Both director Michael Moore and actor Seth Rogen have been publicly slammed and criticized for their recent comments regarding the new Clint Eastwood movie American Sniper. In a recent Tweet, Moore called snipers "cowards" and also later Tweeted "when we invade and kill 100,000 based on lies, we are not heroes". Moore, of course, was referring to the war in Iraq and how we invaded Iraq based on the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
Rogen's remarks - also made within the limited characters of a Tweet - were less incendiary but still elicited a harsh reaction from the general public. Rogen's Tweet compared American Sniper to a scene in Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. In the scene, there is a movie playing in a theater that features a German sniper "heroically" killing 200 Allied soldiers. People did not appreciate Rogen's insinuation that Chris Kyle, the soldier American Sniper was based on, was no more heroic than a Nazi sniper.
In reaction to Rogen's Tweet, country music singer and military veteran Craig Morgan publicly 'slammed' Rogen, saying...
"You are fortunate to enjoy the privilege and freedom of working in and living in the United States, and saying whatever you want (regardless of how ignorant the statement) thanks to people like Chris Kyle who serve in the United States military. Your statement is inaccurate and insensitive to Chris and his family. I'm sick and tired of people like you running your mouth when you have no idea what it takes for this country to maintain our freedoms. If you and anyone like you don't like it, leave."
"If you don't like it here, leave."
The above statement has always sent an ominous shiver down my spine, but it seems to be the common response to anybody expressing any kind of criticism or dissent regarding the United States of America (I've even seen a bumper sticker with this slogan). Coming from a veteran who's preaching about his love of liberty, "If you don't like it, leave" is paradoxically one of the most fascist statements that one could ever make. This kind of a statement is not born out of a lover of freedom, but an enemy of freedom.
Instead of slamming Rogen, people like Craig Morgan should be praising Rogen for utilizing the very freedom that Morgan fought for during his time serving in the military. In fact, Morgan should love the fact that Rogen is saying something that he so vehemently disagrees with. Even if he sees the comments as dumb and ignorant, at least they are products of a mind practicing unfiltered free speech and it was for this kind of free expression that he fought as a member of the United States military. How can a person preach about fighting for liberty and at the same time turn around and shout at somebody practicing that liberty, "If you don't like it, leave!"? It's completely hypocritical.
But this type of hypocrisy is standard in our culture today.
Movies like American Sniper that celebrate "liberty" are merely propaganda disguised as art. Their main agenda is to condition Americans into loving the military and loving war and creating an environment where anybody who opposes war/military is publicly persecuted by people like Morgan for being 'enemies of freedom' who are so 'ignorant' and 'dumb' and 'unappreciative of their free country'.
Figures like Moore and Rogen are essentially made examples of in order to create a culture of fear, fear to go against the grain and question anything war-related or military-related. Chris Kyle may or may not have been an American hero - that is all up for debate because some people say he was and other people say he wasn't. But his name and his story as featured in American Sniper (however embellished or outright fabricated it may be) are essentially being manipulated in a way so that anybody questioning the propaganda or drawing attention to it is somehow also offending and insulting true American heroism. In other words, those who question wars, express dissent, speak their mind, blow the whistle on pro-war propaganda...they are twisted into being perceived as assholes who hate true American heroes.
And nobody wants to be THAT asshole.
Just because you're critical of war or you blow the whistle on bogus propaganda "American Hero" stories like what may (emphasis on 'may' because I don't know nor do many other people) be portrayed in American Sniper, it doesn't mean you're disrespecting the military or true American heroes. It simply means you're a person who questions things and seeks for truth. Once we manage to shut up all the truth-seekers out there - shouting at them, "if you don't like it here, leave!" - then truth eventually goes completely extinct and our culture fully transforms into a world of lies and unreality.
Sony Pictures has decided not to release their film "The Interview" in any shape or form after receiving threats from a computer hacking group known as the "Guardians of Peace". The FBI has supposedly traced the group back to North Korea.
Much of Hollywood is outraged by Sony's move. Even President Obama wasn't supportive of the decision, saying that we can't allow ourselves to submit to the threats of foreign dictators. Shelving the film will set a new precedent, he says.
Sony, on the other hand, stands by their decision for now. They felt like they were between a rock and a hard place. They didn't want to be a company responsible for releasing a film that initiated a 9/11-style terrorist attack. This wouldn't be good for the company image and its overall business.
While most people are outraged at N. Korea, I've tried to remain objective, mainly because the whole story sounds a little fishy to me, perhaps maybe even contrived. In fact, it kind of sounds like a plot to a movie, which is ironic since this all started with...well, a movie, "The Interview".
