[Review] Bowling for Columbine

by **Kurt** » Tue Aug 03, 2004 4:45 pm

pinback wrote:[...] why do US citizens kill each other with so much higher regularity than citizens of these other countries?"

This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

by **Keza** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:51 pm

Awww, I missed all the fighting! :-(

by **Debaser** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:27 pm

Casual Observer wrote:Big difference between Africans brought to this young nation in chains and immigrants like the irish and italians. Though every immigrant race has dealt with their share of racism and hate, at least they all had the freedom to come here by choice instead of being branded and sold apart from their families.

This is true, but only tangentally related to my point which is that ethnic minorities tend to start out segregated and slowly integrate. It's probably happened slower for blacks than for other races for the reasons you state, but it is happening (and, to a comparably large degree, has happened).

by **Casual Observer** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:09 pm

Debaser wrote:Mexicans are the new blacks who were the new Italians and Irish.

Big difference between Africans brought to this young nation in chains and immigrants like the irish and italians. Though every immigrant race has dealt with their share of racism and hate, at least they all had the freedom to come here by choice instead of being branded and sold apart from their families. Hell, it's only been fifty years or so that I can leagally marry my fiance (who is only half african american) in every one of the states.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:08 pm

Debaser wrote:Well being starven and plague-ridden on the one hand or living in perpetual fear of a government that once wiped out an entire generation of its own citizens on the other can do that to you, even before we get into the whole Eastern vs. Western locus of identity thing.

Yeah, I didn't mean to imply that other issues were not at stake there.

We have no customs.

Debaser! C'mon man... it's not all bad. We have Santa. We have football.

We have a language

And a language!!!

Well, sort of.

But anyway, I don't mean to imply that things are crappy in America or that I am this insane racist or whatnot. It'd be nice if everyone got along better in this country, but unfortunately when everyone in it is either wondering how they are going to get through their job without cracking up or chortling because they're going to lay off 2,000 workers to drive the stock price up you tend to become very focused in your own life and nobody else's. And if your life leads you to stealing televisions or cars or whatnot you don't care because you have to do it and if you didn't you wouldn't.

... Except for the piece of testicle that stole my car -- he had no good reason whatsoever and ought to be put to death for even thinking about touching my ride, much less going ahead and taking it.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:04 pm

pinback wrote:Way to destroy the movie base. Now we're rating movies based on the mass of the director. Good job, Jonsey.

Real quick -- the place where nobody has any fun or makes any wildly indefensible posts and where everyone feels like they are going to fall into a coma is here.

This, please, can not be that.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:02 pm

Rather than clog up the thread with lots of "I agrees!" and so forth -- if I don't comment on a bit of someone's post I either agree with it or have nothing to add. Important to mention for this thread, I think.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:This country has such a self-centered, isolationist attitude.

As far as that goes -- I think you have to be in the US these days. Nothing is gained by showing any loyalty or so forth because the minute you do your corporation just farmed your work out to someone on the other side of the planet, or they swindled your 401(k) or otherwise fuck you. And because corporations have so much extra money to spend on lobbying they will never have anything bad happen to them.

At work I'm concerned with one person and one person only: me. When I decide I don't like what is happening to me at work it's time to get out and find another job. All I care about is how often I get paid and making sure the pay gets processed accordingly. This is because corporations have shown zero loyalty to their employees in the last twenty years. People were perfectly happy to work for Business Zephro for 35 years. Corporations started this shit, not us.

One might say that he feels he needs a gun to protect himself and his belongings. True, if you live in a ghetto or some bad neighborhood where there are regular break-ins, it might be reasonable to take the extra precautions to give you peace at night.

Well, my car was stolen recently and the cops had the audacity to charge me for it. Thanks, guys. They're not doing fuck-all here to combat or even remotely deter crime so I'll be happy to have a loaded automatic weapon at home with me in the bedroom, accessible by typing in 31337 into a keypad or something. If I end up living in Longmont.

Our apartment complex is also CRAWLING with solicitors. Ha ha ha, you're a student on a work summer voyage or something, I don't give a shit, get away. For all I know you're scoping out the place to see who's got a big TV so you can grab it when I'm at work and nobody will notice you doing it because the place is an apartment complex and people move out all the time and hey, I saw that guy just the other day on the weekend, was he a solicitor, maybe he lived here oh well.

I don't have enough time or, frankly, the interest to learn judo or karate and be able to defend my family by opening a can of whoop ass that still requires things to go my way. I'll be much happier when I have settled down getting a weapon that shoots an absolutely inappropriate amount of bullets at the me-fucking-with piece of human filth that broke into my house.

by **bruce** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:47 am

pinback wrote:Way to destroy the movie base. Now we're rating movies based on the mass of the director. Good job, Jonsey.

I assume, since this is the "Michael Moore Is A Fuckwit Thread" we mean the quality of the movie is inversely proporational to the director's mass, right? Is it the director's ultimate mass, or the mass-at-the-time-the-movie was made?

