The world is changing.
Its shifts have been subtle, imperceptible even.
And yet now, as I fly over the Atlantic, something's erupting.
Its rumblings have been long felt in Europe.
And yet, it is in America, where it is finding its drama, its crescendo,
its face.
If I were a sociologist, I might call this phenomenon, national populism.
And yet, being someone who seeks to understand the world through its people
I'm hesitant to begin this documentary by ascribing labels.
I am here because I'm seeking an understanding
not of what I've read about populism, but through the untold story
of what lies before me.
I'm arriving in America with no fixed route, a shoestring budget, no team
and few contacts.
And yet, what I'm certain of, is that I will be touching down
at a critical moment in its history
There is an election ahead, but I'll be running a different type of campaign.
It is one without party affiliation, lobby groups or the seeking of political power.
Rather, it is a campaign to seek the elusive heart of America.
And if she be willing, to narrate the story she wishes to tell.
As an outsider, passing through.
NEW YORK (flight announcement)
I have arrived in New York and America is before me.
My heart is beating and in being alone as I arrrive on this great continent
I think of the thousands of migrants who have touched upon her shores,
drawn by the calling of a fresh start, a dream of liberty, or in many cases,
the promise of freedom from tyranny.
The sense of being an outsider will never leave me in America, yet in some ways
will help me, in shaping my understanding of what it is to be truly American,
especially, as the fear of the other becomes used as an electioneering tactic.
Where does one start with the madness of America?
How does American politics work? Shit! I don't know!
Its conflicting ideas?
But I'm saying Bernie and Trump are the same person. Two old white men with a
different version of tan. - No, I'm just sayin' that popular...
Its clashing ideals Didn't Al Gore win the prime vote? - OK
Its cultural vivacity.
Hillary is only gonna win because its bad cop versus worse cop.
Kaleidoscopic intelligence of its people.
She told me in 9th grade, if you wanna know
how anything works in this country you follow the money.
Or the magnetism of its energy.
Even in black America there's a hierarchy: light skin versus dark skin, long hair,
short hair, kinky hair. What does that mean?
I realized that I was stepping into a cacophony of ideas, emotions and history.
I decided that rather than trying to order America...
And you're gonna give a guy whose tagline is "You're fired!" the nuke code? - Yes
...that I would acquiesce to its madness, its inspiration, its narrative.
My first task was not to try to make sense of her, but to listen.
We're not founded on inclusive, we're founded on freedom. The idea that everyone
here, who believes in what we believe in, is cool. That's not inclusive, that's an agreement.
The immigrants? I'm talking about the immigrants throughout the last 300 years have
used the Statue of Liberty as a sign of freedom - Right
and escape from religious persecution and ethnic persecution.
There already is a fence,
so what's the difference between a fence and a wall, right?
(Jim) So it's a metaphor like... - it's a metaphor. It speaks for a bunch of hate.
But there's already a fence up there right?
They see, you know, these mamasitas and they hear all these things about Hispanics
being rapists and the women coming in and just being nothing more than cleaners,
and people to do your backwork shit. Then they see 9/11 and they hear about the Chelsea
bombing so you know they're gonna blame ISIS. It's like let's fuck all these
people up. And they are on board with it.
We're an oil industry town and for us if the oil industry isn't turning, we're not
making money so there's all these workers but there is no money. There's very much a
sense of other. Anybody who says that racism is not alive in America in 2016 is
fucking crazy. Bottom line. Racism is alive and well. It's a problem. And it needs to
be addressed. I don't want my daughter growing up in a world the way it is today.
I've woken up on a beautiful morning in New York.
I have the feeling that I am within life and the first sense
that America is willing to share her story with me.
My head is buzzing with conversations of Trump's war, race, immigration, feminism
and I want to go out into life and be part of the ongoing dialogue of the city.
WHAT OF HOUSING
There's the greedy and the super rich that come in and use this as a playground
and just spit on it and leave. - Right
These people are so wealthy but they don't even live here. So that's one reality.
Then you have the reality of people who are homeless, who are ill and there's
nobody interested, or capable, or can afford to help them. So they just drift around here
and they're a real nuisance. I know I sound reactionary and crazy, but it's sad.
We read about populism as a social phenomenon and yet what is it really?
As I listened to New Yorkers speak of the consequences of exploding house prices
I began to understand the profound impact it has on the different earning brackets
of society.
Radical wealth disparity seems to be creating anger and jealousy at those looking upwards
and yet simultaneously a frustration and lack of empathy looking downwards.
It felt a profound signifier of social decohesion and I was fascinated to hear
how these phenomenons were playing out in the lives of normal people.
Many American families across the United States if they lose their jobs they're two,
three months from being homeless. I can't even contemplate what that means.
That means if you lose a job, that two, three months later, if you don't get a
substitute job and your car breaks down you can't fix it or you can't pay your
rent, you're homeless. I mean this is the wealthiest country in the world?
And understanding why people are voting for populists has to gravitate in the
reality that the issues are profound and real. Even people who would never vote
for populists, seemed as animated by the challenges of immigration, social security
and housing as those who would.
How can you have a Hitler, how can you have a Mussolini? I mean how can you have
that? With the Trump thing you get a little insight of how people are so angry
that they will vote for a madman.
Hitler came in because they were economically on their knees and I think, even though
you come to New York City and you see there's a lot of wealth and entertainment
and it's fun and people live here, and we're not on our knees, but a good part of
America, the backbones of America are on their knees. So why that can't happen again
and here we go, we've got Trump.
GAZBE + THE HUMAN HEART
I walk from Central Park, grateful for the honesty of the conversation, but feeling
melancholic about the state of things.
- Poetic right now or do I sound high? - Poetic. - Alright, poetic it is.
As if by design, a chance encounter with some young men reframed the narrative.
(Jim) That's fucking beautiful man. What's this song called?
- About my business. - This is amazing. The law of attraction
is so amazing and so heavily active and present.
(Jim) It's like Spiderman. There he goes, up there. (laughter)
(Jim) ...location change - Oh yeah
There was an indescribable energy of serendipity and connection. Within minutes
we decided spontaneously to film a music video.
This is one of the most beautiful things about the world even though there is so
much negativity. This is one of the positive things, this is beauty,
this is art, this is love right here.
♪ about my business. I'm a pro, P-R-O.
Keystone on my witness T-O want me to fix this, end this, and ya'll want this♪
They follow this new rule order. Nobody just wanna be free. Everybody is locked
up in a box.
The way this world is going right now. I mean in this country, it's getting real
bad out here, but through all the negativity you see the fine, like this
man right here. My man, how you doin? - What's up man?
See a musician right here. Love the smile.
♪ Some things that I can change to make me a better man. My yesterday is gone. Today
I'm a new me. Some hills I had to climb, some lessons know a time. Now I'm
a better man. Today, today I'm a new me. ♪ - What's up man? - I like that.
Like I got up and danced with you. I hope that you would get up and dance with my son
when he danced. Like, what? I'm gonna be scared of you 'cause you're a different
color than me. What does that mean?
People, we degrade each other. You get what I'm saying?
We touch, we see, we feel, everything. - With lack of knowledge you do irrational things,
With knowledge, you know better, so you do better.
I'm just saying we're all the same. People are scared of that. I don't know why.
Everybody's gotta stop the hate and we all gotta come together and you know what?
Until that happens, we're in trouble. - I'm very worried. If we're gonna have a
reality show star be running for president we should have at least a good one.
If Donald Trump gets in to this presidency we're in trouble.
I don't know why, but as human beings we so often forget the gifts we have and the
blessings of each day. For the first time my investigation into populism had
penetrated the realm of intellect and issues. And in a chance meeting, the illusory
boundaries we hold up as human beings were being dismantled. New York was revealing
something too often kept in darkness. The human heart.
He's against the blacks, the whites, the gays. He's against everybody. The jews.
I mean what was wrong with this country? The muslims. I love the muslims. What's
wrong with the muslims? That's what makes us the United States of America.
People come over here from the other side of Brooklyn.
We feed most of the community here.
EXQUISITE EXPRESS AND SMALL BUSINESS
(Jim) so it's the best jerk chicken in all of Brooklyn? - In the world!
There is a presumption that populism is a manifestation of a rage felt by normal
people outside the political, economic and media elites.
Chicken is always good. Jerk chicken man. Beans and rice, and the white rice with
the little Catahoula as a side - (Jim) Enjoy your chicken.
(Jim) What of the challenge of having a business in America?
It is hard, hardest thing to do.
I wanted to gauge the temperature of small businesses...
(Jim) Nice people working here, friendly. - Yes.
...get a sense of what hardworking people were feeling in the buildup to the election.
(Jim) I feel like I'm in a celebrity area now. - Oh yeah (laughter)
Give it a try. It's excellent!
Not wrong.
