I don't really want to plunge myself deep into a guns/no guns debate, cause I fear such a discussion could take forever, so I'll try to keep this as brief as I can
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I'm just not buying what Moore is selling because it doesn't stand to reason.
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This is exactly what I meant with "is Moore a liability or an ally". His methods might be shoddy but his overall message might not be. I don't know really who else is campaigning that kind of message though, so I don't have any links for you with well-researched counter arguments. I do however strongly feel that something is rotten at the core of America though (no offense intended), and I support anyone who tries to find out what it is.
I first went to America three years ago. It was to LA, for the E3. Every morning I went out of the hotel, and every morning when I saw the news on the TV in the hotel lobby I was thinking "what's happened?! what's wrong? are we all going to die?". Of course it was just some bank robbery blown all out of proportion. But it was presented in a way that in Europe would probably mean... a disaster, or a political assasination, or some other
huge news story. You say something like "hey, that's just the sensationalist media". Well, YES. And that sensationalist crap pervades through America every day. Everyone's affected. You can say "yeah, but it's not like I'm associated with that". But erm... you know, it's there, and it's screaming "terrorism!" and "violence!" and "disaster!" and that makes people scared, even subconciously.
Another experience I had was a building accross my hotel being raided by police, with helicopters and all that crap. Also, a guy on the street near the LACC told us it was "a great day to kill some n------". A friend of mine who went to States had a gun pointed at his head, and if it wasn't for his gun-bearing travel companion he might have been dead by now. So, on the other hand, some places in the US are definitely worthy of being scared of. But I think guns are the cause of this problem, and not the solution. I mean all the street violence in sort of the urban areas that you hear about is usually related to some guy being disproportionately poor, but being able to acquire a gun fairly easily. This smelly guy thinks: "hey, my life sucks, but guns==power, so i'll buy one of those". That's the simplified version of course, but it's true I think. Take away the guns, give people some quality of life, and you remove 95% of the problem.
The current US government has an agenda based on fear. It's their basic propaganda strategy, really. While I was taking a shit in one of those fancy automated toilets at SFO, a voice spoke through the intercom, and it went along the lines of this: "This is a message from Homeland Security. Terrorist threat level has been raised to ORANGE. Report any suspect behavior to the authorities immediately." After that, I was more than happy to go on that plane. That terrorist threat level color code is not made for security, it's made for repression. Assuming their was a genuine terrorist threat, why scare the hell out of everyone in that airport? It felt like Big Brother himself speaking to me. You're not going to catch any terrorists with that intercom message, and if there's a bomber walking around I'd like to have him dealt with swiftly and quietly by the CIA, thank you. That's what they're for, isn't it?
Oh, and finally, I
think what Moore meant with the whole black guy thing, is that people usually focus on the crime in the streets, and not crimes committed at higher levels (such as CEOs accepting bribes, or whatever), which he regards as more severe. Moore's reasoning is probably that the crimes at the top encourage the crimes at the bottom. It makes more sense if you look at it symbolically, especially the bit where he says a black guy never hurt him, but white guys have (anything from a car salesmen to a corporate CEO). I mean, it would be hard to take that literally. :eek:
I hope that with these anecdotes -- which turned out to be much longer than I wanted -- I've sort of illustrated what I think.
Next time I shouldn't write one of these posts after a strong coffee, heh.
