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And the wealthy men were enthralled by Chris Kyle...The American Sniper
I was reading Tim Knight's post on ZH about Perfect Palo Alto, and teen suicide in America.
The heart of the issue isn't the fact that this one railroad crossing is or isn't guarded by someone. It has to do with what the kids think they have to "achieve" to be worthwhile.
This made me think about the movie, American Sniper, and the article I read in D Magazine about the subject of the movie, Chris Kyle.
There is hope. Those kids can always join the military and kill some men, women, and children that are just trying to defend their homeland from foreign invaders. This may delay suicide by a couple years, not to mention the 10% discount at Home Depot.
Who knows? If they kill enough, there may even be a book or movie deal and good times at NFL games with hedge fund managers.
I suspect that Tall Tom was referring to another ZH article in his reply:
Is 1628 the magic number? I gotta know...I gotta know.
That way they can feign remorse while bragging about the body count...
Makes for a great book and TeeVee time too.
Below is my response to Tall Tom, which I have now moved to the ZH Contributors blog in the hope it may spur some conversation on this sad matter.
Bass invited Kyle to live at his house with him while Taya finished selling their place in San Diego. He introduced Kyle to as many “big money” people as he could. And the wealthy men were enthralled by Chris Kyle. They loved being around the legend. They loved hearing his stories and invited him to go hunting on their ranches. Bass would hold an economic summit every year at his ranch in East Texas. He would kick off the festivities by introducing his sniper friends.
“I’d have Chris and other SEALs come out and do exhibition shoots,” Bass says. “They would take 600-yard shots at binary explosives, so when they hit them it’s this giant explosion that shakes the ground.” He smiles as he tells the story. “For all the people that manage money all over the world and on Wall Street to come to Texas and see a Navy SEAL sniper shoot a bomb, it’s about as cool as it gets.”
I wish I could get Kyle Bass and all the people that manage money all over the world and on Wall Street to watch this 18-minute video by Sam Richards. Maybe then they might begin to understand why Chris Kyle was killed by another veteran, and why more US soldiers are dying from suicide than are killed by the enemy.
And maybe then Wall Street and The City might decide to direct their whores in Washington and London to get our sons and daughters out of Afghanistan, which is the longest war in American history.
Now, that would be about as cool as it gets, in my opinion.
For those that think this is a derailing of the Palo Alto suicide thread, just think for a moment about Tim's point in the article on Palo Alto.
"It has to do with what the kids think they have to "achieve" to be worthwhile."
What American Sniper Chris Kyle "achieved" to become a hero is not so vastly different than what Russian Sniper Vasily Zaytsev "achieved" to become a hero.
Read these two books if you want to better understand.
http://www.amazon.com/Stalingrad-The-Fateful-Siege-1942-1943/dp/01402845...
http://www.amazon.com/American-Sniper-Autobiography-Military-History/dp/...
However, the morality of a nation matters.
The morality of a fight matters, as was taught to a young Chris Kyle by his father, and to me by my father.
It always has.
It always will.
As Bastiat says in, The Law:
Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two.
We do not have the natural right to attack others, imprison others, and to take or destroy others property...even if it is profitable to do so...and even if not doing so may endanger our nation's ability to enforce the petrol dollar.
Get us out of Afghanistan.
Get us out of Iraq.
Get us out of Syria.
Get us out of Bahrain.
Get us out of Saudi Arabia.
Get us out of Yemen.
Get us out of Ukraine.
Stop the drone war.
Peace be with you.
»
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UKRAINE IS RUSSIA. THE MOTHERLAND. DON'T GO THERE.
The Ukrainians that live there seem to feel otherwise, well except for the ones that migrated from Russia when Stalin was shipping off all those Ukrainians to the gulag. Those "Ukrainians" seem to like blowing up passenger planes for Mother Russia.
Nice
I just expanded on your morality theme.
The fact that Chris Kyle was, in the end, an entertainment whore for wealthy people kind of sums up American Morality quite succinctly.
I am Chumbawamba.
A good summary of American morality, yes, but not quite as good as that whole Tara Conner scandal a few years ago. (The Miss USA winner was basically a huge slut, coke whore, drunk, etc.) Sleaze at its finest!
"(The Miss USA winner was basically a huge slut, coke whore, drunk, etc.)"
You say that like it's a bad thing. ;-)
And the wealthy men were enthralled by Chris Kyle. They loved being around the legend. They loved hearing his stories and invited him to go hunting on their ranches. Bass would hold an economic summit every year at his ranch in East Texas. He would kick off the festivities by introducing his sniper friends.
