[Oblivion437]

I'll deal out on Moore's response first...

His response to the Research director of the Independence Institute, if that's what he really was, well his argument isn't even tackled at all. All he does is run paragraph after paragraph of ad hominem attacks on the man who made certain assertions (assertions not posted, something important, he won't counter what the guy himself said, just the fact that he's right wing, and also a crazy, so if Moore uses broad and sweeping generalizations it's okay, but when someone else does it, it's terrible) on a news program.

About the bank scene he lies very carefully. The Bank thing was setup over a period of months. The fact remains that, had he actually attempted to load the weapon in the bank, there were cops right there. They'd have their pistols levelled at his face before his pudgy fingers could have closed the bolt on that thing. Never mind also the fact that the rifle in question was, at the entire time of his filing for the CD (he's now plunked 1000 dollars into the bank, not something a robber would do) in a vault 4 hours away. That's a long distance, the rifle was handed to him months later, as the scene was filmed, but he'd already had that filed for some time.

It's true that Heston said exactly what they recounted. Moore's words, on face value, don't exclude the possibility of him using other words, he doesn't say, "he said that, and only that." He quotes Heston out of context, and slices together two parts of a speech in different tone, to make yet a third tone, one of arrogance, hop-headedness and unsympathetic rabble-rousing. This is not the case. Heston cut those festivities to the bone, doing both what was morally right and legally obligatory at the same time. I applaud Heston's decency.

He uses the excuse that he's 'being introduced in narration' but the editing is so quick and precise, that unless you'd known about it in advance, or watched some scenes multiple times for that 'extra jab' effect, you'd assume that all three cuts were of the same speech. Moore plays very carefully with the words in his response. If he didn't, he'd be sunk. He doesn't make a single outright false claim in the whole lot of responses.

He then seems to think that context is non-important, if I started slicing words of his response together, I could make them mean anything I want. So, when we realize that Heston was making a speech, drawing, in a rather intellectual fashion, to a famous and grand old man of our history (Theodore Roosevelt) who was himself a Gun Nut in his day, among friends, in a different context, he suddenly isn't the demon Moore makes him out to be.

He then carefully admits that his sources of the same statistic varies between the countries applied to, what he doesn't admit is that they all count the numbers differently, and that the end result that they release all mean different things. Police statistics wouldn't show police shootings, and DOJ statistics would seperate everything, so that you'd have to add the numbers together to bring an altogether, but some numbers added in should really be ignored.

Then he pats himself on the back for having sold a large number of books and movies, when in fact, the merits of one movie is in question here. That's like saying, I've built a hundred sponge foundation buildings. That matters little if they all collapsed. This while he shoots off a paranoid and unfounded rant about the NRA, and then says that every fact in the film is true. Well, all facts are true, aren't they? Everything stated, within a certain context, as fact, is true. If it wasn't, he's right, chances are it wouldn't get released. The point is not that the numbers are wrong or his sources are no good. It's what he's done with these facts that has us irritated. Not to mention a lawsuit is pending from that fruitcake farmer he interviewed.

What's especially delicious is how he accuses his attackers of resorting to character assassination, whilst his first few paragraphs were dedicated to that very thing! Excuse me if the irony is not funny anymore.

He then accuses random individuals of libel. I suppose that's going to include me, after all, I'm one of his 'internet crazies.' Being that I, like him, have made no false assertions, and am not libeling him, what he is doing is in fact libelous, and I could, in theory file a lawsuit against him.

A footnote, if you didn't pick it up, "Michael Moore Hates America!" was a reference to a documentary he won't give an interview for, that's driving him up the wall. Mike Wilson is working on it, but unlike Moore has a finance problem.

1- I went into the film a little anti Moore - the Oscars comment being one, and the in my opinion erroneous sociological assessment of Germany being the other. 2- But I walked away with respect. 3- Although - as I said to my American friends, who I watched it with, who became full of self loathing after watching it - America has done much good on the planet as well as bad. Moore painted a very bleak picture, which was making a point, but wasn't painting the whole picture. Americans, like all of us, should feel a balance of pride and shame with their country, not exclusively one or the other. Certainly that is how I feel about Australia. Shame for the mistakes and horrors and problems, and pride in the strengths and achievements.

1- The Oscar Comment was like the cream topping upon a massive pie. It was the apex of a long series of insults to the Academy, the first being that a fictionalized film receives an Oscar for Best Documentary. As for his sociological assessment of Germany, what Moore has carefully NOT told us, is how powerfully the Germans have been forced to constantly apologize for something that happened then, individuals who bear no anti-semitic feelings, have no connections to the Holocaust, are forced to sit through it again, and again, and again. They've practically rebuilt themselves. Hate rehab of sorts. I do wonder though, how encouragable is tolerance in a society that forces it upon itself.

