Dude, Where's My Country_ - Michael Moore [55]
“The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”
“All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.”
“They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening.”
“The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as ‘Sir.’”
17. Start bombing the hell out of people with WHITE skin. I mean right now it looks like we’re prejudiced or something, only attacking nations with dark-skinned, non-Christian people. When France and Germany pissed us off, we should have bombed them!
18. And finally . . . let’s set a good example. Remember that lesson about treating people the way you would like to be treated? It still works! When you treat people well, 99.9 percent of the time they respond in kind. What if our entire foreign policy was based on that novel concept? What if we were known as the country that sought first to help people instead of seeking first to exploit them for their labor or their natural resources? What if we were known as the country that shared its incredible wealth—shared it even to the point where it might mean that we go without some of the luxuries we’re accustomed to? How would the poor and desperate around the globe feel toward us then? Wouldn’t this reduce our chances of being victims of terrorist attacks? Wouldn’t it be a better world to live in all around? Isn’t it the right thing to do?
The fact is, the number of people willing to blow themselves up to kill you is infinitely small. Yes, anyone prepared to die for their cause may eventually pull it off, but those people exist everywhere—and they always have. The “War on Terror” should not be a war on Afghanistan or Iraq or North Korea or Syria or Iran or whatever place we’ll end up invading. It should be a war on our own dark impulses.
We all need to take a deep breath, and a step back. What would it take for you to want to kill someone? What about 3,000 people? Or four million? That’s right—it would take something awful that would have completely messed up your mind. Now, if you know what breeds a terrorist, and you see that you and I are the ones breeding them, doesn’t it just make good common sense to stop doing that?
I’m not saying that Osama, or whoever else, should just be free to go on his way. In fact, that was the first point—catch that bastard! But what do you accomplish if you launch a war that scatters al Qaeda members around the globe? And what message are you sending to Muslim people who have lived under oppressive governments that you have, at one time or another, helped to keep in power?
Yes, it’s springtime in terror land, and we’re germinating an entire region. Is this how to make the world safe?
The only true security comes from ensuring that all people, here and around the globe, are able to meet their basic needs and dream of a better life. At the very least, we have to make damn sure we are not the ones robbing them of that dream.
CHAPTER
6
Jesus W. Christ
HI. GOD HERE.
I hope you don’t mind if I interrupt Mike’s book with a few words from Me, your Almighty Creator, but hey, I’m God—who’s going to stop Me?
You’ve probably heard My name bandied about quite a bit lately, and if there’s one thing that really ticks Me off, it’s bandying. Another thing that