FYI, michael, when I heard about Glenn Beck's threat to you I called Church headquarters and asked them for Glenn Beck's Bishops phone number and they gave it to me! I then called that Bishop and told him that I demanded that Glenn Beck be excommunicated from the Mormon church. He said they don't excommunicate people the way they used to and that he would have to get back to me and talk to the stake president which is the guy over him and he would get back to me. Well he called me a couple days later and said that they weren't going to proceed to excommunicate or have a vote on whether he be excommunicated and I asked him why and he said that he thought Glenn Beck was a "very fine man." Shortly after that I became a born-again atheist
well i was excommunicated. surprised you weren't. i wouldn't be surprised if you aren't, if you checked. i actually was excommunicated because i resigned. i resigned when black men were admitted to the priesthood, not because black men were admitted but because they were under threat of several threat of lawsuits for not admitting and i wrote them that that god had not revealed they should administer the priesthood to black men but only the fear of being forced to do so, and i also wrote it was akin to the "revelation" abolishing polygamy when us govt disenfranchised the church and seized their assets. suddenly the "prophet" had a revelation against polygamy. problem is, the previous prophet, John Taylor had already excommunicated any "prophet in the future and anyone who follows him is herewith excommunicated as believers in a false prophet and not of the church of jesus christ...et al. so i wrote to harold lee, prophet at that time, not only was his revelation to grant black men the priesthood non-prophetic, but for monetary expediency, he himself had no prophetic capacities because he had a priori excommunicated before he ever became "prophet."
at the time i wrote the letter i was already a long-time non-believer. but without ever communicating anything to me about it, it was apparently announced in church, without mentioning my letter, that i was being excommunicated for "moral depravation." It was my mother who told me what had been said at church and was never convinced for the rest of her life that i had committed some great "moral offense". oh well, i did not care at all except my mother was quite embarrassed in front of all of her friends and could never mention my name to any of them again. she did continue to associate and be my mother. but the manner in which they excommunicated me was kind of morally depraved, wasn't it?
or maybe they were correct and my letter was an indication of my moral depravity.
i don't much believe in morality anyway. usually because moral teachings i find to be quite immoral.
I saw the film when it came out and own the DVD. Three weeks before your courageous Oscars speech, I was arrested with a dozen others in a strip mall near an Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. We had not been protesting nearby but were identified by the police and sheriff's department officers as being from out of town. Well, the brilliant civil rights lawyer in Denver, David Lane, sued those departments. Three years later, we won. The authorities had to write us a letter of apology and take trainings on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A small but satisfying victory!
The rest of the world understands our problem: Too many guns that are too powerful and too easily obtained. Keep speaking truth to violent power, Michael. I'm with you all the way...and as someone told me to, I'll repeat here these ten words:
wow!. i got "arrested" in a herd roundup in chicago in '68. not booked but just rounded up. when the police attacked and there was kind of a crowd rush and my girlfriend fell and so i bent my body over her to keep her from being trampled and we were easy pickings to be handcuffed and hauled off. funny irony to it all, i was a foundry worker nearby and had gone out of curiosity and not as part of the protest so there was no intention on our part to protest. in fact being a strong unionist, i strongly supported hubert humphrey.
but yes there are more of us than them, unfortunately most of "them" are only them because they have been misinformed that us are against them and don't understand they are really us. my goal is to make us all "us & them" to be against the real them---those who try to enslave us to allow their false ideology to divide us.
Thank you Michael Moore! Bless your Irish heart, intelligence, and dedication to righting and writing about wrongs. Do not ever give up - We the People are out here and in some small way are doing our part to end violence and influence legislators...learning from you as we go! Sheila
Such a powerful post tonight. Thank you. For all you do, for sharing the truth. For standing up. For not backing down even when your life is threatened. I agree with everything in this email tonight. I oversee after school programs and we have to constantly keep in mind that someone may randomly and senselessly break into our school and shoot our kids for no reason. Never stop, Mr Moore and I never will either.
Unlike the previous writer, I am really glad you said what you did. I am not glad that it needed to be said, but it is refreshing to hear truth and to hear it expressed, as it should be, with passion.