That is truly disgusting. Having read some of Kyle's book, and having followed the adventures of Wall Street's finest, it appears that "let the bodies hit the floor" is the anthem. Any respect I may once have had for Bass just evaporated.
Drawing lines like this is fruitless. I am sure Chris Kyle was a good man, and Kyle Bass is who he is. For me I neither respect nor disrespect because I do not understand their circumstances or how they live(d). I do not know if I could have ever been a sniper. A friend's son was a sniper in Afghanistan. He's a good kid, but with issues. He does not trust the same govenrment that trained him the be an angel of death.
To be at peace starts within. It is not that caring is gone, but to me none of this matters unless it comes down to caring for those I love and respect. I tell my family and friends I have given up. Not on life but on choosing sides in what clearly is a morass of morals. One would be changing colors constantly in a world where propaganda cannot be separated from fact. So the only facts that truly matter are my own.
Let God be the judge of men and their deeds. This clearly includes me and what I have done. Don't sweat the bullshit.
Never Understood the giddy school girl/man love so many ZH'ers had for bass. He seemed like any number of self-important brats I have met; only richer. When I heard bass say how he had that other statist schmuck, austin goolsbee over "the ranch" regularly, I knew he must be a piece of shit.
"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." (variously attributed)
He may not have been a hero. He was "rough man" however.
you poor mindless sucker.
No, you clearly did not see the movie. He was the one that invades a man's country, breaks into a man's home in the night, forces the man to give up his neighbors because the man has guns to defend himself, and shoots the man dead in the street.
"He was the one that invades a man's country, breaks into a man's home in the night, forces the man to give up his neighbors because the man has guns to defend himself, and shoots the man dead in the street.
Did he moonlight as a cop in Ferguson?
"All is fair in love and war."
Each person believes their morality is the best when competing for a lover or at war.
Both sides should look at the precepts of their morality, and if their actions match the precepts.
With humans the precepts are often ignored because of individual or cultural lust.
Blame needs to be laid at the feet of leadership which feeds these lusts.
"Blame needs to be laid at the feet of leadership which feeds these lusts."
Yep we should start with DC. From the White house to the capital. They ordered the troops over there where they have no choice but to fight or die. Toss the folks who think they are invaders into the middle of that quagmire and I bet they would pick up a gun and fight like hell knowing they would be wearing an orange suit on youtube if they got taken alive.
Kule didn't shoot the man dead in the street, the butcher's guards did. The man gave up terrorists (NOT his neighbors) for $100,000.
I saw the movie. Did you?
He saw the Movie ! He saw the Movie ! He has the Intellect of an eleven year old; but he's probably "an adult"; and this is what you''ve got to work with. I think I'll just go get drunk now; this is why I live alone and away from the 'citizens'. It's fucking intolerable. The dim fucks want to debate what was in a Movie !!
.
So he draws his conclusions from a movie which is a carefully crafted propaganda device designed to reaffirm all the status quo narratives, reinforce the waning fear of "the terrists", and hopefully leave viewers pumping their fists while chanting "USA! USA! USA!" in a cult-like exercise in self-brainwashing. And this fine film was based on a book built on an edifice of distortions, half-truths, and outright fabrications. That's real solid ground, there. Probably went to see The Interview out of a patriotic sense of duty.
Well, after determining that The Flintstones was a realistic depiction of prehistoric man, it was time to move on to another issue.
But hey, it's no wonder all the big money people think of Chris Kyle as a hero. After all, he made money the 'american' way: lots of lies and lots of killing.
Expect US Citizen 'american' Sniper to win an Oscar. It makes as much sense as Obama's Nobel Peace Prize.
Oh give me a fuckin' break about the 'terrorists'! One way or another, the 'terrorists' were created by the USA. Either through direct training/funding or as blowback from our insane foreign policy.
Perfect summation. Like I tell people, you can slice this thing anyways you like, conspiracies or not and you end up at the same place.
Yes, I saw the movie.
No, I was not there on the street that particular night outside that restaurant.
You cannot spell Hollywood without lol.
One man's enemy and terrorist is another man's neighbor and patriot.
good article, good comments, HH. I saw the movie too, and reached much the same conclusion. No, going to a country you had no business being in and shooting a bunch of people does not make you a hero, it makes you an invader, and when you shoot people who are fighting against a foreign invader, defending their homes, it makes you a murderer. Most people I know say that he was fighting to defend his fellow soldiers, keep them safe, so all those kills were justified. But those marines and soldiers would have been perfectly fine anyway had they not gone over there in the first place. I will say this, that movie is an excellent piece of pro-war propaganda, perhaps the best I have ever seen. Goebbels would be proud. "Of course the populace of the country doesnt want war, they never do, but they can be convinced to go along, as long as you denounce those who speak out against warfare as unpatriotic" Im paraphrasing, obviously, but that movie is one of those that you simply can't criticize in certain company, since even if you don't neccessarily support the war, you still aren't allowed to criticize chris kyle, since somehow being dead makes you above criticism.
