By ROBERT LAURIE – There’s a good chance that this is the most depressing statistic you’ll see all year.
According to a new Army report, as of November, 303 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard soldiers had committed suicide in 2012. During the same period, 212 men and women in uniform were lost due to combat fatalities in Afghanistan.
It’s depressing, and disgusting.
Our military has sacrificed precious blood and treasure in Afghanistan for an ill-defined, and as such probably unwinnable, war. They’ve been given an arbitrary withdrawal date which has nothing to do with the accomplishment of any military goal and everything to do with politics. While they wait to leave, they’re still forced to fight, but their Commander in Chief has offered them little in the way of an objective.
When they finally do earn a ticket home, they return to a broken, barely functional, America. The economy is in the dumper, jobs are nigh-on impossible to come by, and – as a result of their low pay – former soldiers find themselves in an extraordinarily difficult financial position. All too often, this is leading to depression, substance abuse, and suicide.
Given the lack of leadership, coupled with the reality of the U.S. fiscal situation, are we really supposed to be surprised about the ugly numbers?
The President, the government, and every American citizen should be ashamed that we’re doing so little to support the men and women who protect our nation. This is the darkest scandal of the Obama administration.
This next song is dedicated to all our friends who made it back alive from the Persian Gulf …
What is art? I spent the best part of a decade studying philosophy, so I had plenty of opportunity to find out, but I avoided the philosophy of art (aesthetics) religiously. “I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like,” was, and pretty much still is, my answer to the question.
Music is art. I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like. Heavy metal is my favourite musical genre, and Slayer is the greatest heavy metal band of all time. It really is that simple.
But not if you’re an Objectivist. Lindsay Perigo is an Objectivist, and he thinks that Slayer is indescribable filth. Why does he think this? Is it because he is in thrall to Ayn Rand’s batty aesthetics as given in The Romantic Manifesto?
Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments.
Art … concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence.
The emotion involved in art is not an emotion in the ordinary meaning of the term. It is experienced more as a “sense” or a “feel,” but it has two characteristics pertaining to emotions: it is automatically immediate and it has an intense, profoundly personal (yet undefined) value-meaning to the individual experiencing it. The value involved is life, and the words naming the emotion are: “This is what life means to me.”
Art is man’s metaphysical mirror; what a rational man seeks to see in that mirror is a salute; what an irrational man seeks to see is a justification—even if only a justification of his depravity, as a last convulsion of his betrayed self-esteem.
What utter bullshit. I don’t know much about art, but I know that Rand is wrong and that Tom Araya, Slayer’s vocalist and bass player, is right. Art represents. Art reflects. Araya says that Slayer’s music is “dark reflections” of society. Here’s some snippets of an interview with Tom Araya.
And here’s the same interview, lovingly transcribed by me. First up, wicked guitarist Kerry King.
Kerry King: I like to take potshots at religion because I think it’s the …. the biggest brainwashing thing that is totally acceptable in America and probably most every place else in the world. Um, I just … I think it’s a load of shit.
Thanks for that, Kerry, you atheist douche-bag. Moving right along …
Interviewer: Tom, another well-tread path with you is your Christian background …
Tom Araya: Yeah.
Interviewer: … and the juxtaposition with your music.
Tom Araya: Catholic!
Interviewer: What place do your personal beliefs have in Slayer?
Tom Araya: I guess that what we do is art. Right? And it’s, it’s … art can be a reflection of society. And I mean … and … we’re picking up the dark reflections [laughs] … and, you know, that’s what we’re reflecting. But, evil’s everywhere, man, everybody’s got it. It sits really deep in everybody. Some people can’t control it as much as others, I think it’s … it’s … it’s there. Regardless of whatever fucking religion you believe in and whatever it is you feel is right, everybody knows what’s wrong. Everybody knows that there’s … there’s wrong things, there are just things you DO NOT DO. And the people that don’t understand that or don’t believe that, then they’re really … they’re not really connected with themselves, spiritually. It doesn’t matter what the fuck you believe.
Interviewer: But God Hates Us All, I can’t help but come back, I mean … how does it fit in?
Tom Araya: How does it fit in?