Thank you for sharing! Love this movie and all your movies. All these years and congrress has done pretty much nothing to stop these mass shootings. I know you can't prevent every tragedy but background checks will help. What are they waiting for ?
I don't know about Congress, but locally, my State is putting law in place for background checks & gun safes in households with minors & many Counties are proclaiming they won't enforce the law & directing the argument to the possibility of false accusation in the "red flags" portion of legislation. The most popular or loudest opinion seems to be "mental illness" is the cause of mass shootings. Well, we know "mental illness" isn't being addressed. And the illness as I see it is a refusal of adults to agree on reasonable measures & stop engaging in obstruction of them like defiant children.
Thank you Michael. I saw Bowling for Columbine and purchased the DVD when it became available. But, mostly thank you for your commentary on our invasion and destruction of Iraq. I emailed my
Congressman and both Senators in October 2002 when they were debating whether or not to approve sanctioning an invasion of Iraq. I opposed such an invasion on the grounds that Iraq was a sovereign nation that had done nothing to us, Robert Matsui and Barbara Boxer both agreed and voted against it. Dianne Feinstein emailed back that she knew things I didn't know and was supporting the invasion. I am so glad that you also agree that the reason for invading Iraq was control of the oil. Afghanistan has no oil, and few other expensive resources to steal - so why should we confine ourselves there, just because they allowed al quaeda to train there.
As to the guns, I don't understand. I was a Canadian for the first 25 years of my life and I never even saw a gun until I immigrated to the US. I watched Westerns, and the Lone Ranger in the movies growing up. But I don't think my brothers played with weapons either - they may have had a cap gun. Personally I find guns smelly, dirty. noisy and ugly. But why people feel they have to own a gun baffles me. Hunters, ok, people have always liked hunting, I suppose because in the beginning humans had to hunt other animals for food. Today. we need hunters to keep wild animals in controllable herds since among the other truly bad things our ancestors did was to kill off the predators leaving the prey animals (deer family, bears, rabbits and rodents) to overpopulate. But the greed and hatred that surrounds the gun market today is beyond comprehension. Maybe its like the fascination with horror movies (another genre to which I cannot relate) the need some people have to frighten themselves.
I remember getting in a very long line waiting to see "Bowling..." in a city I just moved to far from my home state. I was very moved by this movie. I agreed with you then and I also supported my young son when he went to fight in Iraq 4 years later. This is all very hard to digest. Thank you for speaking out all these years for so many of us. I will watch the movie this weekend.
Americans Kill people ---It’s eating at the soul of America like a cancer.
We need accountability, we need justice, we need to uphold civil liberties, we need to stop killing ourselves and each other.
We have a corporate capture that keeps the status quo, whether you are talking about fossil fuel or the gun lobby, they are keeping the laws from being passed that the majority of Americans want.
And a small group of insurrectionist, authoritarians and white Christian nationals want to subvert democracy and our economy.
Communities across America and the world are reeling from climate catastrophes, school kids have access to guns and are killing our children everyday.
These are corporate monsters, these oligarchs. until people start speaking out, standing up, it ain’t going to change.
But all this is coming to a head.
The debt ceiling and the economy being held hostage and Americans coerced.
You see what France is doing!
Americans better be in the streets in May and June, and in numbers, when the lost cause authoritarians try their plot to destroy America once again.
The ICC was right to go after Putin for war crimes there is a reason america has not endorsed the ICC. Because we would have to hand over Bush and Cheney for invasion of Iraq.
Dearest Michael, I watched this today. I saw it when you released it and have watched all your films over the years. Thank you, for making sure We The People get the Truth. Everything you have touched over the years is about telling the Truth with facts, and with compassion and with depth. I still love seeing Charlatan [sic] Heston squirm under your gentle and persistent questioning. What a soulless cypher he was....Please, never stop, Michael! We need you more than ever.