There is a great deal of debate about our wars and most on ZH are firmly in the camp of non interventionist if not outright isolationism. While I have mixed feeling about our circumstances and in hindsight realize our involvement there was a mistake, a larger mistake would be to assume an effective military and soldiers willing to kill is wrong. If pacifism was a viable alternative in the real world, not a fictional or utopian one, there might be a good argument for complete disarmament, but its not. If we believe in evolution and truly believe pacifism is a real alternative, we have yet to see it appear successfully in the world. War is an inevitability and to ignore this fact is equivalent to ignoring our debt and every other delusional pipe dream currently killing us.
Osama stately clearly and publicly that he wanted war with America, not because he believed that he could defeat us in any conventional or even terrorist way, but simply because we lacked the will to pay the price, to last it out and do what it would take...and he was right. While this war has lasted far longer than it should, our losses have been minimal compared to other wars, but the political rhetoric has never been higher. Rules of engagement that no other military has ever had to conform to. We see our soldiers into this mess and then they find themselves not able to fight back. And when they do, they are castigated as murderers. And we wonder why the wars have continued on for so long. Chris Kyle did what was asked of him. He put HIS life on the line which is far more that I can assume the vast majority of heroes on this thread ever have or will do.
The war may be wrong, but what is worse is the line of cowards who will condemn those who did serve, especially when those cowards have done nothing but bitch and moan and criticize...like they live on some high moral ground by simply not showing up, not voting, not serving and not doing anything about the crap they constantly whine. Did any of these cowards protest to our government in such a way that they actually put their life or freedom on the line? I doubt it. The problem for America is that there is absolutely NOTHING that the vast majority would do to preserve freedom or risk anything that they did not think they would profit from handsomely. And God help anyone who would actually consider sacrificing for their country...nationalism..oooh the big evil! Prance about professing great love for the constitution, but fuck America, right? See any conflict there or is it only about ME? Or is it that we simply hate anyone richer, smarter, braver or just better looking than us? Humanity is defined by its insecurity which is absolutely contained only within us. How we see ourselves, our values, our motivations, and our actions is how we define ourselves and what determines what we do from each moment forward. Most are doing very little but masturbating.
"The problem for America is that there is absolutely NOTHING that the vast majority would do to preserve freedom or risk anything that they did not think they would profit from handsomely."
And 239 years later, the truth about his beloved United States of America FINALLY dawns on Oldwood...enjoy the ride down, pal...
"not because he believed that he could defeat us in any conventional or even terrorist way, but simply because we lacked the will to pay the price, to last it out and do what it would take...and he was right"
As did Ho Chi Minh, Gen. Giap & a few others clearly recognized and exploited.
&
Kurtz: I've seen horrors... horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that... but you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror... Horror has a face... and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies! I remember when I was with Special Forces... seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out; I didn't know what I wanted to do! And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it... I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, my God... the genius of that! The genius! The will to do that! Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men... trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love... but they had the strength... the strength... to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men, our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling... without passion... without judgment... without judgment! Because it's judgment that defeats us.
Osama Bin Ladin wouldn't know where the US was if we weren't fucking around in the middle east, specifically saudi arabia. We are always fucking with them first, show me an instance where we aren't.
The question of whether Osama bin Laden has ever visited the United States, a subject on which I have expended an unhealthy amount of energy in the course of various journalistic and biographical research, has now seemingly been settled. Osama was here for two weeks in 1979, it seems, and he visited Indiana and Los Angeles, among other places. He had a favorable encounter with an American medical doctor; he also reportedly met in Los Angeles with his spiritual mentor of the time, the Palestinian radical Abdullah Azzam. All this is according to a forthcoming book by Osama’s first wife, Najwa Bin Laden, and his son Omar Bin Laden, to be published in the autumn by St. Martin’s Press.
First, some context for the book’s disclosures:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/steve-coll/osama-in-america-the-final-answ...
We?
How about the corporations, banking interest, IMF, corrupt and/or psyco polititions vs. we. The military has no choice. They take orders and carry them out as best they can while trying to stay alive.
"The military has no choice. They take orders and carry them out as best they can while trying to stay alive."
They can go to Leavenworth...
Yes, that is exactly what Hitler's Nazi officers said, and how many of the German civilians felt.
Please consider reading this excellent book, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45.