Interviewer: To the …
Tom Araya: He doesn’t …
Interviewer: To the …
Tom Araya: He doesn’t… he doesn’t … God doesn’t hate. It’s a great fucking title. When we wanted to make that an album title, I was, like, goddamn, it’s fucking really good. I think it will fucking piss a lot of people off.
Metalhead: The bands that want to be the biggest badasses pick the most badass subjects. It’s not that these people believe in this stuff. It’s just … you know, it’s … it’s a cool imagery that goes along with the music and, you know … some people believe in it, you know, I’m not going to deny that the … that the Norwegian bands are real, I mean, they’ve proven they’re real by their actions.
Interviewer: OK. So Venom and Slayer aren’t real.
(One day I’ll post about “the Norwegian bands.” Black metal. EVIL stuff. Google ‘Varg Vikernes’, if you must.)
Below are two pictures, one of Tom Araya who writes songs about serial killers, and one of Heath Ledger who played the part of psychopathic uber-villain The Joker in the Batman movie The Dark Knight.
Tom Araya writes songs about indescribable filth. He is not himself indescribable filth. Heath Ledger played the part of indescribable filth. He was not himself indescribable filth.
Heath Ledger got an RIP from Perigo, and his death was cause for a rewatching of Brokeback Mountain. Yet Slayer deserve to be branded “indescribable filth”? What’s the difference?
The difference is this. Tom Araya’s taking on the role of a serial killer – getting into the mindset of the psychopath, such as in the song Killing Fields – has harmed no one. Heath Ledger’s taking on the role of The Joker – getting into the mindset of the psychopath – has killed people, including, arguably, Ledger himself.
On Friday, 23 January 2009, in Dendermonde, Belgium, a 20 year old named Kim De Gelder, dressed as the Joker, conned his way into a day care centre and attacked babies and infants with a knife, stabbing them repeatedly in their heads and neck, killing 2 babies and a daycare provider and leaving numerous infants injured. (Wikipedia)
On Friday, 20 July 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside of a Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. A gunman, dressed in tactical clothing, set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. The sole suspect is James Eagan Holmes, who was arrested outside the cinema minutes later. … According to two federal officials, he had dyed his hair red and called himself “the Joker” … Seventy-one people were shot or otherwise wounded, reported by mainstream news as the most victims of any mass shooting in United States history. (Wikipedia)
“He’s a psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy.” — Heath Ledger on his portrayal of the Joker in the Dark Knight film. (source)
“Well,” Nicholson told reporters in London early Wednesday, “I warned him.” — Jack Nicholson, who had played the Joker in an earlier Batman movie series, commenting on the dangers of playing the Joker after Heath Ledger’s death. (source)
Awaken
In a web like Hell
How did I reach this place?
Why are they haunting me?
I cannot look at God’s face
Paralysing
Brilliant light
Trying to run
Want to scream, but cannot speak
I cannot look at God’s face
Blind my eyes, I can’t see
What is being done to me
In my mind only pain
All the memories are drained
Victimized
Specimen
Deathless torture
Void with no mercy
Black shroud blinds those who see
Violated
Naked before you I stand
Shattered shrine of flesh and bone
God’s piercing through my soul
Segments of my life
Morbid pieces of reality
Twisted personality
Many faces yet faceless
Familiar things give way to strange
No mercy no reason just pain
Fatal
Sub-conscious control
Threshhold of pain unfolds
Transfixed martyr saving race
Who am I to judge thy grace?
Awaken
In a web like Hell
How did I reach this place?
Why are they haunting me?
I cannot look at God’s face
Blind my eyes, I can’t see
What is being done to me
In my mind only pain
All the memories are drained
Communion. Christian Libertarians / Eternal Vigilance bloggers Reed, Richard, and Twikiriwhi. Liberty Conference. Crowne Hotel. Auckland. 6-10-12.
It was great to meet you Reed, and to catch up again with you Richard.
HAHAHA! Check out our Halo’s!
“…And there appeared on their heads Cloven tounges… as of Fire…”
(Acts2vs3) 🙂
Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”
He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’
“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’
“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’ (NIV)
There are two kinds of people in this world. Are you one of them?
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ (NIV)
I just found this Slayer fan video. (Warning: extreme content may offend.)