Have a blessed one, alright?
It's the sauce. The chicken is tender, nice and juicy.
Because you have so much tax you have to pay.
Not an easy thing to do. The economy is really tough right now.
Alright sweetie, be good.
(Jim) Where do your customers come from? - Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, England
New Zealand, Australia, Mexico. All over the world they are from.
Then you have a lot of crazy people just like Donald Trump. So anything can happen.
We're the creation of the American dream. We want people to dream about coming to
America, thinking that they're gonna have freedom and opportunity like everything's
thrown at them, but in reality, like you said, you have to work for it.
Every race has an individual that has a dream. It's just fortunate that America
is where you can seek it. You get the opportunity to do whatever you want.
A PHILOSOPHY OF EVERYHING
American dream is a opportunity, for people to be here and make themselves
profitable in this country. And whatever car you want, you can go whatever place
you want. Restaurants that say "Come here." I won't clean the dishes
'cause I was born here. I was born in this house, you know what I'm tryin' to say?
They got hoods in Germany, they got dudes, tatted up, smokin' weed and they're white.
You know what I'm tryin' to say? Why does every president have to keep bein'
70, 80 years old? That's crazy. You know what I'm tryin' to say? Like Michael Phelps,
he's a modern-day white person, you know what I'm tryin' to say? Once they make up
for this error then it will be the constitution of 2016, not 17 whatever, you
know what I'm tryin' to say? Horses will never be replaced by cars, are you crazy?
And what she goin' "Nah, yo, don't do it yo, don't listen to them, yo.
The shepherds look back, and go let me shoot that sheep real quick!
He 'bout to fck up my whole fing plan...
We're gonna make you the president, you know what I'm tryin' to say?
We're not listening to y'all no more. Y'all fucking up America.
Y'all be fucking up the economy. You're fucking up mass shit. And there's new ideas out here.
It's 2016. It's psychological. You know what I'm tryin' to say?
I don't believe somebody took a rocket ship up there. I don't believe that earth
is round ass ball. You know what I'm tryin' to say? No one knows really where
this shit came from. You know what I'm tryin' to say? You don't know this is earth.
This shit man. You don't know what this is. You don't know, you never know.
Yo, I'm gonna tell you somethin'...
You don't know how the continents look, you never been a million miles in the air.
You take Florida, you don't know which way Florida is... who made the word plain?
I never did figure out exactly what James was trying to say, ...
- That's what I'm tryin' to say. ...but somehow his kaleidoscopic mish-mash
of similes, metaphors, allegories and analogies reflected the vastness of the
American experience and the challenge before me of attempting to understand it.
THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
I'd been eagerly absorbing the colors and musings of the New York street.
Hillary's got more experience and she is the better candidate. Trump's not ready
for it. Simple.
Tonight, however, the election cycle would truly kick off.
I'm in Harlem and have managed to wing a ticket into the world famous Apollo Theater.
But this is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs.
I don't feel as if it's show business. I think it's pretty serious.
And I'm very nervous about it.
I also have a much better temperament than she has. (boo-ing)
Nature says: Act now or else.
Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax, perpetrated by the Chinese. I think
it's real. (laughter)
Hillary mentioned that she is going to make fighting global warming a priority.
Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in
2006: Gee, I hope it does collapse, then I can go in and buy some and make some money.
- Well it did collapse. Nine million people. - That's called business.
You know what I think Trump is? He's like, what do they call that? You know, when the
End comes, the rapture and all that? Tribulation? He's like. - Satan incarnate.
- I'll be reducing taxes tremendously. - You haven't paid any federal income tax.
That's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan.
It's going to be a beautiful thing to watch.
It's really unfortunate that he paints such a dire, negative picture
of black communities in our country.
African American communities are being decimated by crime.
- What are you gonna do with this? - You can't make this stuff up. (laughs)
African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell, because it's so dangerous.
You walk down the street, you get shot.
'Cause I think you were able to stand taller, you know and I think Americans,
that's when color didn't even matter anymore. It was just about: Wow, I'm so proud
to be an American. Now you wanna put your head in the sand and be like: OK, so I
have my passport, and I'm hidin' it. (laughs)
I wanna make America great again. We are a nation that is seriously troubled. We're
losing our jobs, people are pouring into our country.
♪ I know, I know, I know, I know, I know ♪
♪ Hey, I oughta leave young thing alone But ain't no sunshine when she's gone ♪
THE STATE OF AMERICA
Watching the debate, we were witnessing a clash of archetypes.
As an alpha male disruptor clashed with a schooled female establishment figure.
Again race and immigration came to the forefront. Trump's use of fear and
dramatization as an electioneering tactic contrasted sharply with Clinton's reasoned
and studied inclusivity. America was being presented with the starkest of choices
and again, I turned to the genius of the streets to summarize the crossroads at
which she had arrived.
Hey Jim, what's goin' on? I'll see you in about ten minutes, alright, bud?
Keep goin'. That makes it official. (Jim laughs)
(Jim) Don had lived the most colorful of lives.
From experiencing war in the US military...
(Don) The Berlin wall did not fall because they used bad concrete.
The Berlin wall fell because of my team. (laughing)
(Jim) ... to being a barber to the stars.
It isn´t a state - it is capital. It is life.
I use this to cut through the bullshit.
I use this to cut rid of the past of yesterday.
(Jim) Sensing my confusion about the state of America,
he took me under his wing, and
in introducing me to the inner life of Harlem
allowed me to experience it not as an outsider
but from within its very heart.
It brings my intelligence down a notch to answer
Trump´s, Donald Trump´s, you know ... just semantics.
(Jim) My central take-away from the debate was not about the issues themselves
but about the voices the candidates were bringing to them.
You wanna know the state of America?
From my perspective:
It´s very volatile right now.
How do you feel about New York switching up, flipping up, the way it has?
`Cause I feel a little way... (Woman) It up-rooted!
You know why? Because we don't stick together.
That´s just straight how it is.
We too busy like crabs in a barrel tryin´to pull you down
'cause you make a dollar...
(Jim) Trump is using fears as a tactic to divide people and to make
different groups afraid of one another.
I was curious if this fear was something populism is inserting into society
or if I can see evidence with nascence on the streets themselves.
We tend to protect the Donald Trumps for some strange reason.
I´m ain't making it, so I´m hatin', you know, dislikin' you,
I ain't gonna talk to street, like:
dislikin´you ´cause you makin´some for yourself.
And I´m too busy being negative tryin´ like, how do you say,
tryin' to kick you down with me instead of
being united and we could come up together but a lot of people don´t think like that.
How was he even closely in the runnings for the highest political position of the world?
This is the state of mind of the world right now. We are not looking for a good,
pious leader. We are looking for the best cheater.
♪ (music) ♪
Yes... (whispering) Who are you voting for?
Who are you voting for? - You are a very cute Harlem dog, aren´t you?! Eh?!
(Jim) I´d been lucky enough to feel the embrace
of the African-American community in New York.
Ahead of me now lay Ohio - where an old Italian American friend
Terry Roncagli had invited me to stay in his basement.
And where I hoped to find the next piece in the jigsaw of America.
This is what we do in Northeast Ohio.
(shouting) Hold that Ti-ger! Look at him!
Classic Northeast Ohio clambake.
- Come on Jim you're our guest.
We got some chicken on the grill...
Look at those beautiful people there cheering!
My cart, I drive around the neighborhood in the cart...
(singing) dede nenededede nene...
(man sitting) We, we don´t know him.
Rules of American Football...
Come on! Are you waitin´for a hammer to break the rocks, motherfuckers?!
Hit them as hard as you can.
Go, get `em, Tigers!
As legal as you can.
Cheaters!
Put the football in the end-zone.
(shouting) There we go! Catch and go!
(laughing)
But it´s all about how hard you hit `em.
Hold that, Tiger! (laughing)
(Jim) Shit, they lost! (laughing) Oh, my god!
GOLF CART REVELATIONS
(funny, "panicked" cheering and laughter)
(Jim) Hell, is there no safety belts in here? Feel like I'm
in a Ferrari!
(laughter)
(Jim, laughing in stress with pleasure): I´m not feeling safe.
Let´s get a bottle of liquor.
(Jim) Watch out for the car!
I see the fricking cars, Jim!
(Jim) And this place is really... It´s just like a Truman Show.
That´s for you.
(Jim, chug-a-lugged) Woah!
I'm really am a Trump-supporter only because I want change.
But I feel like, in the end, Hillary's gonna win.
I tell you what. Fricking Hillary is an entitled politician, who has done nothing.
Trump is an entrepreneur who has actually been a business man.
(cheering for joy) Yeah!
(Jim): I had been welcomed into the rituals, culture and hospitality of Ohio
by Terry´s family and friends.
