Ryan's Journal

I finally got around to watching Bowling for Columbine today. Films, of course, only show us what the director wants (Marilyn Manson the hero, George Bush the devil), but until we can completely emulate real life in computer graphics, I'll believe Michael Moore captured some amazing moments in his documentary, not to mention some interesting commentary on the filmmaker himself. It can be hilariously funny and hard to watch at the same time.

The point of Bowling is that America's problems with violence are cultivated out of the fear our media tells us to feel ("Homicides went down, but coverage of violent crimes on television have gone up by 600%"). I'm more on the conservative side, but this is a point I'm very willing to agree with heavily left-leaning Moore. If the vast majority of us turned off the TV, threw away the urgent news magazines, and got out there and knew our neighbors and our neighborhoods, maybe we'd find ourselves realizing that there's not so much to be paranoid about.

It's like a macrocosm of American economics. Our financial experts tell us when to buy and when to sell, and the FTC, the ever vigilant guardian, finds it an unthinkable crime when someone other than certified experts says the same thing. Teenagers can upset Wall Street by hyping penny stocks and they get litigated into obscurity; golden children of financial companies say the same thing about tech stocks, blow our economy into an unsustainable bubble, and mostly walk free in the aftermath, except for a few scape goats.

Our media tell us what to fear and what to buy to protect ourselves. I'm lost on how to combat them. Only 'vote with your dollar,' and we'll see. Oh, and as a psychological trick, try not to frown when you watch the news. Frowning helps you remember (so by extension, frown in lecture).

But that's not the whole picture. God tells us of a world beyond the one we perceive. There's more to this country's self-destructiveness than fear. Ephesians 6:12 gives me hope that this fight for a better nation can be won, if we choose to fight it the right way:

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."