I support your assertions about USG being a front for bankers and their immoral wars of empire.......the caveat is A military has been with MAN since time was measured.....some nations use programming/propaganda to drum up support of populace and willing young men to serve as fodder for their perpetual and never ending byzantine and nefarious schemes perpetuated on a global scale......what ALL men need to understand...... is before their was organized evil machinations their was the concept of the archetype that is passed down in genetic memory...warrior.....merchant....leader.....follower....teacher...et al .....so now we arrive at the logical discourse of the warrior is evil and aiding and abetting an evil government......beware logic traps ....roman soldier arguements.....Man is either capable of executing the deeds like KYLE did ...........or he can talk endlessly about the deeds men like kyle do.....lol
"There is a great deal of debate about our wars and most on ZH are firmly in the camp of non interventionist if not outright isolationism"
Not really. If a job needs to be done, then get it done, and get the troops home. Instead, this really has turned into ENDLESS war. We go from one country to the next chasing so called terrorists that are going to harm us. I call bullshit.
Take ISIS for example. It takes many things to form an army, not the least of which are guns. You need the raw materials and natural resources to build guns, ammo, gun powder and the vehicles to deliver them. Where are the iron mines, and the copper mines and the lead mines in Syria to manufacture the arms that ISIS has in its possession? ANSWER? In the USA!! They get most of the ability to fight us right from.....US!!
We lost our collective minds on 9-11 with our kill everyone and anybody that has an ill word to say about the USA. Osama Bin Laden has won the war. We let him win it, because we coudn't use any common sense on how to handle terrorists around the world---we have created more and more enemies, not less. No one is saying we have to be completely isolationist---just that we should maybe take up arms as a very last resort instead of killing people being the first answer instead of the last.
And that is noninterventionist, which i largely support. The wars have been endless for the last sixty years. We cannot win one, not because we lack the ability, but the will. We see constantly rehashing of WWII, the last one we really won, debating if we should have used the Abomb or fire bombed Dresden. Maybe if we hadn't we could still be at war with them too. No, they wouldn't let us win a war. The democrats voted for these wars...before they condemned Bush for going to war. We sent our troops in, and then told them not to shoot unless fired upon. Anyone think we would have won against Germany or Japan with that policy? No we can't win, because we can't call them enemies, because we can't even really call it a war, but a international police action. No we can't win a war because there is far far too much hay to be made by keeping as many going as possible, even so far as to do what they can to get one going inside of our own country...watch, its happening. WE don't need to be disparaging those willing to fight...we need more of them. We just need them to fight for our freedom, not someone elses. America is becoming a country of people sitting on their asses complaining that they don't have more...of everything, and are increasingly willing to fight for none of it.
So...we are equivalent to Nazis. Are those the ones who shot back at our troops in military conflict or the ones dragging the bodies of Jews to the ovens (that according to many here never really happened)?
Are you going to suggest that Kyle deliberately killed innocent civilians that posed no threat? In your eyes, should he have simply stood down and allowed his guys to be killed? Or it as simple as he should have never joined in the first place and that no soldier should ever join the service and fight unless they personally have visited the site of conflict and personally surveyed and determined the fight to be just? So we can't have a military where soldiers follow orders?
What you are suggesting to me is that we cannot have a military, as soldiers cannot be a functional unit if they do not follow orders. By your definitions, as I understand them, we should never ever enter a war of any kind, for any reason, simply because it is immoral to do what it takes to win. Which seems to me to be EXACTLY the current policy...war forever because the costs to winning are too damned high.
No, but people need to quit patting themselves on the back about how "patriotic" they are, and how they have "served" their country because they are in the military. Where is the outcry from military families to bring the troops home?? Crickets..... No they think they are "defending our freedoms", so they say nothing about finishing our business and bringing our boys home. We don't have any business sticking our noses into every single corner of the world. Like I said in my post below, war should be a very last resort, not one of the first.
"Defending our freedoms" would be sending live rounds down K Street in Washington DC.
The traitors running DC and Hollywood aren't going to make a movie about that.
Read this about "K" st and Victoria Newlands husband.Fuckers http://www.globalresearch.ca/ukraine-the-corporate-annexation-for-cargill-chevron-monsanto-its-a-gold-mine-of-profits/5375170
I am suggesting that everyone always has a choice, even those that have chosen to join the military.
The military oath taken at the time of induction reads:
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) 809.ART.90 (20), makes it clear that military personnel need to obey the “lawful command of his superior officer,” 891.ART.91 (2), the “lawful order of a warrant officer”, 892.ART.92 (1) the “lawful general order”, 892.ART.92 (2) “lawful order”. In each case, military personnel have an obligation and a duty to only obey Lawful orders and indeed have an obligation to disobey Unlawful orders, including orders by the president that do not comply with the UCMJ. The moral and legal obligation is to the U.S. Constitution and not to those who would issue unlawful orders, especially if those orders are in direct violation of the Constitution and the UCMJ.
