Michael Moore: I think that there's something in the American psyche, it's almost this kind of right or privilege, this sense of entitlement, to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance to that concept if you think about it. To actually have to sit down and talk, to listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun, that's the cowardly act. My question is, why do we believe that way and other cultures don't? And I think it's because we do not feel a collective responsibility for each other. And we punish you if you end up as one of the have-nots, instead of embracing or helping you. A country that will still not, to this day, put into law that a child has the right to a doctor: we won't even say that our own children has the right to a doctor. If a group of people won't do that for their own children, what would they do to the children of Iraq? It's why a lot of the world is pretty frightened of us, because they see how we treat each other. "Jeez, if they do that to their own, what will they do to us?"
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The most incredible day for me in the last decade was during the L.A. riots, in 1992. I was in New York, and walking to the Warner Brothers building; it was the day after the riots started to slow down. And there was an announcement in the building that it was closing, and everyone should go home. Manhattan shut down. People were running to the train stations to get to the suburbs. The streets were empty. I walked into a store and the manager had a baseball bat on the counter. I asked him why and he said, "Just in case." I said, "The riots are 3000 miles away, what are you worried about here?" He knew, they all knew, that it could happen anytime, anywhere, because we have refused to deal with the problem. I'm not going to refuse to deal with it. I'm going to talk about it and talk about it, and I want to see change in my lifetime.
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MM: I spoke to him before. And the point is important: by creating a fearful and panicked public, you not only get them to buy things they don't need, you also get them to vote for politicians who have a right wing agenda. Fascism thrives when the people are in a panic, because people are willing to give up their freedoms and liberties, if they believe they're going to live as a result. And so the right wing politician says, "Vote for me and I'll put a 100,000 more cops on the streets. Vote for me and I'll build more bombs. Vote for me and I'll bomb Iraq." That creates this false sense of security.
Also, it's important to keep people ignorant. So as long as you can keep them glued to the TV, as they are today with the sniper story, that's good. That way, they won't watch or read the real news, or know what they should really be frightened of. I'm afraid that we have 40 million people living below the poverty level. Or 40 million adults who cannot read above a fourth grade level, or almost 50 million now who don't have health care. That is something to be afraid of, because that will unravel a society. What do we have to do to get the news to cover that as the main story every night