I have always understood the intent of that was citizens right to bear arms to defend themselves against what was, at that time, the rule of the British.. I am sure it was not to encourage us killing each other off. We need to evolve & solidify our intent, clarify & strengthen the words our country was founded on, not let them be twisted.
your best column ever. this column and your work throughout your life is what needs to be taught in school. First grade curriculum text---the life and works of michael moore. then we can develop the rest of the "educational" years on a solid foundation. congratulations on the 20th anniv. of bowling.it brought you, i suppose, a certain amount of notoriety. however roger was more momentous to me. sicko became more momentous when i became sick. bowling was important, and of course, you're right, the NRA was right, "guns don't kill , people (Americans) do. I want to say, however, or refine it to, "leaders kill people." always have, always will. yes individual people pull the trigger, but the rhetoric begins in first grade, this the land of the free and of opportunity. that is the wrong beginning. michael moore is the better foundation so we begin by learning that the promise of such ain't the reality that's going to be their lives. but if we begin with michael moore we can then learn how the promise could be a reality and maybe could become a reality. americans "fascination" with gun is because americans are taught about how great america is to be so wonderful and give you such great freedom and such opportunity and reality for most is the opposite and we take to the gun to defend not our lives but to take lives because the foundation has given a promise in first grade that our system of leadership essentially denies to most and tells us we have to defend that system that gives us such freedom and then we don't have it and then we attack the enemy the leaders tells us is the cause. leaders don't necessarily mean politicians who might or might not be promoting the wrong enemy. the leaders i refer to are those who maintain power by denying us the promise and deflecting their culpability. to paraphrase,the loftier the promise the more intense the disappointment, the more intense the disappointment the greater the likelihood of lashing out in violence. but the leaders have deflected us from them against each other. i am not suggesting we turn violently against them. so we begin our education with michael moore and we learn the truth that the promise has not been fulfilled and then we learn it is not each that are causing its lack if fulfillment but leaders who are blaming us and deflecting us against each other and putting guns in our hands to fight wars against each instead of them. not saying we should turn our guns on them, saying michael moore has taught us we can join in harmony and deny the leaders the opportunity to turn against each other and let us fight each other. so i suggest, the first year of school, preschool, whatever, we begin by studying the films and ideas of michael moore. as long as we let ourselves be divided by leaders against each other we will continue to pull the trigger for them.
Michale, you know I love you, but I’m still desperate to fully understand what is going on in your intelligent mind. While I totally agree that guns are for fun, like the Olympics, and should never be used for security, I don’t get your steadfast position on what 911 was, or the Scamdemic. I’m baffled you still attack Saudi Arabia and say that “terrorist hijacker’s did it.” You Do Not believe that. You cannot still believe Islamic Terrorists did it, and I’m still waiting for you to produce a documentary to support and assist all the legitimate engineers who called it correctly and were destroyed for it. Same with this bullshit pandemic and all the legitimate scientists and doctors who’ve been destroyed for calling it correctly, like Dr. Mercola…just one of thousands who’ve been attacked for questioning the corrupt media and government’s criminally-corrupt narrative insisting on the compulsory vaxx program, which has been the greatest genocidal-crime against humanity in the history of the world.
Thank you, Janet. Yes, the Greatest Genocide in Human History, and counting—as this crime continues to unfold for the next several decades—proving itself in the form of cancers, not just heart attacks, including everyone else from previous compulsory vaxx programs who’ve developed several types of immunological disorders. I have family who have Native American blood, who I love, plus I can add. You also left out dropping nuclear bombs on Japan. May I invite you to get a “free subscription” to my substack? I just started this year, and I believe you’d appreciate my last ten publications.