Refusal to obey an order and then prove it is in direct violation of the Constitution AND the UCMJ is entering into a shitstorm of unbelieviable personal consequences.
I am a vet. I have seen combat. I may not have liked or agreed with orders but when your and your units ass is on the line it's generally more appropriate to start grumbling after the fact.
An oath is a promise made under known circumstances. Do you think if confronted with a situation which is extraordinary, that oath should be revisited, or followed blindly?
A person can be put in a tough situation if you were drafted and or signed up for the military because of your circumstances not knowing what you are getting in to. When I see stuff like loading a record amount of ordnance onto carriers and the like it make me want to cringe. Some of these youngsters will only figure it out after the fact.
I recall being in Bangkok in '68 having dinner at Nicks No. 1 - at the next table was a young Army Lieutenant on R&R with his parents who had flown over from the States to be with him. They were solid anti-war and he argued his position of duty, honor and the oath he had taken. He had yet to figure it out. The light in my head had only flickered on after 2 years of the 4 I spent in Vietnam. My feelings and my associates at that event was of compassion for both him and his parents. We were all anti-war by then but had a job to do. So we went back to Nam and did it. LBJ disgusted us. The Generals, except for Abrams, we considered incompetent. What to do? We did our jobs. Even more would have perished if we hadn't. I arrived in May of '66. I left in 'Dec. of '70 and commuted from Bangkok as necessary thru '72. After '72 I never went back. I truly loved the country and it's people - still do.
All Wars Are Banker Wars
Chris Kyle was an extreme example of the consequences of unconscious procreation.
"Society is your parents' writ large; your parents were nothing but agents of this society."
Conditioned from birth to be yet another agent of a violent and brainwashed society.
I feel sorry for Chris Kyle and others like him who are brainwashed into believing in the whole "rah, rah, patriotism" meme. That ship has sailed boys. You are now just doing it to protect the ultra rich. You aren't doing it to protect the constitution. Your .gov is taking away our rights and you fight on its behalf. Time to start thinking for yourselves and not someone who has an agenda.
As if anyone portrayed in that movie had the means to come to the US and commit an act of terrorism. They all lived in shitty bombed out buildings and had a junker for a car to drive at best. Those people weren't going to be doing any "killing on our soil". Hunting brown people in caves isn't protecting us from anything.
I'm not sure, but I think you meant "Nationalism", not "Patriotism".
"The nationalist not only does not dissapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them." ~ George Orwell
I love my country and the principles it was founded on, and I consider myself a Patriot (love of one's people and country). I am, however, not a Nationalist by any stretch of the imagination - which is exactly what Kyle was and his supporters are (love of one's GOVERNMENT and it's rhetoric).
As you pointed out, it's obvious that "terrorism" is state sponsored if viewed from the aspect of training, mobility, and sheer costs alone .... and since foreign governments don't benefit from US military killing people and breaking things on their soil, well, that kind of narrows the possible answers to the question of "Cui Bono?" (Who Benefits?)
Yes. And Orwell had creds. too; do youi know about his imprisonment by his lefty buddies in Spain; when he was scheduled to be executed.
"I'm not sure, but I think you meant "Nationalism", not "Patriotism"."
Yes you are right to a certain extent. Patriotism leads to Nationalism, from the time you say the Pledge of Allegiance in kindergarten, to the time you stand there with your hand over your heart singing the Star Spangled Banner at a sporting event. You believe in your "freedoms" and want to kick some ass if someone tries to take those freedoms from you in a visible manner such as 9-11. Take them away by stealth, and the sheeple don't respond.
If the sand monkeys didn't want shot, they shouldn't have been living in their country!
Better to kill them over there, than in NY or LA!
-Amurikanus Booberamus
exactly. that's the zionist way.
Nice one HH.
And the word people are looking for is neither nationalism nor patriotism but JINGOISM.
Americans have been brought up from birth to be jingoists, with all the constant flag and country and pledging programming.
It will take too long for any meaniingful de-programming to happen.
And so, the piper must be paid, unfortunately.
Now, too many kids who have grown up on Call of Duty (it's a just a gaaaame they say).
Virtual killing machines, too deeply gone.
And so, the piper must be paid, unfortunately.
It will take an act of some stupendous significance to chage thsi ship of most states now, th eZionistas have got their claws deep everywhere, even here in India.
Good luck all around and make your own history...