(cheer and laughter)
I was fascinated how Ohio´s famous swing state status was reflected evenly
in this intimate friendship group.
Whereas Obama had won handsomely twice in Ohio,
the polls in early October were neck-and-neck between Trump and Clinton.
I wanted to dive deeper into the heart and mind of Ohio,
and asked Terry, if he would drive me to Cleveland.
(Terry) Walmart is the largest employer in Ohio,
and is also the largest employer in the nation.
When I was a kid growing up, the largest employers were the steel industry and
the auto-industry. Everyone had good raises, good benefits, health care
and we don't have that any more.
(Jim) As Terry told me about the changing face of Ohio,
I wondered about the social impact of these disappearing industries
on normal people.
I felt that to understand the human effect
I needed to witness the reality of the loss of manufacturing first hand.
- Hey bro! - My name is Jim, what´s your name?
- I´m Stutz
It turned out that my guide would once again appear
in the most unlikely of places.
THE NEW GILDED AGE
It´s the new Gilded Age. None of these people have to pay tax.
Only the working people are taxed to like a quarter of their income.
And we don't get much in return, because the infrastructure's falling apart,
the school system's falling apart. The health care is a joke.
The only thing that keeps this together is that people are so mollified by
Walmart and the Kardashians that they don't revolt. As long as they get,
as long as they can keep 500 TV channels going, everybody will just
just sit there "uhhh..." (imitates a foolish sound), you know: transfixed.
(in a high-pitched voice) I'm gonna deconstruct some pizza, son! (laughs)
(Jim) I hit it off with the brilliantly named Stutz Bearcat.
By evening we were bonded by beer, Buddhism and music.
Buddhism demands that you become who you are.
That's the demand of Buddhism.
As you practice every day you become what it is that you are.
And what it is, I need, I'm right now, I'm a guy that needs a sip of beer.
(♪ plays a fast melody on the guitar ♪)
(Jim) Knowing I was hungry for insight in to the state of America, the next days he
introduced me to some of the impacts of the waning of the steel manufacturing
automobile industries in the Rust Belt.
Here there's always trillions and trillions of dollars to go to war.
To bomb some unfortunate people that happen to be walkin' around on high-grade crude.
There is always the money for that. There's never money for the infrastructure.
The city is collapsing.
And this is what we wind up with. You know, the skeletons that we have to walk over.
The skeletons that the capitalist system leaves behind.
OK, this is the old Richman Brothers tailoring company, from probably
1920 to 1970, maybe even earlier. But this is it, goes for blocks and blocks and
there are just thousands and thousands of men that worked here and they fed their
families working in this place. And now all these jobs are in China.
The people are chained to some fucking desk where they have nets outside the
windows so they don´t jump out and kill themselves. And all these jobs are in
China with people making, what? 30 cents an hour, 20 cents an hour now.
Are you Taiwanese?
- Me? - Yeah.
- No! - Where?
- Chinese! - You´re kidding me. You are - he's lying.
- You are lying! (laughing) He's lying.
♪ (soft guitar music in the background) ♪
- (Phrase in Chinese) - No!
- He didn't really buy this building. - Yeah, this is my building!
- I don't know English. - What will you do with it?
- I, I don't - You call my son. - How much money?
- I don't know. (Jim) - He wants to buy it from you.
- He buys from you. - No! - Whoah! - Ok.
- I got four dollars.
(Jim) You go again? - Really? - Let's go!
You know, this has been vacant for 50 years.
Whoah!
What will you do here?
Knock down? (makes noise of destruction) Knock down?
- No! - No? - Businesses?
- Chinese business, American business, both. - American business
I try to imagine, that how many people - like, you can just picture
the racks of clothes and all the machines, you know, hundreds of sewing machines,
hundreds of people working, you know, three shifts. They went all day.
This place closed, hell, when I was 16 or 17.
Matter of fact, I remember the jingle: (sings, snapping his fingers for the rhythm):
♪ Richman Brothers, for your clothes.♪
That was the... (excited) I remember that jingle!
I got this this at the, (laughter) I bought this at the goodwill!
- No. (laughter) - I got this at the Goodwill in Los Filos.
China stole all our jobs, so it's good to see some Chinese people coming here
to bring some jobs back.
(laughing) - High Five!
I need to end up playing guitar and doing drugs and drinking every night.
(everyone laughing)
- Is he the bodyguard? - Big boss.
- Yeah, ah. - (Jim) Big Boss.
- Yeah, Big Boss.
(Jim) And that was the Richman factory! Wow!
♪ guitar playing ♪
(Jim) I felt lifted by this brilliant interaction by an American raconteur and
a Chinese entrepreneur.
The Richman building was closed by its American owners - Woolworth -
in the early 1990s.
Even if the boom-and-bust capitalism Stutz described is responsible for its closure,
spaces like this were being easily appropriated by Trump as dire
consequences of a globalized world.
Once again, I was confronted by a paradox:
It was, after all, the Chinese who were at last planning to resurrect
this great icon of American manufacturing.
(night noises, whistling)
We need a change! We need a change, the country is getting worse every single,
whoah, this is too close.
Years ago, everbody was - you didn´t have to be a genius to get a job.
You could just go out, get a job working in a factory.
Maybe, Mr Obama is part of the Muslim faith, bringing America down with that.
And yet, you know, Hillary - no matter what she does - I think it's feminist.
I think it's a problem with men have with women.
They are attacking her on grounds that they would never attack a white male on.
(Jim) It was nearly time to leave Cleveland,
and my mind felt more frazzled than ever.
I decided, the only thing to do, was to ask a man who'd sold over two million
hot dogs, to help make sense of things.
(woman, cheering) Jim!
(hot dog diner owner) Old fashioned hot dog.
(guest) This is a landmark place in Cleveland, Ohio.
(hot dog diner owner) We've been going 87 years.
(guest) I can't help but think with Trump, so...
I feel like, right now, that's the way I'm leaning.
(hot dog diner owner) I take voting serious. And I'm leaning towards Trump right now.
He´s a guy who tells the truth. He's a real jolt.
- 2.1 million - 2.1 million - Hot dogs
(Jim) Who are you voting for?
(man) Trump, 'cause he is a businessman. (Jim) So why is he going to help America?
(man) 'Cause he's going to make us rich.
Sports and politics, that's all people talk around here.
No politician, no faith, you know.
He acts like a guy you can sit down have a beer with in the bar.
But as I said, I didn't say I was gonna vote for the guy.
(other man speaking) He appeals to the guys, who are angry and I understand that...
(hot dog diner owner) I ain't sayin. Yeah, he does appeal to me.
(man) You like that bombastic, macho talk of it. But it´s talk.
(hot dog diner owner) What? - 40 dogs.
40? Are you crazy? 40? A couple hundred a day.
- Really, 200? - Yeah!
- For you? - For me alone, yeah.
(man off-screen) She served in the White House. On paper, she is one of the
most qualified people we've had in a long time.
(hot dog diner owner) I don´t know, like I said, I really don´t know who I´m gonna vote for.
There are times I´m sayin´ I´m not even goin´to vote.
(woman off-screen) Imagine if you lined up all those hot dogs one after the other,
we could go...?
(bar owner) It´d probably go to the moon and back!
(laughter) (man off screen) We could figure it out!
Look who supports him: Putin likes him, David Duke, head of the Ku-Klux-Klan, likes him.
Why these people - our enemies - like him? (pause) You know...?
(hot dog diner owner) David Duke's our enemy?
(guest) Yeah, David Duke, he's a neo-nazi!
(hot dog diner owner) I know who he is, I know exactly who he is.
(guest) He´s absolutely our enemy.
You know, we went to war against the Nazis, you realize that?!
(Diner owner) I understand that!
Hey, in America, you're allowed to disagree with people, man!
You are, yeah, I mean, the first thing you do is agree to disagree!
- Good hot dogs, man. - Right?
- Good hot dogs. - Right? That´s what Americans are being,
are all about: agreeing to disagree.
Well, who am I voting for? I haven't really made my mind up yet.
A LAMENT FOR KEITH LAMONT SCOTT
♪ (woman singing a capella, crickets chirping in the background) ♪
♪ Hands up, hit the ground, face down, they`re coming for you. ♪
♪ Comply, no attitude, face black and blue, death is comin´for you. ♪
♪ Death is coming for you. ♪
♪ Ridin´in the white and blue... ♪
(Jim) I´m arriving in Charlotte, in North Carolina...
... in the aftermath of the killing of Keith Lamont Scott.
♪ (Soft guitar picking and ambient electronic music) ♪
The subsequent demonstrations turned violent as the anger of shooting biased
by police towards black people boiled over.
The Charlotte I discover is however, rather in grief.
For the first time, talk of the election is muted.
And yet the topic of race is thrust front and center into the national debate.
I would just say that we haven't made much progress from, you know, the early 1900s.