FYI, michael, when I heard about Glenn Beck's threat to you I called Church headquarters and asked them for Glenn Beck's Bishops phone number and they gave it to me! I then called that Bishop and told him that I demanded that Glenn Beck be excommunicated from the Mormon church. He said they don't excommunicate people the way they used to and that he would have to get back to me and talk to the stake president which is the guy over him and he would get back to me. Well he called me a couple days later and said that they weren't going to proceed to excommunicate or have a vote on whether he be excommunicated and I asked him why and he said that he thought Glenn Beck was a "very fine man." Shortly after that I became a born-again atheist
well i was excommunicated. surprised you weren't. i wouldn't be surprised if you aren't, if you checked. i actually was excommunicated because i resigned. i resigned when black men were admitted to the priesthood, not because black men were admitted but because they were under threat of several threat of lawsuits for not admitting and i wrote them that that god had not revealed they should administer the priesthood to black men but only the fear of being forced to do so, and i also wrote it was akin to the "revelation" abolishing polygamy when us govt disenfranchised the church and seized their assets. suddenly the "prophet" had a revelation against polygamy. problem is, the previous prophet, John Taylor had already excommunicated any "prophet in the future and anyone who follows him is herewith excommunicated as believers in a false prophet and not of the church of jesus christ...et al. so i wrote to harold lee, prophet at that time, not only was his revelation to grant black men the priesthood non-prophetic, but for monetary expediency, he himself had no prophetic capacities because he had a priori excommunicated before he ever became "prophet."
at the time i wrote the letter i was already a long-time non-believer. but without ever communicating anything to me about it, it was apparently announced in church, without mentioning my letter, that i was being excommunicated for "moral depravation." It was my mother who told me what had been said at church and was never convinced for the rest of her life that i had committed some great "moral offense". oh well, i did not care at all except my mother was quite embarrassed in front of all of her friends and could never mention my name to any of them again. she did continue to associate and be my mother. but the manner in which they excommunicated me was kind of morally depraved, wasn't it?
or maybe they were correct and my letter was an indication of my moral depravity.
i don't much believe in morality anyway. usually because moral teachings i find to be quite immoral.
Oh, those pesky, persistent women. Catholic and Mormon hierarchies alike just cannot seem to control them no matter how much they may try.
Thank you for trying.
whew!!!!!! good for you!
I saw the film when it came out and own the DVD. Three weeks before your courageous Oscars speech, I was arrested with a dozen others in a strip mall near an Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. We had not been protesting nearby but were identified by the police and sheriff's department officers as being from out of town. Well, the brilliant civil rights lawyer in Denver, David Lane, sued those departments. Three years later, we won. The authorities had to write us a letter of apology and take trainings on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A small but satisfying victory!
The rest of the world understands our problem: Too many guns that are too powerful and too easily obtained. Keep speaking truth to violent power, Michael. I'm with you all the way...and as someone told me to, I'll repeat here these ten words:
"There are more of us than there are of them."
wow!. i got "arrested" in a herd roundup in chicago in '68. not booked but just rounded up. when the police attacked and there was kind of a crowd rush and my girlfriend fell and so i bent my body over her to keep her from being trampled and we were easy pickings to be handcuffed and hauled off. funny irony to it all, i was a foundry worker nearby and had gone out of curiosity and not as part of the protest so there was no intention on our part to protest. in fact being a strong unionist, i strongly supported hubert humphrey.
but yes there are more of us than them, unfortunately most of "them" are only them because they have been misinformed that us are against them and don't understand they are really us. my goal is to make us all "us & them" to be against the real them---those who try to enslave us to allow their false ideology to divide us.
Hi, Janet! I didn't know that you're on here, too! Lovely.
Thank you Michael Moore! Bless your Irish heart, intelligence, and dedication to righting and writing about wrongs. Do not ever give up - We the People are out here and in some small way are doing our part to end violence and influence legislators...learning from you as we go! Sheila
EXACTLY!
Such a powerful post tonight. Thank you. For all you do, for sharing the truth. For standing up. For not backing down even when your life is threatened. I agree with everything in this email tonight. I oversee after school programs and we have to constantly keep in mind that someone may randomly and senselessly break into our school and shoot our kids for no reason. Never stop, Mr Moore and I never will either.
Unlike the previous writer, I am really glad you said what you did. I am not glad that it needed to be said, but it is refreshing to hear truth and to hear it expressed, as it should be, with passion.
God bless you, Michael Moore. You are a truly great human being. (P.S. I just paid $50 so I could tell you that. Worth every penny.)
