Open letter from Michael Moore
To All My
Fellow Americans Who Voted for George W. Bush:
On this, the
fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel?
How does it
feel to know that the man you elected to lead us after we were attacked went
ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran
horse shows?
That's right.
Horse shows.
I really want
to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how
do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon,
give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster
in
I want you to
put aside your self-affixed label of
Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just
talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call
Are we safer
now than before 9/11? When you learn that behind the horse show runner, the #2
and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have zero experience in emergency
preparedness, do you think we are safer?
When you look
at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience
in national security, do you feel secure?
When men who
never served in the military and have never seen young men die in battle send
our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do
they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never
there?
Do you really
believe that turning over important government services to private corporations
has resulted in better services for the people?
Why do you hate
our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25
years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think
that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been
good or bad for
With the
nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still
a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in
Do you believe
in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the
least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a
nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and
what was revealed was that the poor in
That's not a
joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and
their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees
broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a
guitar some country singer gave him. All this while
It would take
ANOTHER day before the President would do a flyover in his jumbo jet, peeking
out the widow at the misery 2500 feet below him as he flew back to his second
home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and
troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while
children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other
than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a
job!"
My Republican
friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world?
And on this
sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on
9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable
and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die
in vain?
Our
vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We
are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in
horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never
graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The
middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no
health coverage whatsoever.
Are we safe? Do
you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated
communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your
walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens?
Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves
and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the
problem will somehow go away?
I know you know
better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and
all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the
world, to the people of
I have an idea,
and it isn't a horse show.
Yours,
Michael Moore
www.michaelmoore.com
mmflint@aol.com
