Tom Morello is a Douchebag; or, How to Get a Lot of Traffic You Don't Want

For some reason I get a lot of traffic from people looking for pictures of Tom Morello, former guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, and current guitarist for Audioslave. I get these hits because of this post, in which I stated:

"As Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello (formerly of Rage Against the Machine) insisted in playing one final song while fans tried to kill each other, I wonder if he reflected on the irony of that his music was inspiring such violence at a rally for peace. I suspect he reflected on no such thing."

Let me first say, if you've come here looking for Tom Morello pictures, I hope you find what you're looking for, and Tom Morello is a giant douchebag.

Douchebag.

Now as I was discovering the reason for all my Tom Morello-related traffic, I found this comment on my post, linked above:

"Ummm who says he isn't well informed? He graduated from Harvard with a degree in Social Sciences. And he openly admits he is a socialist. And RATM was all about the politics before the music."

Well, first of all, I didn't say he was uninformed, I just noted the irony that someone is ostensibly playing a concert for peace while inciting a riot. But now that you mention it, the guy is, in addition to being a douchebag, also uninformed. The fact that he openly admits he is a socialist is conclusive evidence either that a) he is profoundly uninformed, or b) he is an evil piece of crap who rejoices in the torture and deaths of millions and millions of people. Being a naturally charitable person, I'm going to assume it's the former.

Here's the problem. Audioslave likes to point at the Bush administration and cry "police state!!!" But the douchebag in question is standing -- proudly -- in front of pictures of two notorious killers and, yes, heads of police states. They released either an album or a DVD (maybe both -- it's not like I care) called "Live from Cuba," another infamous police state. So when people like Tom Morello ignorantly whine that America is becoming a police state, what exactly is the nature of the complaint? That it has taken so long?

Or does he think only brown- or yellow-skinned people deserved to be slaughtered wholesale by police states? Well, it can't be that, because the Soviets killed millions -- maybe he just really hates Jews? Or perhaps I should consider the most obvious common denominator -- they're all foreigners who get sent to the mass graves or marched to death at gun point or made the subject of cruel scientific experiments. In other words, Tom Morello is a jingoistic moron who wraps himself in the flag to justify his antipathy for North Koreans, Cubans, Soviets, Chinese, Vietnamese, Venezuelans, etc. who displease their murderous overlords.

I'm sorry but reasonable and well-informed people cannot simultaneously decry American security efforts while approving of Mao and Lenin. Or, if they do, it means they must really be happy about a few million dead Chinese political undesireables, or North Korean babies being exterminated because Kim Jong Il believes political dissent is genetic.

So yeah, rage against the machine, kiddies, unless that machine is literally responsible for millions of deaths of its own citizens, in which case hey, maybe the machine isn't so bad, after all.