This "astonishing," "coruscating" satire poses the question: Is it better to rule the world, or to save it?
In this first of its kind “dramatic-documentary-musical,” essayist Lewis Lapham and an all-star cast (including Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, James Baker and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.) take two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power. This “astonishing”, “coruscating” satire poses the question: Is it better to rule the world, or to save it?
Appearing on the screen are a range of leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum, among them: the late Robert B. Altman, James A. Baker III, Bill Bradley, Harold Brown, Hodding Carter III, William T. Coleman, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vartan Gregorian, Doug Henwood, Mike Medavoy, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., John Perkins, (a.k.a., the economic hit-man) Samuel Peabody, Pete Seeger, Lawrence H. Summers, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., William Howard Taft IV, the late Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn.

The American Ruling Class
Release Year: 2007
Duration: 88 min
Availability:
Related: Campus, History, Life & Culture, Politics, Cactus Three
In this first of its kind “dramatic-documentary-musical,” essayist Lewis Lapham and an all-star cast (including Kurt Vonnegut, Robert Altman, James Baker and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr.) take two young Ivy-League graduates on a tour of the corridors of power. This “astonishing”, “coruscating” satire poses the question: Is it better to rule the world, or to save it?
Appearing on the screen are a range of leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum, among them: the late Robert B. Altman, James A. Baker III, Bill Bradley, Harold Brown, Hodding Carter III, William T. Coleman, Jr., Walter Cronkite, Barbara Ehrenreich, Vartan Gregorian, Doug Henwood, Mike Medavoy, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., John Perkins, (a.k.a., the economic hit-man) Samuel Peabody, Pete Seeger, Lawrence H. Summers, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., William Howard Taft IV, the late Kurt Vonnegut and Howard Zinn.
Produced by
Libby Handros
John Kirby
Screenwriter
Lewis Lapham
Director of Photography
Mark Benjamin
Editors
John Kirby
Leah O'Donnell
Music
Qasim Naqvi
Lucas Johnson-Yahraus
Cast
Lewis Lapham
Paul Cantagallo
Caton Burwell
Executive Producers
Stanley Buchthal
Caroline Camougis
Nick Fraser
Chris Hilton
Julie Goldman
Krysanne Katsoolis
Caroline Stevens
Paula Silver
Posted 06/01/09 by kerry mccarthy
Unfortunate that this film contains advertisements. This film is one fairly decent starting place to learn the nature of the method by which our nation’s economic subsystem has been corrupted, (only one of our nation’s several corrupted support subsystems) with the collusion of the government, to benefit the ruling class, rather than the equal benefit of the people of our nation the better known of our founders intended. One measure to start to bring back the capitalism of our preferred nation’s founders intent is to eliminate the legal fiction of corporations as individuals, distinct from those individuals that direct the policies and behaviors (work) of the corporations. Return corporations to the status of companies where individuals are held personnally liable for the damages they cause.
Posted 05/19/09 by brown
Too much of the american people have no idea on how to earn , you can’t just spread wealth to people. welfare is not the answer, Obama is also just another Cog, although a charismatic and smart talking cog, just part of the machine. different presidents are not the answer, the answer comes from the bottom, and the first step is to have less mouths to feed, some good contraceptives would go a long way to stabilizing things allowing what we do have in resources to actually spread evenly in a natural way. and you need education, stupid parents generally breed stupid kids. and the morons of the brainwashed pious folk need their talons taken out of young minds. you cant truly progress if most of your population believes it must pay for a mistake involving fruit long long ago in faerie tale land. were a nation of stubborn backwards morons with an outer coating of trivial technology, that differentiates us from other stone-age countries.
this film is very good by the way....
Posted 05/19/09 by Andrea Huges
Loved this. I thought it was very well done. As much as it was informatve, it was done with wit, good interviws with interesing notables. I liked that it got the perspective of one from $ and the other not. Want to see it again.
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