Because it's still, it seems like, the value of black lives does not matter
to the majority of society here in America.
The police...may genuinely be afraid, but then, what makes that racist is that
the fear is ingrained in them. ♪ (soft piano music raising) ♪
And you know, they cast this dream about everyone's equal.
But, when it comes down to it, it goes by what you show and not what you say.
Society tells them to be afraid of the Black Man.
How do we not see it coming? Or is this something we are not getting?
Society has made the Black Man out to be something to be feared.
Like me personally I think we failed. I feel like society is repeating itself...
... over and over and over. Because all we do is nationalize.
And block our expansions into the cosmos
Which is why it´s so easy for them to go out and execute. The system has been
designed: fear the black man, kill the black man, exterminate the black man,
put the black man in prison.
It is those people that are angry. And when I say they are angry, it´s that
majority of the white population that are angry that things aren´t better for them.
So, how do they express that anger? And some of them go back to those old ways,
if you will.
(Jim) Each conversation I had in Charlotte seemed to reflect an experiential perception
of ongoing systemic racism. ♪ (soft guitar music) ♪
It made me think of the civil rights movement, not in historical terms,
but as an ongoing struggle.
It felt tragic, that systemic racism had to be thrust to the fore by Keith Lamont Scott´s death,
rather than as a creative discussion about American identity. And its need to
reconcile itself with its history of slavery, lynchings, and the murder of
civil rights´ activists.
If Barack Obama, the first black President, arrived as the Great Unifier,
yet in such a polarized environment, I wonder, what could the effect
of Trump be?
The Great Divider.
So just been researching about, about, some basics about hurricane conditions...
(laughs with gallows humor) Oh, fuck!
(Driver) Well, how are you gettin´there? (Jim) I´m renting a car. - Ok.
(Jim) Unless you wanna drive me... (Driver laughs)
STORM PREPARATIONS
(Jim) Anthony. Hey, it's Jimmy here. How you doing?
(driver) I would love to Jim, but I don´t know.. .You know? (laughs)
(Jim laughing) Oh, man.
(Voice on the phone) We'll be dodging stuff flyin´ through the air...
(Driver) I mean, I don´t wanna get caught up in no tornado or hurricane.
(Voice on the phone): Hell yeah, I do like a good whiskey too!
(Jim keeps laughing at himself desperately)
You know, I´m tellin' you, dem somethin', Mother Nature ain´t nothin' to play with.
(Voice on phone) You know, when it gets too bad Saturday, you and I'll both be
haulin' ass out of here soon.
(Jim) What the devil else do you need, when you are preparing for a hurricane.
(Imitating Yoda) You are so fast. Superman-onesie or bear-onesie?
In you go.
(Jim in deep voice) I´m your father.
Result. Mm.?
(noises from within supermarket, cars outside, rain on car´s windshield)
(Jim) I feel like this election has lost sight of people. And of how special
it is to be alive and sometimes ((cutting error?)) bases in our humanity.
When our politics isn´t serving our humanity, then it has lost the plot. And,
I feel like that´s something that needs to be addressed globally in our politics.
120 miles an hour winds will tear a house down.
(pointing at a screen) The storm is here.
(Radio announcement): A tornado warning has been issued for our area.
(Jim) At what point with the strength of winds would you start having worries
structurly about the house?
- A hundred miles an hour. - And it´s 105 at the moment. - Yes.
- When it starts hittin´a hundred mile an hour, our asses are outta here! - Right.
If I see anything larger than a chicken flying' by, we´re getting the hell outta here.
(laughs)
Trees break, stuff flying through the air, that´ll kill ya if it hits ya.
There's your bed.
That´s like you being on a motorcycle
when you´re hitting a tree at a hundred miles an hour.
You're gonna die.
(laughs) It is, what it is.
♪ (scary swirling sounds rising) ♪
(Jim) With the election storm in full swing, it felt somehow fitting to await
(♪ change to energetic, rhythmic music ♪)
Hurricane Matthew with Antony´s indomitable spirit, and charismatic hospitality.
A few days earlier, Hillary Clinton had named Trump supporters:
a basket of deplorables.
It reflected the trend in the media to confuse the antagonism of Trump´s
rhetoric, with the very real issues many Americans were facing.
My grandfather worked in the mines. And my brothers, my uncles, we made a living, we
had a family, we raised our children here. You know, that´s how we did it.
And all of the sudden the government comes here and says: We´re gonna put so many
regulations. Hillary Clinton got on national TV and so did Obama:
If you´re in the coal business, you better be looking for another job.
All of those thousands and thousands of people out of work.
And, I mean, there are no other jobs.
We need to take care of our own, take care of this country,
get our backbone back, our infrastructure back, our jobs back.
You know people with pride. You know, people used to have pride when
they went to work. We´ve manufactured, we´ve made things, we've worked together in the
United States to achieve things. And now, we don´t manufacture anything.
(Jim) We woke the next day to the news that the eye of the hurricane had changed course.
And would make landfall at Myrtle Beach, less than five miles away.
(Jim) So the actual eye is coming here?
Main surge in the eye of that storm is going to be here 'bout 1:30 today.
Only eight miles from here a tornado set down and tore up houses and property.
(Jim) Antony was noticeably more nervous than the previous day. And yet,
in the spirit of true American adventurism, insisted we head to Myrtle Beach,
to see for ourselves.
(Jim) So, where are we gonna go?
- Down towards North Myrtle Beach. - Are you ready for this? - I just don´t know!
- The gas stations are closed. But you know what? The liquor store is open.
(laughing) The liquor!
Everything east of Oceanside and Highway 17 is mandatory evacuated,
because of the flooding.
- Okay. - And the when the surge comes in
the ocean is gonna push all that water which we already have flooding down there now.
(Jim) Wow. Gunning it down when this fucking hurricane hits land.
I can't believe it's hitting here.
This is where the water comes in off the ocean into the channel.
(Jim) Not a soul on the streets.
The ocean is straight in front of us. - Okay. Woaaah, man they're gonna come down.
(screaming) We're at the ocean now!
Fuck me!
That's the ocean beginning to come in.
They said it's gonna get even worse... - An hour or two.
(Jim) That's scary shit, and I'm not staying here for long.
I'll tell you that much!
That is exactly where it's coming in.
But a surge could come in any time, yeah? - Yeah, yeah.
They say it's supposed to happen any time after 2.
(Jim) Wow! Yeah! It's coming through! Wow, look at that!
We probably need to get out of here. - I think we should get out.
Let's do it. I think, one big surge can come in any time now.
Oh my god!
It's coming in with fury now.
I mean, c'mon. Jesus! Look at this. It's coming in.
See the ocean...we're running... right now we're running parallel.
different voices (Jim) That's where a tornado hit earlier.
Blew the roof clean off.
This whole area is prone to flooding. Now that the water is breaching the dunes
off of the beach, this whole area is gonna... it will flood.
(Jim) Let's not get trapped.
Look at how the roads flooded. - Ah, okay. Wow.
This is our last chance to get out of here. Literally.
I can't get through there. - Oh my god!
But you got an exit route, do you? (exhales) Yeah, that was scary!
Just seeing the road close like that, thinking "Wow, can we not get out of here?
Do we need to get higher ground?" - Well, sometimes I ask myself in life
"Why do I have to be with the one guy who wants to be out in all of South Carolina
when the fucking eye of the storm is hitting?"
You just gotta grow a set of nuts and go with it.
(both laughing)
Hey, it's one of lifes adventures.
(radio playing) It's very tough getting around with hundreds
of areas of roads closed.
(Aftermath - Part 1) There's another road blocked up there.
No way to get through and down the 905, huh?
Rolling on the river!
Oh, shit!
As if by design to epochal events struck both Clinton and Trump's campaigns
as Hurricane Matthew hit.
Oh, this is not feeling good at all.
Properly going through a lake.
On the one hand the access to Hollywod tapes revealed
Trumps bragging about his sexual exploits
and predatory approach towards women.
On the other, Wikileaks began publishing thousands of emails from Clinton's campaign.
The aftermath reflected not just the perilous state both candidacies...
- The wind. - You could hear trees snap.
But signified we were now within the heart of a truly unprecedented presidential cycle.
It's terrifying.
Neither campaign would ride out the aftermath
with the dignity of the people they were set to govern.
I just thank God that that's all that was lost, cause it could have been
a whole lot worse
Kind of get the yard straight in the process.
So, that's Dad up there! How you doing, Dad?
Are you alright?
Did you get out of the beach, okay? - Yeah, I was alright.
That's a Dad doing a proper Dad's work! - That's a true homeowner for you.
(music plays)
It is hard to describe how the feeling changes as one drives south.
You notice it in the landscape.
Hear it in the accents.
But more so, in the caress of the air around you.