My first issue is with the FBI. I no longer believe anything the FBI says. All you have to do is read about Whitey Bulger and you will at least find the FBI extremely shady, if not completely corrupt. They are a mafia. They cannot always be trusted. So if the FBI says that N. Korea is behind this, I am skeptical. They simply don't have a good history of telling the truth.
But the FBI wouldn't lie unless they had a hidden agenda, right? Right, and there very well could be a hidden agenda that seems to be successfully eluding the mainstream press, not to mention George Clooney, Ben Stiller and other Hollywood figures who have expressed outrage at Sony's decision. What I'm getting at here is that I think the Sony hacking could possibly be a manufactured event, possibly by our own government, or at least a shady faction of our government under the guise of GOP, 'Guardians of Peace'.
As Obama stated, Sony's decision to shelve their film will set a new precedent, but this precedent has little to do with us being more submissive to foreign dictators - it has more to do with the 1st amendment and the subsequent destruction of that amendment. Sony's decision to shelve "The Interview" will potentially initiate a continuing trend of censorship. Everybody in Hollywood is going to start thinking twice before they express themselves freely, especially on a political level.
Think about it: if you're a powerful Hollywood studio like Sony spending millions and millions of dollars on a movie, are you going to keep making politically edgy films that may initiate a terrorist threat/attack only to have to shelve it before exhibition? Or are you going to play it a little safer? Make a very non-political 'popcorn movie' that doesn't get too edgy? Yes, you're probably going to play it safe and make the watered-down, passive popcorn movie. It's too big of a business risk if you go the other route.
"Playing it safe" is what (I believe) 'somebody' out there wants us to do more of and the Sony hack/threats will likely initiate this trend. I do believe this 'somebody' could possibly be our government or, like I said before, some faction within our own government. Maybe the GOP (the acronym for 'Guardians of Peace') really is the GOP, meaning the Republican party, or at least a more extremist faction of the Republican party. Maybe the identity of this shadowy terror group is in plain sight. Who knows? And I'm not trying to knock Republicans. Most Republicans are good people. Same with Democrats. However, certain factions within both parties are extreme and wacko. They are hungry for power and control.
Of course, there's definitely no proof that our own 'government' (or any faction within) is behind any of this, but that's not what's important. What IS important is that we acknowledge that this Sony hack could very well be an extension of a more general ongoing attack against our Constitution. This attack started after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. Then, over the recent years, the second amendment has been under attack - the right to bear arms has been blamed for school shootings while the real culprit seems to be mental illness (assuming that the shootings aren't, themselves, manufactured events). After the Boston Marathon bombing, there was an attack on the fourth amendment. The whole town of Watertown, MA. was in lock-down and people allowed each and every one of their homes to be searched without probable cause. People were complacent because an external threat had been created (Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was on the loose). Then, the NSA conveniently came out of the woodwork within a month of the Boston bombings. The NSA said it was reading everybody's emails and listening to phone calls. They were saying that they had the power to prevent future attacks like what happened in Boston. The fear of more marathon bombings seemed to justify the need for what they were doing and the American freedoms they were infringing upon.
Now the attack on the Constitution has been taken to the next level and has implanted a new precedent that may ultimately snowball and eat away at the 1st amendment ever-so-gradually. Slowly, but surely.
Just today, another hacking group called "Anonymous" has supposedly threatened the popular singer Iggy Azalea because she Tweeted some unpopular comments regarding the Michael Brown and Eric Garner protests. 'Anonymous' threatened that - unless the singer made a public apology - they would release a sex tape that Iggy allegedly made a while back. They would also release unsavory pictures of her. They claimed to have "so much on her" that they could ruin her career worse than Bill Cosby's recent demise.
Who is 'Anonymous'? Nobody really knows. But it's very possible they're another faction of our own government, or maybe the same faction, just under another guise...
With these kinds of threats happening, every celebrity out there will be afraid to speak their mind. They'll be too afraid because it may initiate some sort of retaliation from these anonymous cyber hackers, whoever they are. They may have their emails hacked (like in the case of Sony people), personal photos hacked, videos and other information. There may even be outright terrorist threats either against them or people they care about.
If celebrities stop speaking their minds, ordinary Americans will start doing the same. Since we all look up to celebrities and emulate them whether on a conscious or subconscious level, sooner or later we're going to do what the celebrities do and keep our mouths shut. There will be no more political opinion. No more dissent. No more questioning of anything. No more free thought or expression whatsoever...
A world where movie producers, celebrities and ordinary Americans are always playing it safe is not a good world to be living in.