2- I walked away with anger and disgust.

3- His unbalanced and biased picture of America among other things is one thing. What he's done to the Academy is another, and his fallatiously presented arguments are the other major ones. Your sense of national and civic pride is something that Moore wants to destroy in Americans. A complete dissolution of pride for something of which someone is a part is a pre-requisite to revolution, taking the good with the bad is an essential way to overcome the hardships and handle well the boons.

That's how I feel as an individual. I seek to fix the character areas I am inadquate, deficient and mistake ridden in, but have self pride in the things I'm strong and beneficial in.

That's a good policy. You get places in the world thinking like that. On that track you'll accomplish something, even if it's in a material sense hard for others to appreciate it, at least you're doing it for the right reasons.

Why does America have 11,000 gun related deaths each year? I feel it is a combination of all those reasons, some more, some less. People often look for a convenient simple reason, for a simple solution.

I try to learn as much as I can before the old mental computer starts firing off solutions. Before I'll cast judgement I'll say that intuitively, I feel that the problems of Harris and Klebold run deeper than the film, and all media-outlets, and their source providers/creators, are willing to dig, or can fathom. The roots are deeper than what most are willing to agree with

To blame for Columbine: 1. Guns. No guns, no massacre pure and simple.

Sorry, but human beings have been mass-murdering eachother before firearms were invented. Before even Iron was used as a principle metal in firearms, in fact. Also, banning firearms is an unworkable ban. Those who truly want them get them easily enough. Convicted Felons managed to acquire firearms and military-quality body armor and heisted a bank. None of which they could have done legally. They still did it. Guns aren't an effect or cause in this case. Merely the tool with which an act were carried out. These individuals were determined psychopaths and lousy shots. They didn't seem to be very effective killers. If they'd expended over 900 rounds of ammo, and were precision marksmen as some asserted, over 300 people would have died that day, at least according to the military definitions of precision marksmanship.

2. Kmart bullets - If bullets cost $5,000 as Chris Rock joked, we would indeed have less murders

No, murderers would use something else, which they already do. Knives. More people are killed with knives than any other single device. It's just too ubiquitous. Should we ban knives for the safety of those on our streets? Not a rational step. Also note that millions of people were murdered by firearms in the 20th century, well over 50 million in the first half alone. Stalin's 5-year plans and Lubyanka murders killed 20 million, plus an unascertainable percentage of individuals actually shot to death during the Holocaust, war casualties across two world wars, plus the fact that the Holocaust was made very possible by force of arms. If someone barehanded demanded you pack yourself among many others in a train and go off to somewhere, and none of his friends were armed either, would you listen? If you're at all like me, you'd tell him where he can shove those relocation orders. Those murders, primarily perpetrated by government agents, are a result of a lack of balance in potential power of force, not the presence of force itself.

3. Fear - huge. Moores doco makes this point adequately

No it doesn't, and it creates more fear and insecurity as it tries to argue its points. It in fact does better at creating fear of the American gun culture than Moore's supposed Media conspiracy.

4. Social attitudes re. self seeking rather than social support. Again Moores doco highlights the diff. between Canada and say Australias social health care, and what that does to a societies mental regard for itself. I think America could go a long way towards caring for those less fortunate, and this would erase many social ills.

I am an individual. I am also not someone's property. I am not a part of a social collective any more than I wish to be. My ambitions for the next ten years are entirely consumed with making money, making more money, and establishing myself in whatever jobs I can get. It's going to be a long, hard hustle. I don't want anyone's help any step of the way. Also, every socialist program implemented in our country has been, by and large disastrous. The AAA, the Welfare program. Right now, over 7% of our population is on welfare. Those 7% used to be unemployed. The AAA was so carefully exploited that our food markets were still glutted but the farmers were collecting other people's income tax money. All that happens when you try to do something like that on tax money is you kick around a few coals in a dying fire. It's like that last burst before a star collapses. It doesn't reverse the effects of what necessitated social help from someone.

5. Violent past. A nation forged by revolution, civil war and conquest of indiginous peoples has violence as it's foundational success value. Canada was not forged through revolution and had no civil war. Nazism for another example, was in my mind, a result of the centuries of defensiveness and zero natural boundarys for Germany, as well as a reaction against the social instability... (I'll stop there.. you could write a book on the reasons for Nazism)

Moore disagreed with this particular point, but I do agree that our past is violent, and unlike Britain or Germany, we haven't either forced apologism upon ourseleves or white-washed our past or simply forget about it. We live in a violent world, our social values stem from a society pulling away from tradition. We also embrace freedom over order. I do so as well, and feel social order can go to hell if so much as a single natural right is to be infringed.