There is an ease of being as it envelops you.
As if you can breathe in a new way.
There is a sense of inversion when in the South.
As if, in slowing, you can hear America's plurality of voices with greater clarity.
And with it a recognition that to truly understand America
each one must be heard.
Absorbed.
Interjected.
♪ I wanna live in a blue sky I wanna live in a blue sky ♪
It's always about me.
People keep asking me
have we, have I ever seen anything like this. And I keep saying "no".
THE VOICE OF THE BLUES
And I just hope to God that I don't see another campaign like this one.
America can do better.
Than what we have seen here tonight.
This was just disgraceful.
Most people feel like, you know, the rich stay rich.
The poor stay poor.
♪ (singing) Misery ♪
The middle class work to keep from being poor.
♪ (singing) You can't have me no more.♪
But to make the rich richer.
People feel forgotten about.
♪(singing) I ain't got time.♪
We throw away more food on a daily basis that could actually
probably feed the whole world.
Alabama
I feel like a lot of American politics all depends on who you know
and what kind of money you have.
The thing is we're fucking choosing between two fucking morons.
It would be so cool to have the first female president.
- Absolutely. - However, I find it really pathetic
that Hillary Clinton can barely beat Trump.
(What of The American Dream?)
Half of us work our asses off just to make ends meet.
That American dream is something that you saw in the 50's.
- Yes! - You can't tell me shit's not rigged!
Something's coming. Change is coming.
Whether it's gonna be good or bad.
But change is coming. I know people like us who work
our asses of are tired of the people like who run our country.
(Louisiana)
New Orleans is in a constant state of decay.
It's the lowest place in America but it is a beautiful type of decay.
It's a fascinating type of decay because the leaves are turning yellow.
There is always something bright green coming right up with it.
Louisiana is teeming with life and really has a longing for life.
A BEAUTIFUL STATE OF DECAY
It's everywhere. And it's beautiful.
You know, everybody has to watch what you say
to be politically correct.
This just started the last two years. It's like "oh my god."
Like the statues. You know the statues have been in New Orleans for
I don't even know how many years.
What I discovered in the South
was not a sense of wanting to ignore or forget history.
But a feeling that it had come to terms with its own past.
Look but they want to tear down a statue though.
They couldn't. It was hard find a racist in New Orleans.
They tried to start all that stuff but we're all been married to each other.
We don't have colors here.
We have shades.
We, New Orleans, have been mixed for so many years.
Oh my god.
They try to start all that racial stuff. That stuff doesn't work with us.
Never has. Never will.
It seemed that the South felt itself appropriated by the so-called culture wars,
CULTURE WARS
embodied by the removal of confederate statues.
How many years? And now all of sudden they're racist
or somebody is being offended by a statue. Give me a freaking break.
The politicization of culture was dredging up old divisions
of racial tension,
which the South felt it was organically moving on further.
As a nation I think it's coming together.
Still gonna take some time, but... everything does.
And I believe in that. We all gonna survive.
I'm tired of America's self hatred.
I can prove to you very quickly that we're not a racist country.
We elected a black president twice.
Black comprised a little less than 13% of the population.
music playing
New forms of music are not born in fancy neighborhoods.
Or where people get a lot of money from the government.
They're born on the streets and on the sidewalk. A little messy sometimes.
They're born in places like this.
We're the wealthiest nation in the world.
And we're below like the highest ranks like out of the top ten
of how many categories?
music playing
I think that this neigborhood is gonna become just another wealthy neighborhood.
A museum.
What's destroying the country: only 10% of the people vote!
You're willing to kill and die for the right to vote and won't do it.
And you're talking about a revolution?
Why don't you using the revolution you got?
music playing
TEXAS - I think that this is going to be
the debate where Trump is going to go all out.
He's gonna lash out. He's gonna say whatever he feels like.
He's gonna grab the debate by the pussy.
That's what's gonna happen. That's what I think.
THE FINAL US PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
(Trump) We we have some bad hombres here and we're gonna get them all out
No one's hating. Anyone, anywhere right here.
Like no one has any anger or hate towards them.
We're just good people all having a good time.
(Trump) She wants to open borders. People are gonna pour into our country.
I'm not gonna let someone project on me what my country is.
When I'm sitting here, having a beer. You know, having the best time of my life.
(Clinton) You're not up to doing the job. crowd cheering
It's hard to believe that the race is actually so close.
When you get to watch the debate and see what he has to say
that is acutally a lot of it is nonsense.
I want it. That's why I got it on my back in the beginning.
It's because I give a shit about the people around me.
People matter.
And you know building a wall is bullshit.
I literally, like when you ask me for a sip of my beer.
I literally got emotional because like bro like we just met.
You know like I'm a giving heart. That's who I am.
Like we just met. You know like you feel comfortable enough with me.
You know, no hate. Nothing like, you know, 60 years, you know 60, 50 years ago that shit would've never happened.
I would had to take a drink in a fountain. You know, back outside
or some shit like that.
You know, so. That's how far we've come.
And that's, things like this, is what makes this country great, man.
America was continuing to reveal its different faces to me.
Texas had voted Republican in every election since 1980.
And yet, despite the polarity with the debate
it showed me a version of an America
at peace with itself.
Republican, Democrat sat side by side,
and for a brief moment I felt a healthy conversational
and interactive approach to politics.
Ahead of me, however, lay Austin
where the reality of the economic divides
would present themselves in stark colors
and if there's one thing a populist leader understands
it's how to exacerbate existing tensions
and use them for political gain.
woman screaming
Those of sometimes strangers fighting one another.
over something that they may stepped on each other's foot...
THE GOSPEL OF THE SIDEWALK
in the club, while they gettin' drunk or something..
You know something that don't make any sense.
Or this lady decided she wanna go over here with this gentleman
and that gentleman didn't think she should.
They never really fightin' over anything that matters.
(Jim) What matters, Linda?
What matters is life.
And preservin' it.
And learnin' and teachin' one another how to survive with each other.
We don't know how to do that.
You know.
And racism - that needs to be dead and gone.
Those that started it is dead and gone.
Let it die with them. You know what I'm sayin'?
We are a whole new generation and we got new generations to come.
What are we teaching them? How to stay in the past?
It was in my meeting with Linda that I realized
my grappling with America had somehow gone in the wrong place.
Linda's words, "what matters is life,
preserving it"
struck at my core.
Like most I'd been pulled into the drama,
the divisions,
the conflicting ideas in the spectacle.
Sitting by her side
and within her gentleness and kindness
I was introduced to a new perspective of America.
That night, I watch from my van as two old friends shared a joint
and prepared for another night on the streets.
I felt a sense of humility before the grace
with which they seemed to bear their lot in in life.
And I felt a sense of shame
that for all my wrestling with America
that I not had the courage to reach as hard.
I vowed that I would play a new hand in the game.
From this point, I wanted to tell the story
of the untold election.
Oh, it's a rush. It's a big rush.
The wildest woman you ever had in your life.
I mean crazy.
It's not, are you're gonna get hurt, it's when.
shouting Now, now, now!
Broken ribs.
I broke my femur like six times.
Got more screws right there.
I broke it comin' off a bull.
I got slammed down face first in the dirt.
I got screws right here.
Every muscle in my body aches.
Got surgery on my eye.
I do this because I love it.
Broke my shoulder.
Bein' able to ride a bull? Like being on top of the world.
Right here, across this one.
I was enjoying my first rodeo.
It seemed on the surface
a quintessential expression of American energy, brawn, and gumption.
And yet, in attempting to peel away the layers of this seemingly most
southern traditions, I found my own impressions once again
subverted.
The rodeo is wonderfully multicultural, in both its origin and its expression
of modern culture.
Yet articulates a conservatism way beyond debating, villainization, and populous rhetoric.
It's not an American sport.
I mean, the original vaqueros in Mexico,
they got rodeo started and I mean everybody just went from there.
It's Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, America. It is a international sport.
It is a conservatism of family values,
love of nature. Values that are in no way at odds with liberal sentiment
about the environment and looking after one another
(Jim) Is this one of your lot? - It's my son.
We're thankful that we spend a lot of time doing it
and exercising, running and bein' the best we can be.
So, we're blessed because of that.
Cowboy life. Country life.
Hunting, fishing, riding, everything. laughs
When you go beyond the politics
you find these things are just an expression
of one another.
In the rodeo, I found an America
overcoming itself.
It pointed to the artificiality in the divides of the Right and the Left.
And the illusion of how our politics characterizes us.
As if from two separate species.
The way I feel about America now is that
we need to put all the racial differences aside,
all the business aspects aside,
and get back to being a faith-driven country.
We need to go back to understanding that
and become a country as one
you know, through faith.
It doesn't matter what religion you are.
We just need to come together as we're all come from the same cloth.
