No one would ever call filmmaker Michael Moore bias-free. In fact, his documentaries are really 90-minute arguments in favor of a cause -- or against one -- replete with visceral images for emotional impact, with some manipulated special effects for comic relief.

It is fortunate then that Mr. Moore's targets are always the rich, the powerful, the arrogant and the corrupt -- the elitists and the oppressors who torment the United States and the world. In his new firm, "Capitalism: A Love Story," Mr. Moore pulls together all the themes of economic exploitation and greed and true class warfare (from above) that he has developed since the 1980s.

These are really the themes of his life, as he grew up in Flint, Mich., during the post world war boom and watched it deteriorate after it was abandoned by the auto industry. Specifically, this film provides personal, emotional, often enraging or tragic images of the disastrous effects of capitalism on those who never attain the American Dream -- or who lose it when giant corporations shift gears or collapse.

The filmmaker also includes the usual ridiculing of the rich and powerful, and illustrates how they never fail to take care of their own -- as in the $700 billion federal bailout of the lending institutions that had led us into the economic meltdown of 2008. He shows how, over the past 30 years, those at the top have escaped with their wealth while working stiffs have paid the cleanup bills.

It is good

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that the film includes over-the-top scenes of George W. Bush and others looking foolish, or being comically goaded by Mr. Moore, because the collateral damage our harsh form of capitalism continually inflicts would be too depressing. These are real people suffering real pain and crying real tears. If we can continue to rationalize or ignore this as a nation, there must be something twisted deep in the American psyche.

Mr. Moore shows us what an eviction looks like from the homeowner's viewpoint, how workers feel when a distant corporate giant closes their factory after the crash hits -- a crash the banks themselves precipitated. He shows how arrogant and entrenched the super wealthy and huge corporations are in the Land of the Free.

He also highlights the ways the power classes can manipulate our government and delude the very people who are being shafted into supporting them -- as if they were doing something patriotic. Mr. Moore also points out that European nations and Japan guarantee health care and other basic benefits of citizenship, but we still refuse.

Finally, he admits to being weary of his long fight against powerful interests. And he asks the American working and middle classes -- those he says have been squeezed while those at the top have prospered since the Reagan era -- for help. In fact, the nation was never stronger, he correctly asserts, than when the middle class was thriving and more upwardly mobile.

And we still have one often-untapped weapon, Mr. Moore adds: our vote on election day. We might start by supporting universal health care.