An Open Letter to Tom Morrello

Tom,

I read yesterday that you are not such a fan of the fact that VP candidate Paul Ryan is a fan of your band Rage Against the Machine. I believe the words you used were that Ryan is the "machine you raged against". A clever turn of phrase there, buddy.

Anyway, as you may have learned throughout your career with first Rage and further on with Audioslave, your fans base is made up of a great many people with differing views, some of which would be considered conservative--but listening to you over the years I'm convinced that anyone with a viewpoint to the right of Hillary Clinton is a conservative in your eyes.

You see Tom, us with a conservative world view listen to music and some of what we listen to is harder rocking than gospel. You have to understand that our selections are kind of limited because in the entertainment industry as a whole and the music business in particular, there aren't all that many bands with a similar set of values and principles for us to listen to. I guess the only one that comes to mind quickly would be POD, the rap-rock hybrid band from South San Diego that sings of God and redemption, but I digress.

As much as it may unnerve you, us on the right enjoyed your music but as Paul Ryan noted, we didn't necessarily agree with your lyrics. Your band wrote songs about hard-left issues and thought you were (and I'm using the past tense because the band now is a caricature of what it was) some kind of secular messianic leaders. Newsflash Tom, you weren't. You were a flavor of the month band that gave testosterone-filled teenage boys a chance to feel bigger than they were. You sang of things that an seventeen year old from the suburbs thought were cool and made him seem rebellious.

But overall the lyrics were mundane and pretty basic from an intellectual standpoint. You sang of liberal concepts but just didn't have the intellectual capacity to make a difference and string together phrases and choruses that would equal your heroes such as Springsteen. Saying the same words over and over about how cops are white and mean grows tiresome after the first paragraph.

It seems to bother you as a person that your songs didn't motivate people to take down the "man" and fundamentally change the country. Case in point: you played a benefit concert for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal and you personally have spoken up for him. Even though every shred of evidence and numerous court appearances have confirmed that the former Black Panther shot Officer Danny Faulkner in cold blood on a Center City Philly street. Jamal should be six-feet under by now but instead is considered an icon in the left-liberal community thanks in no small part to you.

Getting back into it, your music was okay. You are an immensely talented guitar player who thought could change the world. Instead, you played behind lyrics that were shallow and infantile. Zack de la Rocha screaming "fuck you I won't do what you tell me!" repeatedly is not going to change anything except maybe the chances that the idiot teenager screaming them along with you has of getting laid that night. Believe me, that idiot teenager is going to calm down, come down and go back to the suburbs to his comfy basement with X-Box and cable TV. His mind wasn't changed--at least until he gets out of college with his degree in Native-American studies and no chance of a job in Obamanation.

Now granted, you have come out in support of the Occupy movement because they are what you've always hoped for; an angry mob of liberals that have been contaminated with the lefty gene. Years of elementary school, the entertainment industry, marxist college professors--and perhaps small bit of RATM music--have made them what they are today and that is a bunch of unproductive losers whom feel they are entitled to things from the government. This is your dream and it's populated by a group that once melded together raped, murdered and generally made pests out of themselves in the eyes of hard-working Americans. It took about a month after OWS started before people said enough. It's got to make you feel bitter that 20-years of pumping out lefty anthems was destroyed by six months of watching your disciples give the finger to what America stands for while taking a shit in the street. The enemy, the Tea Party lives on while every sensible politician--even those inclined to your world view-- has run away as fast as they can.

So in conclusion, yes, some of us on the right listen to your music or did back when you were somewhat relevant in the mid-nineties. And yes, we admit it and have you in our I-Pods. But don't believe yourself to be any bigger than you are or were. It's got to be balling that your band never had the lyrical talent of your contemporaries such as Tool, Alice in Chains or even Metallica. RATM threw together hard-left phrases but never in such a coherent fashion that it made any difference. Although you did out the fans and the alleged movement by going corporate with Audioslave, made your money, then went back to playing the lefty anarchist again. A typical elitist liberal move but we won't hold it against you.

Thanks for your time Tom and keep on raging against the machine.

Regards,

ER

Occupy Cleveland Is the New leader in Occupy Crimes

It was looking like Occupy Oakland and Occupy New York were going to battle it out for the occupy movement with the highest percentage of crime from people in their organizations. But we have a new player and the bar for this year has been set very high by the Cleveland chapter:

 A mohawk-wearing anarchist nicknamed "Cyco" was among five men arrested after allegedly conspiring to blow up a bridge about 15 miles south of Cleveland, according to court documents released Tuesday. 