It makes a difference, because until I know that, I can't tell whether <i>Citizen Kane</i> r0XX0r3d or was teh 5uxX0r.

Bruce

by **Debaser** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:46 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:I don't know that it's too big to police properly -- there are many more people in India and China and they are policed okay, I guess.

Well being starven and plague-ridden on the one hand or living in perpetual fear of a government that once wiped out an entire generation of its own citizens on the other can do that to you, even before we get into the whole Eastern vs. Western locus of identity thing.

That's just it, I don't think that it's quite the melting pot that the US has become. I think the people who are there are a lot alike. More, in the US lately everyone seems to have to have a ridiculous amount of pride regarding where they came from. Nobody feels it necessary to learn the language or customs or anything any more, it's just Mexico North or whatnot.

We have no customs. We have a language and I damn well believe everyone not living their entire life in "Whatevertown" of a big city should learn it, but we are a very very young nation with a patriotism founded largely on contrariness. Mexicans are the new blacks who were the new Italians and Irish. I don't know who all the Eastern Europeans and Asians are, but considering they will very likely own everything in a generation or two, I guess they be whomever they want to be.

keza wrote:Someone tell me, what's your TV like? People have told me that violence is seldom censored, but sex often is, but I have no first-hand experience of the matter.

This is somewhat exagerrated, but not entirely untrue. But I think it's also somewhat irrelevant.

As I understand it, one of the points Micheal Moore glosses over or completely forgets to point out is that "Columbine style" gun violence is both very rare and on the decline anyway. People tend to shoot eachother over much more explicable reasons like sex, drugs, or cash. America's just got a lot more of those last two than most other first-world nations.

EDIT: Allow me to correct myself before someone corrects me. I did not mean to say we have more drugs per capita in America, just that we have a much more profitable and competitive market. And I don't mean to blame gun violence on some hippy with a sun lamp. I'm talking about the heroin baloon up the anus stuff.

by **pinback** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:35 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
pinback wrote:Most of the comparisons in the movie are with Canada. Is Canada's "culture totally different"?
No, it's exactly the same. I can't recall the equivalent of Bedford-Stuy in Canada, please to be refreshing my memory.

See above. And how about actually watching the movie before spewing idiotic opinions about the material addressed by it?
I don't give a shit about the fat guy's movie. More people would take him seriously if he'd lose some fucking weight and not be such a goddamn gooey slob.

Way to destroy the movie base. Now we're rating movies based on the mass of the director. Good job, Jonsey.

by **Roody_Yogurt** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:31 am

Britain may not be the same kind of melting pot as the US because hey, in America, that shit don't exactly melt, get my drift? Most metropolitan cities will have several areas of some predominant minority, where all the white middle-class people moved out from years ago to get away from them.

This country has such a self-centered, isolationist attitude. One might say that he feels he needs a gun to protect himself and his belongings. True, if you live in a ghetto or some bad neighborhood where there are regular break-ins, it might be reasonable to take the extra precautions to give you peace at night.

On the other hand, a person who lives out in some suburb and is eternally afraid that it's just a matter of time before someone comes to have at him is completely irrational, IMO. Gated communities in places well out of town to me are just so ridiculous that I'd want to laugh if I didn't find the whole thing so completely sickening.

I think the matter is complicated by the fact that we attribute power and other enviable qualities to gun-ownership, like it knocks you up a notch from whatever miserable slot in life you possess.

Maybe one can reason that other countries look at guns as tools and do not throw in whatever other projections we may have about them, just as they may have a more honest and healthy attitude towards sex.

I would like to go to a range one day and fire off several rounds, but in no way do I believe owning a gun would make my household any safer.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:27 am

pinback wrote:Most of the comparisons in the movie are with Canada. Is Canada's "culture totally different"?

No, it's exactly the same. I can't recall the equivalent of Bedford-Stuy in Canada, please to be refreshing my memory.

See above. And how about actually watching the movie before spewing idiotic opinions about the material addressed by it?

I don't give a shit about the fat guy's movie. More people would take him seriously if he'd lose some fucking weight and not be such a goddamn gooey slob. Especially since it's riddled with errors and lies -- there are dozens of places on the Internet that will tell you as such.

You have taste in movies which is 180 degrees different from mine. I believe that you have shitty taste, you would say the same of me. There's nothing wrong with that.

Moore made some propaganda. Good for him. I don't need to see his miserably leftist nonsense in order to comment on issues that arise in a BBS thread because of his horseshit. Americans are killing other Americans with weapons all the time -- why is that? Well people point out other nations and think we should be more like them. But none of those nations are even remotely like the U.S., though lazy thinking would like to imply that they are.

