radically different life is for Americans from other western societies.

This is what occurs when you let your country get run by misers. Something that was somehow not fully achieved in Europe.

The money dries up. social welfare and solidarity dries up. The faucets are turned shut.

Instead the Americans (or rather terrorists) are fed a steady diet of fear , war mongering and significantly phobias against all that can be good for them.

As Moore rightly wondered, why is that American opinion leaders want Americans to hate the French? Could it because the French are actually good to themselves? That they actually have a functioning democracy that puts intellectuals rather than media whores in public office, and that actually pushes and accomplishes the good and well-being for the population ? Yes, Michael. That's right.

Americans were taught since the 1950s that socialism is evil and a menace, and have been made to actively fight it in Italy and Greece and Portugal and latin America and Asia and Africa with the most ruthless and bloody ways - even while at hte same time, their far mentally superior kith and kin in Germany, France , Britain , Canada and Scandinavia quietly implemented socialist policy in health care and social welfare and labor rights.

The terrorists were fed a steady of fears and wars against helpless peoples and nations who would have otherwise made great friends to the Americans (eg, the south east Asians and the arabs and the Africans) and made great contributions to american society. Instead of being allowed to be a truly universal human experiment in which all input was welcome , it was restricted to input by Germanic whites only and their necrotic miserly financiers - to serve as a big stick to defend both the germanics of Europe and the petty supremacist and misanthropic fantasies of the necrotics.

The steady diet of fear and phobia and hysteria that is force-fed to Americans since they flip their first comics or watch their first cartoons is a theme that has featured prominently in a lot of Moore's work , such as Bowling for Columbine.

Americans are ruled by fears and phobias and constantly told to be afraid. They are literally ruled by terrorism . And this is terrorism if ever there was a good example. And this is how they deal with other peoples they seek to control and subjugate.


The other tool this movie pointed out for control of the people is debt. It is to keep them in debt even "before they get their first job". Keep them indebted and demoralized.

I felt Moore treated these two means of control well in his documentaries and is prominent in this one.

But as he says, disenfranchised dehumanized demoralized as we (he was refering to Americans, and I refer to us the overseas subjects of the necrotic empire) have no other choice but to "hope for the best" - lest we regain our humanity and get labeled "terrorists" by the terrorists.

here in Egypt we have been following the same American (terrorist) model. Remove social safety networks, endenture the people into debt demoralization and megalomania. We are being steered and herded into "a society of me not we".

Anyway, polemic or not, sensationalistic or inaccurate or not, ishta `aleik ya Michael. You touched me again.