'America The Murdering Psycho Sniper'

Caleb Howe on why Michael Moore has his giant panties in a twist over American Sniper:

Part One: he is not as close to people when he shoots them as other people are when they shoot. The blessed virtue of proximity, I suppose. By that reasoning, it is safe to conclude that Michael Moore finds the up close and personal beheading of a journalist to be far preferable to the long distance shooting of the beheader.

It is an addendum to this point that the reason it matters is that the sniper isn’t as much at risk of being killed as maybe he ought to be. If you’re going to war, expose your position and for heaven’s sake don’t wear body armor, or you might get a tsk tsk for not taking enough risk. Never you mind that these exact same people played moral scold over insufficient body armor not that long ago. Anything that might reduce your risk is “cowardly. All future military engagements, please take place in the nude using only staplers as weapons. For bravery.

Part Two: The sniper says negative or derogatory things about his targets. This is very important, because as you know, to all things there is an etiquette, and etiquette in all things. “I say, lovely chap I’ve got to shoot this morning. Smashing fellow. Real shame about the blowing people up thing, sad bit that. Still I daresay I’ll be sad to see him off. Dashing good looking too.” I am personally surprised a rugged tough guy like Seth Rogen is not aware of this, but in war, people say mean things about the people shooting at them. And the funny thing is? They also shoot and kill them, which turns out to be a tad more bothersome for all the participants, oddly enough. At least, though, we can say they are consistent and are outraged at any use of the word infidel. Right? Riiiiight.

Soldiers and Marines, especially those who have to pull a trigger, trash talk. Sometimes way more than that, they dehumanize. Is it pretty? No. But it’s real and it works. And selective hyperventilation from the knitting circle left isn’t going to change that.

To be fair though, one can understand why Moore took Kyle’s trash-talking about his enemies so personally, given his own past thoughts on America’s opposition in Iraq:

Related: My 2013 interview with Chris Kyle’s widow Taya, and his American Sniper co-author Jim DeFelice:

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Update: Moe Lane sums up the left’s anger with Chris Kyle’s life story:

Some on the Left will never forgive Chris Kyle for dying while trying to HELP a PTSD sufferer. They’d rather Kyle was the one who snapped.

— Moe Lane (@moelane) January 19, 2015

As the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday admitted in 2010, “creating a usable past” i.e., a simple, reactionary, anti-American, anti-conservative narrative is far more important for Hollywood (and DC) leftists than actual truth-telling. Kyle’s murder doesn’t permit the shaping of yet another 1970s-style boilerplate Hollywood violent war vet narrative to smear the entire American military, hence the anger by Moore, Rogan, and their ilk.

Much truth in this observation as to their roots of the Hollywood left’s anger as well.

More: “Chris Kyle was Charlie Hebdo with a rifle, not a pen,” Kurt Schlichter writes as he “detonates the [leftwing] narrative”at Truth Revolt. “This, of course, was unforgivable to the left.”