6. Artistic influence. Manson in my mind shirked his power and responsibility as an artist shaping culture. Moore compared them listening to Manson with Bowling, but the two are totally different. Music is a language. Music is communication. You can radically change moods listening to music in ways you don't playing a sport. You receive the intent of the communicator - even if you then reject it.

The OSS, CIG and CIA, as well as the KGB, all did tests that proved emotions were affected by rythms, words and patterned effects of sound. It does matter, but I doubt Manson is even half as clever as the media would think he is, as most of the effects have to be subliminal in nature to even work. I say movies are far more powerful than music, as they add visuals to the sound, and Taxi Driver is thusly one of the most powerful ever made. However, while musical propaganda, such as national anthems or badly written Nazi or KKK songs can influence, movies like Birth of a Nation and Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph Des Willens demonstrate a far more powerful effect of motivation.

I'm not suggesting censorship, but an artist should self censor, and be aware of the power of the medium they use. If you create mood depressing music that encourages suicide, the odds that someone already on a low hitting an even lower plunge are quite likely.

That's true, an individual does need to be responsible. And I'm glad you're an enlightened individual who also feels that censorship on law isn't the answer. In the US, we have constitutional rights that protect us from censors, but the FCC has managed to get around that... It's sad really.

7. Desensitisation to violence in media. Other nations may watch American films, but we watch them viewing the country from afar. It;s like watching a scifi film. A world away. I've found films make som much more sense living here, and seem much more real world. Violence in an American film seemed more fictional to me living outside, and more real living inside.

I'd agree with the idea of desensitizing, but no media did it for me. I saw real violence, and after a while, combined with the emotional dissipater of a family death, your feelings on the matter really get squashed quite heavily, like a giant iron weight falling on a bubble. I also understand what you're saying about the differences between the real violence and the fiction, and how being exposed directly to the culture that produced the fiction can rack the nerves (Once Upon A Time In America is one of the most riveting, downbeat gangster films ever made, and living in an area on the vestiges of economic collapse, it's all the more shocking)

8.Computer games reward violent resolution to problems. Whether our beloved Bladurs gate/Morrowind etc, to street fighter, you cannot succeed without violence.

That's true, but...

A truly good character is impossible in Baldurs gate. A truly good character would be nonviolent. Finding a nonviolent solution, or dying instead. This is impossible in the game, You simply can't complete it, yet people are given the illusion that "Lawful Good" characters are justified in killing a person.

The idea is that you act in a means to benefit all in the world best, and due so also to maintain society and law, which, according to such thinking, are to the benefit of the whole. True good isn't absolute pacifism. Nor is violence justifiable, but on moral grounds, if one kills to save more lives, is one not doing the greater good? Lest we forget the father who kills to save a family member, such an act cannot, by any stretch of a human morality, be construed as evil. Violence in itself is not inherently evil, it's what we do with it, like so many other things, that determines its course.

Anyhow... there are some thoughts. No one reason stands out to me, rather I see a combination.

I too see a combination, but mine is different.

How would you solve this problem?

The solution is difficult, to say the least. The problem is one of human beings, and how human beings react to things. Here we have two individuals who comitted mass murder by being unable to withstand the pressures of growing up. A shame, truly a shame, and

I would ban all guns except the types of slow loading guns around when the founding fathers made the constitution. I'd tax ammunition so it was prohibitively expensive - especially for semis and automatics.

Then we'd be what the founding father's were afraid of us becoming, dependent upon the security of an authority state, which would look after our security as everything else, and would screw it up like everything else. Also, prohibitive taxes won't stop black marketeers and home brewers from making their own firearms and ammunition to modern military standards. A revolver can be made from a few small pieces of steel and some spring metal, plus maybe wood or plastic, fashioned by commonplace industrial practices. It's hard to imagine a world where no mobster or crooked corporate thug would be capable of using such common equipment for evil. How the hell do you think prohibition failed? Take that last sentence as if I were Archie Bunker saying it.

I'd educate artists and computer game designers on the power of influence and suggestion so they are more aware and responsible for what they communicate.

A number are duely aware, but don't care. Others don't act responsibly, but I am concerned, how will we pay for such a program, as a Libertarian, I don't want to pay for someone else's irresponsibility!

I'd bring in immediate health care and welfare programs AT THE EXPENSE of the ridiculously high defense budget. Who is America fighting?