I mean, can you imagine it the other way around? "There are social problems in Afghanistan! Well, in America, we..." Gimme a break. I don't want to hear what a paradise it is in Canada or Britain or Jihadistahnz when it comes to shooting people in the face with rocket launchers. You want something similar, look at Iraq. There were at least two distinct groups of people and Saddam threw poison gas at them. That's more similar to what it's like in the States than Canada or Finland.

by **pinback** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:15 am

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:
pinback wrote:The question posed is, "With many of the same cultural influences, and with much the same gun availability/ownership and violent history as other countries, why do US citizens kill each other with so much higher regularity than citizens of these other countries?"
Culture's totally different.

Most of the comparisons in the movie are with Canada. Is Canada's "culture totally different"?

Scandanavia or Canada or Japan -- our murder rate would be more like theirs.

See above.

We're a melting pot.

See above. And how about actually watching the movie before spewing idiotic opinions about the material addressed by it?

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:07 am

Keza wrote:^Which is why America should have been left as seperate states so they could all fight amongst themselves instead. The country is simply too big to be able to run and police properly in any case, and yet you still allow firearms. Madness.

I don't know that it's too big to police properly -- there are many more people in India and China and they are policed okay, I guess.

But Pandora's box has been opened. When I move into a home I'm getting a gun just so that I can blow away anyone who tries to invade me and grab my shit and so forth. Taking them away at this point, with how many there are out there and available means that every crook who's got one is now a nigh-invincible super villain, after all, he's got nothing to fear from a gun-robbed populace.

Britain could be considered as a wee version of the USA, if one was to be extremely superficial; it too is a cultural and racial melting pot. However, it is completely different when it comes to crime. Because the two nations are vaguely similar, we need only look at the differing values to determine what causes America's higher crimerate, and those diffferences are (I think) the countries' sizes, firearms laws and media attitude and censorship.

That's just it, I don't think that it's quite the melting pot that the US has become. I think the people who are there are a lot alike. More, in the US lately everyone seems to have to have a ridiculous amount of pride regarding where they came from. Nobody feels it necessary to learn the language or customs or anything any more, it's just Mexico North or whatnot.

Of course, pointing that out is horribly incorrect and you can be destroyed for simply mentioning it -- but that's this whole other thing in the US.

Someone tell me, what's your TV like? People have told me that violence is seldom censored, but sex often is, but I have no first-hand experience of the matter.

If it were up to me I would blame somethingawful.com for ALL of America's problems and shut the place down indefinitely.[/quote]

by **Keza** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 10:45 am

Who would have saved England's stuck up ass during WWII then?

It's Britain. Scotland did a lot of Britain's fighting. Ever heard of the Royal Scots Guard? They're the elite of British soldiers. Please don't call the United Kingdom 'England'.

by **bruce** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 10:43 am

AArdvark wrote:HOW MANY PEOPLE
HAVE OWNED A GUN
AND NEVER KILLED AHYONE
RAISE YOUR HAND

I'm raising my hand over here. I like shotguns. And they like me.

Bruce

by **Guest** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 10:43 am

Keza wrote:^Which is why America should have been left as seperate states so they could all fight amongst themselves instead.

Who would have saved England's stuck up ass during WWII then? huh? Though, I think we should still fight Texas.

by **Keza** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 10:38 am

^Which is why America should have been left as seperate states so they could all fight amongst themselves instead. The country is simply too big to be able to run and police properly in any case, and yet you still allow firearms. Madness.

Britain could be considered as a wee version of the USA, if one was to be extremely superficial; it too is a cultural and racial melting pot. However, it is completely different when it comes to crime. Because the two nations are vaguely similar, we need only look at the differing values to determine what causes America's higher crimerate, and those diffferences are (I think) the countries' sizes, firearms laws and media attitude and censorship.

Someone tell me, what's your TV like? People have told me that violence is seldom censored, but sex often is, but I have no first-hand experience of the matter.

If it were up to me I would blame somethingawful.com for ALL of America's problems and shut the place down indefinitely.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:19 am

pinback wrote:The question posed is, "With many of the same cultural influences, and with much the same gun availability/ownership and violent history as other countries, why do US citizens kill each other with so much higher regularity than citizens of these other countries?"

Culture's totally different. Don't take this the wrong way, but if there were only two million of us and we were all the same race -- like in Scandanavia or Canada or Japan -- our murder rate would be more like theirs.

We're a melting pot. Oh, and also the fact that corporations run this place more than any other nation and they need a displeased lower class doesn't help either.

America is not like these other nations that we get held up against when it comes to gun crimes. Sorry. Maybe on a different planet you can find a similar nation, but there isn't one on earth. Trying to shoehorn awkward comparisons for a unique case is intellectually bankrupt.

by **pinback** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:15 am

The question posed is, "With many of the same cultural influences, and with much the same gun availability/ownership and violent history as other countries, why do US citizens kill each other with so much higher regularity than citizens of these other countries?"

No definite answers are given, but several possibilities are explored.

[Review] Bowling for Columbine

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