Thank you for sharing! Love this movie and all your movies. All these years and congrress has done pretty much nothing to stop these mass shootings. I know you can't prevent every tragedy but background checks will help. What are they waiting for ?
I don't know about Congress, but locally, my State is putting law in place for background checks & gun safes in households with minors & many Counties are proclaiming they won't enforce the law & directing the argument to the possibility of false accusation in the "red flags" portion of legislation. The most popular or loudest opinion seems to be "mental illness" is the cause of mass shootings. Well, we know "mental illness" isn't being addressed. And the illness as I see it is a refusal of adults to agree on reasonable measures & stop engaging in obstruction of them like defiant children.
Thank you Michael. I saw Bowling for Columbine and purchased the DVD when it became available. But, mostly thank you for your commentary on our invasion and destruction of Iraq. I emailed my
Congressman and both Senators in October 2002 when they were debating whether or not to approve sanctioning an invasion of Iraq. I opposed such an invasion on the grounds that Iraq was a sovereign nation that had done nothing to us, Robert Matsui and Barbara Boxer both agreed and voted against it. Dianne Feinstein emailed back that she knew things I didn't know and was supporting the invasion. I am so glad that you also agree that the reason for invading Iraq was control of the oil. Afghanistan has no oil, and few other expensive resources to steal - so why should we confine ourselves there, just because they allowed al quaeda to train there.
As to the guns, I don't understand. I was a Canadian for the first 25 years of my life and I never even saw a gun until I immigrated to the US. I watched Westerns, and the Lone Ranger in the movies growing up. But I don't think my brothers played with weapons either - they may have had a cap gun. Personally I find guns smelly, dirty. noisy and ugly. But why people feel they have to own a gun baffles me. Hunters, ok, people have always liked hunting, I suppose because in the beginning humans had to hunt other animals for food. Today. we need hunters to keep wild animals in controllable herds since among the other truly bad things our ancestors did was to kill off the predators leaving the prey animals (deer family, bears, rabbits and rodents) to overpopulate. But the greed and hatred that surrounds the gun market today is beyond comprehension. Maybe its like the fascination with horror movies (another genre to which I cannot relate) the need some people have to frighten themselves.
I remember getting in a very long line waiting to see "Bowling..." in a city I just moved to far from my home state. I was very moved by this movie. I agreed with you then and I also supported my young son when he went to fight in Iraq 4 years later. This is all very hard to digest. Thank you for speaking out all these years for so many of us. I will watch the movie this weekend.
Americans Kill people ---It’s eating at the soul of America like a cancer.
We need accountability, we need justice, we need to uphold civil liberties, we need to stop killing ourselves and each other.
We have a corporate capture that keeps the status quo, whether you are talking about fossil fuel or the gun lobby, they are keeping the laws from being passed that the majority of Americans want.
And a small group of insurrectionist, authoritarians and white Christian nationals want to subvert democracy and our economy.
Communities across America and the world are reeling from climate catastrophes, school kids have access to guns and are killing our children everyday.
These are corporate monsters, these oligarchs. until people start speaking out, standing up, it ain’t going to change.
But all this is coming to a head.
The debt ceiling and the economy being held hostage and Americans coerced.
You see what France is doing!
Americans better be in the streets in May and June, and in numbers, when the lost cause authoritarians try their plot to destroy America once again.
The ICC was right to go after Putin for war crimes there is a reason america has not endorsed the ICC. Because we would have to hand over Bush and Cheney for invasion of Iraq.
All boils down to fossil fuel and guns, money
In the name of their god.
Dearest Michael, I watched this today. I saw it when you released it and have watched all your films over the years. Thank you, for making sure We The People get the Truth. Everything you have touched over the years is about telling the Truth with facts, and with compassion and with depth. I still love seeing Charlatan [sic] Heston squirm under your gentle and persistent questioning. What a soulless cypher he was....Please, never stop, Michael! We need you more than ever.
Thank you Michael for your wise words. I feel your pain all the way over here in New Zealand.
Words from the second amendment: "well regulated militia" What is a "well regulated militia"? So, the second amendment only applies to a militia?
