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Schule > Englisch > Ausarbeitungen, Interpretationen und Zusammenfassungen > Speeches > Comment: "Fear in the American Society" vs. "Bowling for Columbine"

Englisch-Klausur: Kommentar über die Rede "Fear in the American Society" im Bezug auf den Film von Michael Moore "Bowling for Columbine"

5000 died in New York
190 in Madrid
50 in London
They all died because of what we call "terror”

35000....................... die because of starvation - EVERY DAY!

Ladies and Gentlemen, what do we fear? We fear the terror, because in terror we see the senseless killing of people. That is, what the media says. And we believe it. We fear, what OUR media, OUR government, OUR people want us to fear.
But if it was as senseless as we think it is would people do it? If we try to understand, what terrorists are doing, we will soon find out, that terrorists want us to pay attention to their problems. And their problems are certainly worse than ours. Or do you think that it is right, that in our "fair” world 35000 women, men and children die, because they don’t have enough food?! Children lose their mothers and fathers! And we are the ones who could do something about it. Terrorists don’t want their view of the world and their society to be passed over any more. That is what "terrorists” are trying to tell us!

And the media changes this into fear! Although no one really knows, what a "typical terrorist” looks like, everyone fears them. This fear of the unknown leads to mistrust, odium and finally – crime. We don’t trust each other any more, so we need guns to protect ourselves against potential criminals. But as soon as you possess a gun, you are more likely to become a criminal yourself!
But again we don’t know who these criminals are. It maybe your neighbour, your best friend, or you, you, you (pointing at people in the audience)
Crime itself creates fear again and fear creates crime. Our whole society is caught in this vicious circle.
We live in a period of time where we cannot trust anyone except ourselves. And so we have our guns – just "to be sure”. Let’s assume not a single American person had a gun. Would we still fear the crime like we do now? Would we need to feel afraid of being shot at night walking alone on an empty road?

Everyone knows that America will never be completely free of guns. And it is also more than difficult to reduce the number of guns in our country. But what I want to reach in my time in congress is that everyone who wants to buy and possess a gun, needs to have a licence and must be at least 21 years old. I’m sure, that this will keep the number of guns at least at a constant level of 200million, which still is a terrible high number. Even more terrible is that each year more than 11,000 Americans are shot by other Americans. And the most common reasons for these murders are poverty and racism. Some people may say, that this racism is part of our history and hasn’t completely disappeared, yet. What I think is, that part of this racism is created just in the time, we live in. Namely be the media. When we turn on the News, what do we say every single night?! Black men shouting each other. We see murder and crime. Actually, crime in our society has decreased by 40%, but on TV we see 600% more murders!

"One way to express our unity is for congress to set the military budget, the defence of the United States as a number one priority”. This is what president Bush said to American soldiers. I asked myself: Is he really talking about the America I know? Where is our great unity when 11,127 people are shot every year? Where is the unity in a country in which millions of black people still have to suffer racism mainly caused be the American media? Why didn’t Mr Bush ask congress for more money for social institutions? He tries to make America seem a strong country, acting as a "police officer” for the whole world. But wasn’t it fear, that made him overthrow Saddam Hussein? With this fear, he completely represents our society!

Maybe we cannot ban guns from our society. But we can at least try to ban the reasons why they are used! We need to change our minds! No matter what colour our skin has, what language we speak or what opinion we have we are all humans! And we are not meant to kill each other because we don’t look alike. We are meant to help each other, and to be able to help people in other countries the people in our society must feel safe, so that we can go out without being armed and say "What a beautiful day in a beautiful country!”

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