Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [43]
See, I’m messed up, too. I guess knowing and having worked with someone who died on one of those planes will do that to you.
How did I get to this place, lil’ ol’ pacifist me? Hell, I’m scared, just like everyone else. Fear, the rational kind, is a critical part of our ability to survive. Sensing real danger and acting appropriately is an instinct that has served our species well throughout the millennia.
But irrational fear is a killer. It throws off our survival compass. It makes us reach for a gun when we hear a noise in the middle of the night (and you end up shooting your wife who was just on her way to the bathroom). It makes us not want to live near someone of another race. And it allows us to willingly give up the civil liberties we have enjoyed for more than 200 years, simply because our “leader” tells us there is a “terrorist threat.”
Fear is so basic and yet so easy to manipulate that it has become both our best friend and our worst enemy. And when it is used as a weapon against us, it has the ability to destroy much of what we have come to love about life in the United States of America.
According to the Bush administration, and the stories they have planted in the media, the terrorists are everywhere. Each day seems to bring a new warning. A new alert! A new threat!
• Watch out for model airplanes packed with explosives! The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin reported that they faced off “a terrorist threat” from an “unconventional weapon” in the form of “Satin [sic] gas.” After the tiny canister was seized from a model airplane builder and flown to a special army base by hazardous materials support personnel in a special military aircraft, the modeling enthusiast admitted he labeled an empty canister “Satin [sic] gas” as a “joke.” Nonetheless, the government issued an alert to be on the lookout for model airplanes that could fly explosives into a building, and cable news channels presented experts in mid-July 2003 to warn us of the grave danger.
• People might be lurking near train tracks preparing to derail trains! The FBI issued a warning to law enforcement agencies throughout the U.S. about a possible attack against transportation systems, particularly railways, in October 2002. “Intelligence” officials said they had seen captured al Qaeda photos of train engines and railroad crossings. (Geez, I hope they haven’t seen my Lionel setup in the basement!)
• Beware of shoe bombs! The FBI says the explosive the shoe bomber used, TATP, is presently undetectable in regular airport scanners, and explosives experts say it can be made in a basic lab by anyone with a college degree in chemistry. The last time I saw someone light their shoes on fire was at an ELO concert in 1978 at the IMA Auditorium in Flint. Some guy who had been drinking too much puked on his shoes and then someone next to him lit a match and dropped it and the guy’s alcohol-laced puke ignited his Converse into a really cool blaze!
• Look for suspicious people lingering near gas stations! Now there’s something we never see. But an alert Oklahoma pump attendant called authorities when a group pulled in with two vans and an equipment truck. Within minutes, police and FBI had surrounded, with guns drawn, the rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Released after hours of questioning, singer Efrim Menuck told Seattle Weekly, “We’re just lucky we’re nice white kids from Canada.”
• Al Qaeda may be setting wildfires in the western U.S.! The Arizona Republic reported that an FBI memo to law enforcement agencies alerted them that al Qaeda had developed a plan to set midsummer forest fires in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming, so that “once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies.”
• Terrorists are trading in sham consumer