Are these doctors going to receive the same pay they did before being paid by the government? Also, are you going to force them to work? What if the doctor actively refuses government forced cases as a matter of protest, but doesn't give that as the reason? Will you force them to operate/provide healthcare/prescribe a problem? I doubt they'll do a very good job, and the rights of the doctor as a human being are infringed upon.

I'd be putting a serious onus on news and media to present balanced news, not "Bad news if it snows" or the whole emphasis on covering violent crime. Not sure how to change an entire medias practices.... as long as the dollar drives the industry and they people are baying for blood....

There's also the first ammendment to consider as well. Freedom of speech and press is very significant, to shelve them in favor of public safety sacrifices the principles of this country, and is a certain blow to human rights. You and I both know, as many also do, that what is censored in 'the public interest' today may just be abusive media practice, but it's rather inevitable that with such power on hand, sooner or later the government will begin silencing any disruptive or dissenting media or speech, and that will be the death of a good idea.

What are your thoughts?

Since I'm a redundant prick I'll respond to this too. I've interspersed my thoughts and if you feel like reading them, there they are.

Originally posted by wellard: LOL [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] maybe you need to read some up to date criticism of the movie, to post a link to such ....mmm.... errr facts! [img]graemlins/heee.gif[/img] proven untrue or misleading such a long time ago, and pointed out several times already on this forum, does no justice to the standards of Ironworks Oblivion437 There are many faults I’m sure with the movie, and Michael Moore, like the one nightstalker has posted. I will look foreword to your impartial critic of the movie with baited breath. Just do us a favour and make sure they are not as "embarrassing" as those links BTW loved the "the non-limousine left" comment. Was that one of your own?

Well, I'd like to see such dissertations as would disprove Hardy's dissertation. By the way, one of those 'embarassing' links was to Bowling's own site. I'd like to know where they were proven untrue, as Moore's half-assed effort doesn't even come close.

Yes, there are many faults, more than enough that it didn't deserve to be nominated in the documentary category, let alone win it. My critique of the film, as a film will be most impartial, noting technical faults mainly, playback problems, what have you. My arguments about the politics of a leftist polemic will of course be argued from the Libertarian perspective.

Yes, I'm sure you did, would you like to serve up a plate of arrogance with that condescension dish? The consensus among those who knew the leftists in the seventies, called them the thinking left. Then the Limousine people arrived, the rich people who courted leftism out of its fashionability. The thinking left fast became a silent majority, or a quiet minority. I don't read much political literature or proselytizing, so it's not for me to say. However, the quip phrase, non-limousine left, is meant to underline the historical difference between what was an ideology driven movement, to a movement driven by almost cosmetic non-virtues. The hollywood types, the rich 'communists' (the most hypocritical person in the world is a socialist who has everything they've ever owned and learned everything they know, and are the very demon they complain about, in the capitalist system) of our time. Moore is one of them. He decries the rich, yet he is one of them.

Originally posted by Grojlach: "Hated by Non-limousine left"? "Amusing nuisance"? The guy who told you that *does* live in our dimension, right?

Yes, he does, and his entire family works in the broadcasting industry. He's a top moderator over at the Firearmsmod.com forums, and I'm willing to believe him. Sadly, the forums are going through a serious overhaul right now and can't be reached.

Actually I got a wholly different impression - the people who made the biggest fuss about BfC, both here on Ironworks and elsewhere on the Internet, were still the "hardcore" conservatives (which probably comes as no surprise either). Heck, we once had a good laugh during an American Studies seminar once with an NRO-review of BfC, as it was full of self-indulgent spindoctoring and pot-kettle-black reasoning - even apart from the "12-year-old-and-writing-an-article-for-the-school-paper-for-the-first-time"-like writing skills of the guy responsible for the review.

First, how well-written something is matters little when considering how valid its points are in a debate. It wouldn't matter if I threw this at you in Ebonics, German or Chinese, the arguments would be just as valid. I agree that a lot of detraction has been written rather poorly, but I'm willing to take it on the flipside that a number of the positive reviews are similarly badly written, and make similarly weak arguments of support/detraction. Second, I'm sure the same crowd as the thinking leftists (on the right though) threw up a similar fit over the film, but that's irrelevant. A number of leftist thinkers I know were much more pissed off over BfC than the hardline Rightwingers I know. They said, "and someone actually believes this shit?" The Leftists said, "He's an insult to leftists everywhere!" and I said, "Well, that does it, the Left is even deader than it was for me a year ago!" Something to that general effect. The conversations, personal and internet based a like, are well over a year and a half old and the old circuits aren't what they used to be.

[ 02-27-2004, 05:46 PM: Message edited by: Oblivion437 ]