And just, we need to put our differences aside
and work together and that's the bottom line.
Never givin' up.
Never let an injury back you down.
There's a number of things.
It's more of in your heart.
It's not how you look,
how you talk,
how you dress.
It's more of all in your heart.
But where it is in the moment a hell of a shape.
You know. Need to be something done about it.
So, for one thing they need to vote for Trump.
And give him a shot.
And since he's a business man then maybe he can get a bunch of stuff done.
And if he didn't get up there and corrupted get corrupted like the rest of them.
You gotta get this country turned around.
You can't keep going into debt.
Because if they do, they're gonna fold the money system as we know it today.
We're 20 trillion dollars in debt and all of this is been since Reagan
went in office.
My sign out front says it all.
No matter who wins this election we're gonna lose here.
In the way the election is going, they're not talking about us.
You know, Trump is talking about the little man.
Small businesses all over America are the same way.
But the Democrats aren't talking about the little man.
They're taxing us out of existence.
I would always like to believe that
everybody is gonna be better in the end.
But it's gonna take an awful lot of us workin' really hard to do that.
And that's what we're lacking in America now.
People working really hard at something.
I think they want it too easily. They think that somehow that the government
is gonna promise that they don't have to do anything for that.
It's like an effortless thing and all of the sudden everyone is happy.
That is not reality.
Not reality at all.
(New Mexico)
American and Mexican border is right up there.
El Paso used to be Mexico.
A lot of California used to be Mexico.
Majority of people are supporting him
of Anglo-Saxon people.
THE WALL OF WHITE SUPREMACY
Who over the last 40 years
they seen that the erosion of white supremacy.
What's gonna happen if he does win,
and if that wall is built.
These people, a lot of these people are already in
they're barely making it now as it is.
They don't like what's happening. They don't like it.
They feel like they're being a minority now. They're not a majority like they
used to be at one time. They're the minority now. And they don't like it.
This is a good place if you want to start in life all over again, there it is,
you know? But you have to want it.
You have to actually say to yourself "I don't wanna be here" you know?
Because this is the bottom of the barrel almost
I want to prove the old people they can do a lot of things.
For me it was almost a greater power was directing me. And to go through that I had
to go through hell in order to learn what I was being trained for.
I don't know if that makes any sense to you at all.
But that's, that's what I live and that's what I believe.
I would've never ended up taking care of homeless people if I didn't...
wasn't immersed in it myself.
(Jim) My experiences in Austin had shown me that there is no true understanding
of America without confronting the epdidemic of homelessnes.
If, as Gandhi mused, a nation's health can be judged by how it treats its
weakest member. Then how does one grapple with this epidemic in the
world's richest country? Perhaps we're all complicit in some way.
We demonize the homeless, make them outcasts, deprive them of their humanity
and settle our conciousness with a few dollars chucked into a hat once a month.
In the Opportunity Center in El Paso I came across what can only be described as
twin forms of heroism. Both in the work of those choosing to wrestle with the plight of
those most in need. But even more so, the power of spirit of those
trying to claw themselves out from destitution itself.
I like your accent! Don't say where you're from, I'm gonna guess. Australia!
Close-ish. (laughter) Actually from Scotland!
Scotland! Ah, I didn't think of that!
-What you think I'm talkin'? Chicken. - I'm chicken juice.
-Your a what? - I'm chicken!
- Yeah, you're chicken shit! - Yeah. I'm chicken shit! (laughs)
If it wasn't for them we'd be in trouble.
- What are you making here? - Rosaries!
- Okay! Wow you make it so quickly, Reso! - Yes
- Wow! Beautiful work my friend! Thank you so much!
- This is a present for you! - Oh no!
- It's a present for you. Yes, sir. - Oh – does it get it...
oh my god, I will wear it with so much pride!
(Jim) What struck me in the Opportunity Center was the thin red line
between the circumstances of one life and the next.
In America it feels the safety net between falling through the social order
is far thinner than in Europe. And I was aghast at how a missed bill,
a freak injury, a lost job or an unexpected illness could prove so
fundamentally life-changing.
Being 54 years old with no insurance and a ...a pretty serious medical condition
it's...it's very scary and depressing.
Then I had an illness where I ended up in the hospital
and my hospital stay ate all of the money that I had
and I had no place to go after I was hospitalized.
And that's how I ended up here.
(Jim) It made me realize that keeping homeless people at a remove
is not just an act of cowardice in society at large,
but also an expression of the protective layer
the wealthier class build around themselves.
To shield themselves from the gritty potential in life.
See, I help everybody 'cause I know how hard things are, you know?
There are hard times right here. Everybody's broke or you know, They want to smoke a cigarette, food, whatever I can. I share everything I got.
Well, I think that there is alot of people who are not willing
to hire homeless people, not willing to give them a chance.
But I do believe that there is still good people in America.
(Jim) The election had become a noise of clashing ideas and archetypes.
A mirage of shock, fantasy and drama.
I felt at last I had arrived at a more substantial reality.
That revealed itself in the simple way a human being suffers.
I'm here in a lot of ways but...
what brought me here was...
trying to find my... myself.
You know, there's a lot of people just getting richer and richer and richer
while uh, more and more people from middle class below are just going way way
down below the poverty line.
(Jim) Seen in this way, a measure of society became how it treated those
who had fallen through its safety net.
As such I felt the Opportunity Center
offered not just opportunity to those lives it was helping rebuild -
but also to society itself. - Making money, eating too much,
drinking too much. These are wrong things. The human,
they don't want to understand how to live better.
How do we create an atmosphere that's friendly and safe and caring of the people
that are rejected by the people in El Paso and everywhere else?
- You're right! (laughter) - Jose, put it there. Oh crap! (laughter)
The cowboy life is the only life.
My dad was once a – he was first, last and always a cowman.
The cattle industry is still going.
It's had a lot of heartaches and heartbreaks, having to
sell down your herd or sell it off and then start over again.
And there's an old story about the guy,
you know, some rancher said, "What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"I reckon I'd just stay in the cattle business 'til it's all gone."
This old stove is what keeps my house warm all winter.
High integrity and hard-working and do the best you can
and as my nephew said, when my dad passed on three years ago...
He was ninety years old. And he was such an amazing man!
And he always tried to make things better.
(Jim) The transformative effects of globalization on traditional ways of life
is often presented in curiously statistical ways.
The deeper I traveled into America,
the more I witnessed longing for ways of life
irrevocably changed through modernity.
Within this yearning was a discernible pain,
not just in the difficulty of rural life...
It doesn't matter how hard it gets - you just keep pushing through.
You push through, you push through. Perseverance.
Perseverance, doing the best you can.
Those are the things that I learned from my folks.
(Jim) But moreover, an acute sense of personal and human loss.
THE HIDDEN INPUTS OF A GLOBALIZED WORLD
And our town was booming!
We had businesses that were everywhere!
I love my town. I love it with all my heart!
I hate to see it just going downhill.
Everyday something closes and somebody moves.
And you never see that one person again that you knew. That it so sad.
In the last – what is it, three years –
we've had I don't know how many overdoses.
Heroine overdoses. Of young kids!
It's almost like it's the devil's playground.
THE DEVILS PLAYGROUND (& ITS SAINTS)
Smoking a bowl! (laughter)
(??) (01:08:39) one of the most beautiful places you've ever been.
One of the most radical places. Back in the day, it was something else!
I'm an aboriginal of this country and hello! I'm barely being talked about
- when it comes to race. - If I thought that Trump would be
in there I'd put a bullet in his head if I had the opportunity.
They talk about all these other nationalities that came from everywhere as a minority.
- They never say American Indians. - I don't trust the man. I think he's
a Hitler. - I wish I could just ask the whole
United States about this. Everbody, wherever they came from is a descendant
from somewhere else.
I think he's the worst of all the worst! (music playing)
COLORADO
- Yeah these roads are really beginning to get icy up here in the mountains.
Heading towards Silverton.
You know this race is going down to the wire. You've got Trump making
this crazy late surge. Two weeks ago his campaign was dead in the water and
suddenly the head of the FBI released these emails and Clinton's campaign is
just being absolutely taken to pieces three days to the election! Is it gonna
stabilize or is Trump's rampantness gonna come back?
Wow, it's really getting snowy. I really
want to get to Silverton and find somewhere to stay 'cause this isn't cool at all.
To tell someone like myself, a small business owner, uhm when he didn't pay
taxes for all those years, to say, "Well, I didn't pay taxes
because I'm smart." You know and then there's someone like me that doesn't make that much money
and has to pay a certain amount of taxes every year?
I mean to me it's an insult to say something like that.
In other parts of the country there's tension between the political views.
Have you found any of that in Silverton?
-Oh lots of people here. - Oh there's lots of it! People are stealing
signs, they get in people's face and argue with them - it's pretty ugly.