Douglas L. Wright, 26, joined alleged co-conspirators Brandon L. Baxter, 20, a.k.a. "Skabby," and Anthony Hayne, 37, a.k.a. "Tony" and "Billy," in a plot authorities say homed in on the Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge, which spans the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and carries a four-lane highway. 

It turns out that Cyco, Skabby (that rather odd-looking dude at right) and the rest were all hard core occupiers

I wonder if Occupy sympathizer Elizabeth (The 1/32 Cherokee) Warren is going to comment on this bust,

#Occupyfail: The OWS Generation

During the mid to late 80's, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was idealistic and thought I had all the answers. Whatever ills were ailing society, my generation could fix them. I get that the Occupy (fill in the balnk) people think what they are doing is Important.

I came from parents whose generation lived through WWII and in my pop's case, the Great Depression. They were old school before old school was even a term. They taught me that if you want things, you have to work for them and work hard. So, from the age of 15, I worked.

I wanted a car, I worked. I wanted to go skiing, I worked. There were no handouts in my house because if you didn't earn something, you didn't deserve it.

The generation directly after mine wasn't taught that. All you had to do was show up and you won. Your baseball team went 0-16, you won a trophy. You didn't do a good job on your term paper, that's okay, we'll grade you on a curve and a 60% becomes an 85%. You act up in class, it must be ADD and we'll feed you ritalin. There's no consequences to actions because for some damn reason--and it may have had to be made up by some liberal "researcher"--it was someone of something elses fault and you were not responsible.

Well guess what, that generation and the succeeding one are all grown up (at least physically), hyper educated and living in a park down the street while lambasting the people who had no part in their misery. Watch them rail about the evil corporations and the unfairness of American society. Why, these idiots spent six years in college, got a masters in art appreciation and are way smarter than those evil white men who actually fuel the economy and create jobs.

For those who are sleeping in a tent and railing about the 1% while using your advanced degree in Women's Studies as toilet paper, this is Real Life. While wasting $100,000 of their parents money or racking up huge loans you have no idea how to repay you essentially showed up and got by. Chasing pussy and huffing bongs while attending a class a day that began at 2 PM was just the way it was done because when you got out, you'd automatically make $80,000 a year right off the bat. At least that's what the professors who have spent decades within the confines of academia told you. You earned it God damn it! And you earned it even more if you were part of one of the oppressed groups such as LGBT because society owes you.

Now back in the Real World, people actually have to prove themselves to earn $80K. They bring real value to those who employ them and increase their skill set to become more valuable. I guess that degree in Gender Studies has value to someone, somewhere; most likely teaching a course in Gender Studies at a college where some other moron convinced her parents to pay $40,000 per semester to attend.

But in the real world, that degree means you've earned exactly nothing. It may even double some day. Just because you've gotten a 3.9 GPA and got raves from the instructor on your thesis entitled Misogynistic Inequities in an Oppressive, White and Patriarchal America in the 21st Century doesn't mean you've actually done anything of value to anyone; including yourself.
It must be doubly tough to watch the man you elected to bring Hope and Change(TM) to America remain deeply in bed with the very institutions you claim to abhor.

So how's this going to end for you? Great question. You have two choices: A) you trash the tent, move back into your parent's basement, lose the lip piercing, create a resume (shouldn't be too hard considering you've got zero experience), apply for a job some place and get on with being a productive American. Or B) continue living in the park and shitting behind a bush, make ridiculous signs that include some drivel about you being the 99%, draw the ire of every hard-working citizen within a mile of the park and not accomplish anything but lose more time that could have been used learning a marketable skill.

For the record, everyone is laughing at you (at least everyone who is not exploiting you like the unions have been). It doesn't unleash the inner hippy in us watching you grow dreads and bang on drums. We look at your incoherent rants on You Tube and chuckle at the inanity of what you say. Hell, John at Verum Serum has made exposing your idiocy a full-time job. We don't hate The Bankers or Big Business more because you want your student loan forgiven. We work for and/or with those people and provide a home and nice life to our children because of them.

Please just stop. You're an embarrassment to yourselves and a punchline to the 99% of us who are too busy working to even consider your plight.