And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for – how those in charge use fear to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told…
— Roger Moore
Go read this article, go see the movie, read Moore’s latest book. Then you’ll be up to speed and we can talk about whether or not he’s an asshole.
Last night my father called me on the phone from the West Coast. We talked for a while (I whined, he listened) and then — in what was, I suspect, an effort to cheer me up — he said “So . . . what are your current thoughts on the war and how things have gone so far?”
I started talking . . . and took my first breath about five minutes later. In the diatribe, the following words appeared numerous times: Horrified, Suffering, Disgusted, Innocents, War Crimes, Halliburton, Propaganda, Carlyle, and Shame.
Then it was his turn.
At one point, I suggested that a love of our country did not necessarily require a love of our government, and the current vogue to demand that the citizenry must profess both in order to be “Good Americans” was, in fact, Fascism.
He took a deep breath and said, “Well. It’s good that I love you so much.”
Ordinarily, I don’t talk politics with family, for the same reason I don’t talk religion with friends. But at the end of the ninety minute conversation, I felt very cheered up.
Although, I expect my father was rethinking his stance on abortion . . . particularly in the forty-fifth trimester.