I have always understood the intent of that was citizens right to bear arms to defend themselves against what was, at that time, the rule of the British.. I am sure it was not to encourage us killing each other off. We need to evolve & solidify our intent, clarify & strengthen the words our country was founded on, not let them be twisted.
your best column ever. this column and your work throughout your life is what needs to be taught in school. First grade curriculum text---the life and works of michael moore. then we can develop the rest of the "educational" years on a solid foundation. congratulations on the 20th anniv. of bowling.it brought you, i suppose, a certain amount of notoriety. however roger was more momentous to me. sicko became more momentous when i became sick. bowling was important, and of course, you're right, the NRA was right, "guns don't kill , people (Americans) do. I want to say, however, or refine it to, "leaders kill people." always have, always will. yes individual people pull the trigger, but the rhetoric begins in first grade, this the land of the free and of opportunity. that is the wrong beginning. michael moore is the better foundation so we begin by learning that the promise of such ain't the reality that's going to be their lives. but if we begin with michael moore we can then learn how the promise could be a reality and maybe could become a reality. americans "fascination" with gun is because americans are taught about how great america is to be so wonderful and give you such great freedom and such opportunity and reality for most is the opposite and we take to the gun to defend not our lives but to take lives because the foundation has given a promise in first grade that our system of leadership essentially denies to most and tells us we have to defend that system that gives us such freedom and then we don't have it and then we attack the enemy the leaders tells us is the cause. leaders don't necessarily mean politicians who might or might not be promoting the wrong enemy. the leaders i refer to are those who maintain power by denying us the promise and deflecting their culpability. to paraphrase,the loftier the promise the more intense the disappointment, the more intense the disappointment the greater the likelihood of lashing out in violence. but the leaders have deflected us from them against each other. i am not suggesting we turn violently against them. so we begin our education with michael moore and we learn the truth that the promise has not been fulfilled and then we learn it is not each that are causing its lack if fulfillment but leaders who are blaming us and deflecting us against each other and putting guns in our hands to fight wars against each instead of them. not saying we should turn our guns on them, saying michael moore has taught us we can join in harmony and deny the leaders the opportunity to turn against each other and let us fight each other. so i suggest, the first year of school, preschool, whatever, we begin by studying the films and ideas of michael moore. as long as we let ourselves be divided by leaders against each other we will continue to pull the trigger for them.
Ken, a superb comment. I fully agree!
Michale, you know I love you, but I’m still desperate to fully understand what is going on in your intelligent mind. While I totally agree that guns are for fun, like the Olympics, and should never be used for security, I don’t get your steadfast position on what 911 was, or the Scamdemic. I’m baffled you still attack Saudi Arabia and say that “terrorist hijacker’s did it.” You Do Not believe that. You cannot still believe Islamic Terrorists did it, and I’m still waiting for you to produce a documentary to support and assist all the legitimate engineers who called it correctly and were destroyed for it. Same with this bullshit pandemic and all the legitimate scientists and doctors who’ve been destroyed for calling it correctly, like Dr. Mercola…just one of thousands who’ve been attacked for questioning the corrupt media and government’s criminally-corrupt narrative insisting on the compulsory vaxx program, which has been the greatest genocidal-crime against humanity in the history of the world.
Wow. So much histrionic tin foil...so little time. Please stop.
Thank you, Janet. Yes, the Greatest Genocide in Human History, and counting—as this crime continues to unfold for the next several decades—proving itself in the form of cancers, not just heart attacks, including everyone else from previous compulsory vaxx programs who’ve developed several types of immunological disorders. I have family who have Native American blood, who I love, plus I can add. You also left out dropping nuclear bombs on Japan. May I invite you to get a “free subscription” to my substack? I just started this year, and I believe you’d appreciate my last ten publications.
Don’t say that. I’d Never attempt to silence you. I appreciate your perspective, and I hope you will respect mine, as well as freedom of speech.
Sleep well. But you left out Israel slaughtering most of Palestine, too.
Thank you so much Michael! I'm forwarding your email to my friends to see how many of them would like to see the film with me!