I think that there's a big section of America that uhm, thinks that America's
going in the wrong direction because we're becoming more liberal on social issues.
And it scares them. - People've runined the country and
whether you agree with it or not it's your opinion but it's in trouble right now.
And terrorist groups are growing way faster than they should be allowed to.
We used to deal with that so that they wouldn't cause the world harm -
that's not happening anymore.
We hear there's some serious crime going on in Silverton. (laughter)
If there's a bad character that came to town I'll hear it from six different people
before the day's out.
- Big time crime in these parts! - Big time in this area! (laughter)
Is this how you managed to come across me after five minutes of being in town?
That's right! Someone said "I don't know, some cat with an accent.
You better check him out!" (laughter) - They come in that way or if they come
in that way, we can make sure we lock the town down!
- I'm glad I'm not getting arrested! - (laughter) Eh, not yet!
(Jim) I'd been lucky enough to be welcomed into the fold by
Silverton's law enforcement community. Once again I was struck by the apparent
contradiction between America's internal divisions...
Political period of the last couple of years has been knock down, drag out
- politics here lately. - They're the ones that everybody of course
- looks up to or listens to or sees. - (Jim) And its consistent capacity
to show welcome and hospitality to a stranger.
Guys, you know we don't understand the tea and strumpets thing or whatever you
- guys say, but... (laughter) - Showing the American spirit in the redneck
- trucks there? (laughter)
(Jim) I hoped to find out more about small community life...
- Well when the shit hits the fan we all together and do what needs to get done.
(Jim)... and the role of guns in America. - This is a kalashnikov.
It says, "kalashnikov this way," a little play on, walk this way!
So I'm glad to see people coming and caring enough to find out what America
is like. Not what the American government is like. What America is like!
Well I think first of all we kid ourselves to believe that we're in a true democracy
anymore. We're in what I consider a system of legalized bribery. I mean when over
ninety percent of every decision in the House and Senate is in direct proportion to
the money that put that person in the office
- that's not democracy. That's bribery. - Some care about it from the heart rather
than from the power structure. And our politicians are no different than
politicians any place else. It's a power struggle.
We're ready for some major...major reforms that need to happen soon and maybe such a
circus-like election as this will kind of bring that about.
Most of us have, whether it's one side of the political spectrum or the other,
all have America at heart. And want to make it what it's supposed to be.
And so, anyway. (chuckles)
- I'm doin' good man, how are you? - Man, good to see you!
(Jim) The British will always view the American addiction to guns with a
degree of bemused curiosity and quizzical bafflement.
- So Bruce, I hope that's not a Scottish guy you've got on the target over there!
- Make my day, punk! - That's the one. (laughter)
I will point it at Steve's truck. 'Cause I don't like Steve very much.
(Jim) And yet, for better or worse, firearms are engrained into the American
conciousness. The right to own a gun is synonymous for many US citizens with the
notion of freedon itself. Regardless of my personal feelings about deadly weapons, I was
impressed at the discipline and diligence of the Silverton police force.
Here, you or anybody else, you would call me and I will do everything in my power
at risk to myself to be there at your darkest hour.
- You going hot? (shot) - Fucking hell that's got a kick!
- You look like Doc Holiday in that hat!
UTAH
It is the day before the elections! Nearly at Salt Lake City. Just stopped
rolling to seeing some amazing countryside! So beautiful! This country just takes
the breath away at every turn. Even in this moment when it's going so berzerk
so crazy! You know what, this election became for me not about Donald Trump
or Hillary Clinton. It's become about the American people, it's become about these
mavericks I've come to know and learn and love. I'm just hoping that,
you know there's a sense of redemption and healing and coming together after
this election. Because all the people I've met, every single one of them deserves it.
Something is in the air and I just hope that it's a moment which can lead to great
self-reflection and like the true spirit of America to come through, that I have come across
and so much of this upon
this journey. Come on America! Inspire us all again like only you can!
ELECTION DAY
Okay, it's Election Day! Let's go see what's gonna happen!
Who are you supporting today? Wanting a female president, aren't you?
- Who are you voting for? - I have no idea and I won't know until
- I get in there... - Oh, I'm just terrified.
- ...and think long and hard about who I hate the least.
How'd you feel if you wake up and he's got the nuclear codes tomorrow?
- Uhm (laughs) yeah... - I think Trump has such an ego that he'll
- try really hard to do a good job. - You know, the reason why I'm deciding when I
get there is 'cause uhm it's been impossible for me to pick a side so to speak.
You're still undecided! You're two yards away from the polling booth and you still
- don't know. - Confusion, anxiety. (laughter)
It's two capitalists running against each other, who are both billionaires.
Make Americanos great again! (laughter)
They say get back to a better time but they never say what time that is. And they
never said what made it better back then.
So the sun is going down over Salt Lake City soon
and when it comes up again, America will have a new president.
ELECTION NIGHT
Clinton in the lead in Florida!
The election is already seasawing from Left to Right ...
(radio) Trump has a lead! - I mean it's just so dramatic and Clinton
has gone ahead. It's seasawing, it's sea- sawing. I mean I'm not an American man and
I'm totally on a knife edge. Looking quite good at the moment in
Florida for Clinton. (Yes, yes,yes!) No one knows where it's going.
Trump is winning in Florida, but look at that: Clinton ahead in Texas!
My youngest daughter is uh, going to school at the University,
Montana State University. Election night- the party that she's putting together for
her friends and her dorm is a R.I.P America Night. A Rest In Peace America
- Night. - I'm calling this "Erection Day"- we're
- screwed either way! - Hillary gets the flu and she can't be on
- election? Really? I have a vagina! And I have kids to take care of. And if you
really can't hold it together, with a vagina! I'm seriously, I'm a Buddhist.
To the Trump supporters out there: find the primary sources for yourself and uh
- discover your own path to knowledge. - One thing, what she do?
- If you had the chance to go back in time... - Okay, ask me!
- and end the life of one Adolf Hitler... - And?
- ...would you do so? - No.
- Why not? It's an interesting line of inquiry. - Okay, okay, why would you?
- Because I believe that given a chance to oppose forces against humanity I would
- do so. For Hitler or for Trump. - Wait, wait. Guess what? You weren't
- there and you can't change history. - And that's unfortunate, but having
- visited the polls and I have done what I feel is my American duty.
- But you can't change history, son. - And I hope I can change history going
- forward tonight. I've tried my best to do so and we will see what the outcome is.
- Mind you, you did. You tried to change history. I'm proud of you for trying to
- make a change. - And I, you.
- Thank you, I didn't vote. I'm Buddhist, I don't need to change history. It'll
- happen with or without me. - That's your choice.
- It is my choice. - Have a good night.
- I am. I'm having a blessed evening, thank you. (laughter)
(radio) Ohio shifting Republican as well at the moment.
It changed so much. Trump is up across the board.
(radio) Donald Trump will carry a huge prize, Texas...
He's up in Florida, he's up in Ohio, he's up in North Carolina...
- Hillary's got it in the bag. - Look how red it is! It's just terrifying!
-We're working west, as soon as we get to the west coast...
I'm so stressed out by your American bloody election, that I had to come and get some
cigarettes!
- Still fucking stressful! (laughter) (radio) The coast hasn't voted. The entire
half of the liberal constituency has not voted. - It's rigged!
- Virgina just won! For Hillary Clinton! - I feel good, a ittle nervous.
- Ohio was lost to Democrats! - Ohio is gone, it has gone to Trump.
- How many electorial votes go to Ohio? - I have no idea!
- Me fucking neither! (laughter) - I'm disappointed that the American people
- are so racist oriented. - If Michigan and Wisconsin go to Trump
- it's over. (cheering) - We just won California!
- Californiaaaaa!
But Trump won Idaho.
Hillary just passed Donald Trump.
If we lose Wisconsin, Michigan, it's over.
So I'm dashing across town
and we do not know which way it is going.
Trump has just won North Carolina.
It's official.
His message has connected with people.
The world is changing. The world is changing.
I'm nervous because Ohio is normally a good predictor,
and they totally failed us.
If Trump wins, there will be a Republican House, Republican Senate,
a Republican president who's likely to put in multiple Supreme Court Justices.
This is Roe v. Wade going away.
But know all of you...
You're too high, like aw, dude... We are foe today.
This is traditional marriage being reinstated likely.
This is not just undoing what Obama did.
This is undoing decades of stuff that we all care deeply about.
That's what all of you did...
and this is how all of you got to where you are now.
This is a really, really shitty moment.
If this is going the way it looks like it's gonna go.
I think the polls are still close, too close to call.
Barring the miraculous, I think Trump is our president,
which says a remarkable thing about democracy.
Which is that we get what we get and we have to acknowledge
the reality of what our populous is and what it wants.
