America is a juvenile nation.

One step at a time…

Rousseau had a similar idea more than 200 years ago, i.e., “let’s keep the evil guys from being evil” by transferring sovereignty, over everything, to the people. There are downsides to that, of course, including precepts that taken to their ultimate logical conclusion result in authoritarianism or even totalitarianism.

Jeans-Jacques took it one step further than Moore, not only seeing the evil but coming up with a structured ideology for preventing it. The trouble with that was the cure was in many ways worse than the disease and led directly to a savior on a white horse named Napoleon.

At least Rousseau had an idea about what to do, systemically, while Moore is simply shouting, “Stop that! Be good!” Moore is being provocative, as Glynn indicates, but only provocative in a schoolyard, junior high school sense, not provocative on the level of ideas.

Truly provocative would be to suggest that we scrap the present political system altogether and introduce one based on the philosophy of the Iroquoian Confederacy of the mid-18th century.

Provocative would be to understand that endless political sport — the victory of one team of ideologues over another for a period of years, during which the winning team force feeds its vision of life on all — might be good for the so-called news media, but really horrible for almost everyone else.

Provocative would be to suggest that maybe the United States is just too large and diverse to be governed rationally and successfully by a relatively small number of politicians and bureaucrats on the East Coast, and that a more devolved system might be in order.

Provocative would be to acknowledge that a permanent class of professional politicians is the main structural governance problem, aided and abetted by the parasitic lobbying industry.

That’s the kind of provocation we need now, not the adolescent variety being offered up by Michael Moore.

Of course the problem, as always of late, is to get the right people to pay attention and think. Mostly, I suspect, he is preaching to the choir.

But perhaps his message will trickle down to some independents — and make a difference at the margins. Because the fact is, he is right…

Underlying the surface problems — lack of compassion, greed, arrogance, etc — is a deeper problem, namely the failure to understand the connectivity of all life and the inherent dignity of life.

For all his insight about the surface, Moore fails to plumb the depths, and further fails to offer any way out. He further does not realize that the basic ideology of “outside-of-self saviors” is, itself, the root problem.

Simply taking people to task for not being as smart or sensitive as oneself might change a few minds here and there, but for the kind of change Moore seems to want, a profound change in both heart and mind among many millions is necessary.

And the latter kind of change requires long, hard effort in a day to day struggle with the negativity within one’s own life and environment.

Certainly, information and education are an essential part of that effort. But establishing a beachhead on the shores of evil is much more involved than only shouting orders at others, which is what Moore seems inclined to do.