DECORAH, Iowa - The president of a company that owns movie theaters in Iowa and Nebraska is refusing to show director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

R.L. Fridley, owner of Des Moines-based Fridley Theatres, says the controversial documentary incites terrorism.

Fridley said in an e-mail message to company managers that the company does not "play political propaganda films from either the right or the left."

"Our country is in a war against an enemy who would destroy our way of life, our culture and kill our people," Fridley wrote. "These barbarians have shown through (the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001) and the recent beheadings that they will stop at nothing. I believe this film emboldens them and divides our country even more."

UPDATE: CapLion updates his post with a counterexample to Midwesterners being any more sensible than anyone else. His point is well taken, though—check it out.

What makes people refuse to see the scale of the conflict of our times, and to concentrate all their fury on one man who deserves so little ire by comparison? It's just tunnel vision, I guess... it's easier for people to lash out against the problem that's closest to home for them, that requires the smallest expansion of their attention span. It's way easier to believe that "the economy is in the toilet" or "Bush runs the USA based on his own personal religious beliefs" than to have to face up to the possibility that maybe Bush is in fact doing some things right, things for which he deserves to remain in office.

UPDATE: Via LGF, Michael Niewodowski (a chef at the Windows on the World restaurant in the WTC) has similar sentiments:

Moore’s film is the first major motion picture about Sept. 11, 2001. This bears repeating. When future generations look back on the Sept. 11 massacre, their first impression, through the medium of film, will be a work in which the president and the government are blamed for the attacks, and the soldiers who are protecting this country are defamed. Instead of a film version of Lisa Beamer’s book, “Let’s Roll,” or Richard Picciotto’s “Last Man Down,” we are presented with this fallacy. How could this happen?

It would be a colossal insult to insinuate that Franklin D. Roosevelt or the U.S. government were in any way responsible for the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Can you imagine the indignation of the men and women who lived during that period?

“Fahrenheit 9/11” is indicative of a nation that has become too apathetic, ignorant or deceived to face the enemy at the gate. America, where is your fury?

I'm drowning in it.