We come together when we're at the hardest times,
you know. Evolution happens at the precipice.
It's, it's like a nightmare.
I'm here for the girls. That's me.
All the beautiful things get torn apart.
I just think I underestimated how misogynistic and xenophobic
and terrible so much of America is.
There are people putting children to bed tonight
and they're afraid of breakfast.
And I'm scared for all of my friends and anybody who's different.
I have Muslim friends who are texting me tonight saying, "Should I leave the country?"
Our president is someone who fears difference in all shapes and sizes.
This was a whitelash.
It's nearly 11 o'clock.
It hasn't been announced yet.
But we don't want to feel that someone has been elected...
by throwing away some of us.
The atmosphere has died in the Democratic Convention.
A solid 21% chance. - It's not nothing.
We're pretty much Germany in the 1940's right now.
Those parellels are uncanny.
Hope does last!
He's loud. He says he can single-handedly fix the problems
by eliminating minorities.
Sounds like, you know. A certain somebody.
I think a Trump presidency will...
We're fucked 'cause of Trump!
end acceptance of diversity.
I'm on my own in a cinema meant to be a party for the presidency.
Donald Trump about to take the stage...
Depressed, buddy.
... introduce to you the President Elect of the United States of America,
Donald Trump.
Now it is all hitting me in the chest.
Kind of like a bad porno.
Thank you. Thank you very much everybody.
Sorry to keep you waiting. Complicated business.
I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton...
The victory of Trump is part of a global movement.
There's no doubt of a shifting sense, the West is changing.
Some people might argue that there is some type of positive...
because if so many people want change then it has to happen.
But what does that change mean when it is characterized by xenophobia,
by division, by pointing fingers, by hostility, by anger, by racisms?
It's hard to see where it's going.
People need to come together more. I think.
The evil is taking over with a lot of things here, in these days.
I don't even know what town I'm in.
There are protests breaking out across the country.
The rhetoric of his campaign can't be undone.
Look at history where this language leads to.
I'm on the way up to Oakland tonight.
There's been protests breaking out across the US.
I'm just heading towards this protest
to see what the feeling is here in California.
CALIFORNIA
We are going up against a corrupt adversary.
And we can't match his corruption.
Because if we match his corruption, he will take us out easily.
How we feeling tonight? (cheering)
What we have to do is make sure
that we are fighting against the corruption within ourselves
while we're fighting against corruption in this society.
To accept this is to accept a repeat of history.
There will be no "I never knew."
The Republicans win the House, the Senate,
the fucking judicial court.
The Republicans haven't won that much since 1928 through the fucking history.
I really do feel we have to come from love.
Fuckers!
You cannot fucking be non-violent to somebody who is violent towards you.
Martin Luther King fucking finds that out when he got his ass assasinated.
We have to march...
...and strike...
...like we never have.
This division has been going on since the entire history of this country.
It's only now there's such a mass uprising against it.
We did kill 95% of the native people that lived here.
Of like what, 12 million?
Fucking indiginous land.
You fucking asshole!
We're not divided, we can unite against something like
corporatism or the government and that is truly dangerous.
Death to the idea that love can solve racism.
Death to the idea that love can solve capitalism.
Death to the idea that love trumps hate.
It's about resistance, it's about organized resistance.
These corporations back every war that we see.
They back everything that is corrupt.
They don't back anything good.
(shouting)
They're fucking arresting people! That's fucking violent!
Them fucking taking us to jail, it's fucking violent.
I believe that it's necessary
to resist the rise of fascism in violent ways, yeah.
We can never be divided!
Maybe in a state like Nazi Germany. I don't know.
Because how else would you have countered that?
When he spoke against Mexicans,
when he spoke against queer folks,
I am a gay man and I'm at a point where
I can't really articulate the fears I have for this country.
Fuck who? Fuck Trump!
I'm a member of the LGBTQ community
and I feel a lot better going to sleep at night
knowing that I have not, like, practiced, like if I say fuck Donald Trump,
that's for me very hateful.
We gotta do this together, man. There's no other way.
You gotta eradicate this shit with love, alright?
The original Constitution mentions slavery,
and slavery, 2/3 a person.
A black man was 2/3 a person. What?
You can't expect people who've been oppressed for so many fucking centuries
to just be peaceful up until now.
Do you think we just gonna be holding hands
and marching and singing all the fucking time?
The bitch is a dump. Fuck that [n-word] Trump!
The next thing is to stand up
and fight for everything that this country is for.
And I want you to remember
that we got four long years of opposing this motherfucker.
They didn't allow women to vote.
Last night I got teargassed.
The Constitution needs to evolve.
We don't want no special treatment.
We want what the Constitution says that we deserve.
But what we know is,
the Constitution wasn't written to give us what we deserve.
People protest and they want to stand there like little fucking bitches with some firearms and shit.
But, nah. They won't to do it alone. Fuck that.
And you look at history,
you look at when Mussolini and Hitler were elected,
and you say,
how did the whole world sit there and watch this happen?
It is a fucking shame that he got elected into office.
And it's a fucking disgrace,
and a slap in the face of every American out here.
We always talk about love,
but if we keep doing all these so called violent protests,
that's not love.
We talk about love so much,
but in all our protests, that's not love.
First they came for the Jews,
and then they came for this and then they came for that.
And I was quiet.
And then they came for me,
but there was nobody left to stand up.
I believe that Donald Trump's presidency is the rise of facism in the United States.
If we look at history and we look at the rise of facism in the 30s,
everything that happened then is happening now.
I want to see Swiss cheese buildings
that these rich people own and let them send a message to them-
- What's a Swiss cheese building?
A Swiss cheese building.
A building that's been bombed, that's been shot through.
- So you want to see this stuff getting torn down?
Why not?
It makes me very afraid.
It makes me afraid
for the people I love who I know best.
But it makes me very afraid for the people I don't know
who are my family because I'm of the family, Human.
THE POETRY OF THE PACIFIC
I've reached the Pacific Ocean.
I reflect on my broken half move through America's cities,
valleys, dirt roads, outhouses, motels, homeless shelters, rodeos,
swamps and highways.
My heart is pregnant with its colours, its kindness, its faces,
its mesmeric beauty.
My mind races wearily, consumed with its madness,
its contradictions, paradoxes, and parallels.
I'm anxious and worried
that in juxtaposing so many voices with one another,
if I've done injustice to the poetry of each individual I've met.
Did I lessen their voices
by being too open to life in all its vastness?
Should I have set more limiting parameters,
tried to explore one issue rather than grapple with its totality?
And yet, as I look out over the Pacific,
my heart gives in to the contraction and dilation of the ocean.
Its ineffability, its raw, violent power,
and its capacity for glacial stillness.
This ocean is America.
And it is too vast to consume, too multiplex to comprehend.
It's only in giving into it, into accepting its nature,
that I can be one with it.
It's a broken quilt, a violent patchwork.
But it is this very fragmantation that makes me love it so intensely.
NEW YORK
My political road movie shot on a shoestring budget is at its end.
♪ Everything's got too much for me ♪
♪ How I would love to join the free... ♪ (Children of the Moonlight continues)
The presidency, the incoming administration is kind of
like a, it's like a hurricane just offshore that's about to make landfall.
America is more conflicted than ever.
Its past evanescent, its future uncertain.
I'd been for a short time a part of its dream
and in doing so, have witnessed its nightmares.
There is an idea that is America,
and yet it forever wrestles with what that idea is.
Yet nonetheless, its history remains in its own hands.
It is Democracy itself
which is celebrated in the manifold voices I've heard.
And it's those same voices which will protect that Democracy.
Even as it is challenged and threatened
in ways it could never have imagined.
America remains the emblem of our longing and our dreaming.
My conversation with it has been one of the great experiences of my life.
And now I give back the gift it gave to me.
I am hopeful that it might, in it,
remember its own beauty, and recognize
that its diversity and abundance drives its special energy.
Most of all,
I hope it will renew its conversation with itself.
Not just with a lighter tone,
but a willingness, once again, to listen.
(Children of the Moonlight playing)
Actually, I've never really listened to the Beatles...
Welcome to your first morning in Ohio!
He didn't feel insulted either and I kept going, oh bullshit!
He's like, that's a cool dude.
I like small government.
You just want to wear a t-shirt that say The Beatles on them and seem cool.
You're lame. - This is not going in the documentary!
Í'm not having anything said against the Beatles!
Let me ask a question.
How much we getting paid today?
I wish I was getting paid.
And I get nights like tonight.
You get some random Scottish flirt that just comes in and gets...
This is really good!
It does the job, man, I tell you.
Guaranteed to withstand 200 mph winds. You're in luck.
I'm not afraid of Trump.
He's too fucking stupid to fuck things up that badly.
They cheated, Jim!
You motherfuckers have a good night.
God bless. - You too.