Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe on Modern Politics: “We are Fucking Living in Planet of the Apes“
Like many of us, Randy Blythe was cracking wise about President Donald Trump back when none of us ever imagined there’d actually be a President Donald Trump. In Blythe’s case, he facetiously suggested that he’d be voting for Trump in November.
This being the case, Rolling Stone recently asked Blythe if it’s “even possible to joke about [Trump] anymore.” Blythe’s reply:
“[Laughs] Oh, everybody wants to talk about Trump. You know, I think we’re living in ‘Planet of the Apes.’ My brother sent me some footage the other day from these Trump rallies in Lake Oswego, Oregon, and of course there were protestors. And there’s this one anti-Trump protestor who decides to start disrupting the Trump-rally people by just screeching incoherently. And then the Trump people surround her and start making animal noises, and soon all of them are just screaming incoherently at each other [laughs]. This is the state of modern political discourse in a nutshell. We are fucking living in ‘Planet of the Apes.’
“The whole thing is mind-blowing. Trump has only been in office for, like, a month and a half. There’s so much shit that’s happened in the media. … I’m checking Fox News; I’m checking CNN; I’m checking the BBC to see what other people are saying. I’ll go on these horrible binges of going down the rabbit hole and reading all the different viewpoints of what’s going on. And, really, man, the reality of the situation, there’s no clarity to it yet, because nobody really knows what exactly this administration will do, can do. What will get through Congress, what won’t. Reality itself seems to become subjective at this point. So for me, you know, there’s some horrifying things, but there’s some shit that’s also absolutely fucking hilarious to me.
“I have to look at it that way. People got really mad at Slayer when I think [Tom] Araya posted some picture of Slayer with Trump that said: ‘Make America Great Again.’ People went apeshit. They’re, like, burning their Slayer records and stuff, and it’s like, don’t you people think just for a second maybe he was just being an asshole, like trying to get your goat? This is the singer of Slayer, you know? Come on, you know? So, it’s like, the whole situation… there’s really vocal minorities all around that are refusing to talk to each other. I guess that’s just like the last eight years of Congress refusing to talk to each other. The country has become completely bipartisan, and there’s not a lot of discourse. And I think that the intensity of all this can only last so long before people are gonna have to be like, ‘Look, we’ve got to chill the fuck out and be human beings and talk to each other somehow.’”
Which is a fair assertion we hear a lot these days: we need to put our differences aside and learn to work together again.
My only issue with that argument is it’s really, really hard to put our differences aside when our differences relate to equality for all human beings. If our differences are I think people should be able to piss in whatever bathroom they want and think we should welcome immigrants and refugees into this country, and your opinion is basically “Fuck everyone who isn’t a heteronormative caucasian Christian,” well, it’s hard to meet in the middle on that, isn’t it? And really, Trump is, in every way, unprecedented in this country. Blythe is right that we don’t know yet the full extent of what Trump will do… but we’ve already seen what he’s trying to do and it’s VERY hard to stay calm while he tries to do it. Plus, it seems like making a ruckus is working in terms of undermining his insidious efforts, so…
But whatever. I get Blythe’s point. It’s really this next quote that kinda bummed me out. When RS suggested that “there can’t help but be a protest dimension” to Lamb of God’s upcoming tour with Slayer and Behemoth — meaning the tour would be implicitly anti-Trump — Blythe responded:
“I don’t know. I mean, I know that we have fans who are Trump supporters and we have fans that despise Trump.”
So I guess in 2004 Lamb of God didn’t have any fans who were Bush supporters?
I know, I know, I shouldn’t bust Blythe’s balls. He’s still politically active, he’s made it clear he doesn’t appreciate Trump, and if he’s not quite the angry young man he once was, well, that makes sense — he’s not a young man anymore (and, of course, people are allowed to change). It just feels like this is really letting Trump off the hook, which is not something I’d ever imagine Blythe would do. Again, we’re not arguing over fine points here; we’re arguing about people’s freedoms under an aspiring despot who has surrounded himself with bigots. This just doesn’t seem like a great time to shrug and go “Well, some of our fans like Trump.”
Am I overreacting? Read the entire interview here, then sound off in the comments section below.
[via Metal Insider]
