Commentary | Michael Moore loves the First Amendment, especially when it is applied to him. But if anyone dares to disagree with him, he uses his freedom of speech to end the debate and launches into tirade loaded with pseudo clever sound bytes designed to upset as many people as possible. After spending the weekend battering a nation of distraught Americans senseless with his exploitive and insensitive Twitter posts promoting an aggressive, America Sucks agenda, he followed up by calling America a nation of killers.
I hate to say it, but killing is our way. We began America w/ genocide,then built it w/ slaves. The shootings will continue- it’s who we are
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) December 16, 2012
Back in July, Moore went on talking head Piers Morgan’s show to announce he would not grant any more interviews after shootings. Twitter became his weapon of choice in his war of words:
“I am not going to come on another damn TV show, either, after the next one of these shootings, Piers… you’re a good guy and you made a good case to me to come on, but I’m sick of this. I refuse to live in a country like this, and I’m not leaving.”
While I am sure that a great many Americans wish he would do them a favor and just leave, he is never going to fulfill their dreams. He is having too much fun pushing their buttons and trying to convince them that patriotism is evil. He rants and raves and then refuses to engage in civil discourse with dissenters, just like another self righteous group of wonderful human beings, the Westboro Baptist Church .
I wonder if Moore even realizes or cares how ugly and out of place his comments were this weekend? Certainly, many people who read them thought he should have shown the good taste and human decency to allow the families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to bury their dead and grieve before launching into his Twitter assault against anyone who would dare to own a gun. Instead he used Tweets like the Phelps family use their signs when they picket funerals.
Perhaps, if Michael Moore had his facts straight , his complaints would have some validity, but the simple truth is that gun violence has declined in America year after year. According to the FBI, the rate of violent crime is at the lowest rate since 1972. Significantly, the murder rate is also at the lowest rate since the beginning of the 1960’s.
@ beyondshay @ mmflint did you know that gun crime has fallen almost every year in past 15 years? what do you mean “continue 2 get worse”?
— Andrew Kahn (@akahnnyc) December 16, 2012
@ beyondshay @ mmflint oh so the issue isn’t that there is less crime, it’s that the crimes that are there are uglier to the media.ok i get it
— Andrew Kahn (@akahnnyc) December 16, 2012
There are 311 millions American citizens and there have been 62 mass murders committed with guns in the last 50 years. While this is obviously a terrible tragedy, and every single life is precious, this means that less than one one thousandth of a percent of Americans committed mass murder by guns. The number is, in fact, so low the calculator will not display it in plain decimal, but as 2.06666667e-7. Obviously, to any fair minded, rational individual, the vast majority of the people in this nation are kind, compassionate human beings who have no intention to harm anyone.
America, like every other nation on earth, was founded by expansionism and yes, violence. Should we condemn our forefathers and hold a grudge against our homeland for all eternity or should we move forward and build a better nation? Do the words spoken by Michael Moore, as he rails against everything we have built, accomplish the goal of reconciliation and healing or do they simply alienate and offend people who might have changed their thinking if the debate was rational and fair.
Michael Moore, I will look you in the eyes and tell you, plain and simple, I think your words are destructive. I wonder why you feel the need to offend as many people as possible. Are you so angry you have become incapable of civil debate? Do you realize how many of us you discourage from working with you? Do you understand why we doubt your anti-capitalist ravings when you are worth 50 million dollars and you live in luxury? Do you see the hypocrisy in criticizing gun law abiding gun owners as wanna be killers while endorsing the anarchist criminals of OWS who demolished part of the city of Oakland? Do you even Care?
It is interesting to note that even when Moore tries to engage in a dialog and claims to be compassionate, he always falls back on his demeaning generalizations of the people who don’t agree with his political viewpoint. He makes people feel like he thinks they are the enemy. I’m telling Michael Moore, I don’t consider any American my enemy, including him. Instead, I would remind him of something I am sure he already knows: words can be used like bullets and he just fired a massive and undeserved salvo at the American people. He shot at an already wounded nation that was just trying to understand their grief and heal.
The time has come to put aside the rhetoric and the sound bytes, cast off our hate, renounce the partisan politics and work together as friends to fix our broken nation. Stop the hating and the name calling , Michael. Its getting boring.