The film “American Sniper” is stirring up controversy.
Michael Moore and Seth Rogan have dissed it and gotten a lot of nasty, hate-filled
Tweets and emails for their opinions. I haven’t seen it and probably won’t, but
it sounds like one more in a long, long line of propaganda efforts from
Hollywood designed to romanticize and sanitize America’s military actions.
What exactly makes Navy Seal Chris Kyle a hero worthy of our
respect? If it’s his body count, why aren’t the pilots and crew members of
military bombers who dropped explosives on Iraq and killed tens of thousands of
people, given ticker tape parades and huge medals? And what kind of a guy is
Kyle? People have pulled excerpts from the book on which the film is based, and
the unfiltered bigotry and lack of compassion for human life paint a less than
heroic portrait of the real American sniper.
On this Martin Luther King Day, it’s a good time to ask when
we as a country will stop glorifying individuals who commit violence in our
name and start celebrating the peacemakers? Creating a day of remembrance for
King was a good start, but I’ve never had a job where my company recognized the
day as a holiday, yet everyone gets Memorial Day off.
Our priorities as a country are badly skewed, but because we
are Americans, we don’t feel any need to look in the mirror and assess our
weaknesses. Films like “American Sniper” play to our darkest desires to beat up
anyone who acts, talks, thinks or looks different than us. That’s the attitude
of a schoolyard bully, not a great democracy.
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