SOLDIER LETTERS

From: Jerry Oliver
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 11:05 AM
To: mike@michaelmoore.com
Subject: Iraqi Vet. Wants to make films

Dear Mr. Moore,

I have just returned home from "Operation Iraqi Freedom". I spent 5 months in Baghdad, and a total of 3 years in the U.S. Army. I was recently discharged with Honorable valor and returned to the States only to be horrified by what I've seen my country turn into.

I'm now 22 years old and have discovered America is such a complicated place to live, and moreover, Americans are almost oblivious to what's been happening to their country. America has become "1984." Homeland security is teaching us to spy on one another and forcing us to become anti-social. Americans are willingly sacrificing our freedoms in the name of security, the same Freedoms I was willing to put my life on the line for. The constitution is in jeopardy. As Gen. Tommy Franks said, (broken down of course) One more terrorist attack and the constitution will hold no meaning.

Computers are running our lives. There literally isn't anything we can't do online, and now we're becoming dependant on computers. And this is forcing us to become anti-social. And people who notice this become paranoid of One World Government conspiracy. Then the people who don't notice call the paranoid, “crack pots” and bury their nose back in the football section of the newspaper instead of reading the headline. Americans read a Maxim Magazine "How To ...fix the sink" and they truly believe they're plumbers. It's an illusion of intelligence.

They are convinced they control their lives when in reality they've never even left the city limits of Culpepper, VA. When just outside the city there's a station that's controlling them. Hell they know more about Peyton Manning's family history than about their own.

I wanted to take 2 months and travel all over this great country of ours, but I see no need to now... Because the McDonalds in Arizona is the same as the one in New York. We're losing our culture. And this convenient and sterile Wal-Mart environment that should be an alternative, is now common place and even worse, we're inflicting it on other cultures and pressuring them to drop their thousand year old heritage.

Americans accept anything the television tells them. The media can put a spin on any topic to suit their opinions and feed it to the people. People don't research the subjects on their own, they take the easiest route.

And it just seems like nobody cares that their dreams are being crushed by a society and a system. We're pressured to conform to a standard. Go to school for 12 years. Go to college, get a diploma, get married, use the degree to get a job you hate to work at for 40 years making somebody else rich, and then have your kids shuffle you into a retirement home where you wait for your turn to die. I know that's not the american dream.

Don't conform to a standard because you're told, conform if you want. Stop telling me what's appropriate and not. If two guys want to get married, I don't care, how does that affect me ? If I want to smoke a cigarette when I walk down the street, don't tell me to put it out, my freedom, you don't like it, try walking on the other side of the street. Do what you want in life. It's your country.

Remember there are some things you'll get arrested for. But if you feel you need to make a stand by doing so, more power to you.

Jerry C. Oliver Jr.

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