i love rage agains the machine

^ This is actually kinda weird, I've been listening to this album a few times on and off and even though I love the instrumentals, the music is good, I'm a big Public Enemy and Cypress Hill fan, and I'm all about the reunion of a ratm-like band, there's something about this that doesn't sit well with me that's difficult for me to explain. But I think I've figured out what it is.

Rage Against The Machine has songs like Take The Power Back, Killing In The Name Of, and Bulls on Parade. The poetic way these songs are written have a way of describing a perspective that paints the system in a very dystopian way which triggers a very relatable feeling of wanting to fight the man.

Prophets of Rage does this with some songs, but there's also a lot of clear references to Donald Trump, black lives matter protests, drones, and the legalization of marijuana. A lot of these are very real, topical, and controversial issues that have been dividing the country in a lot of ways. The band takes a pretty clear stance that seems to be in line with the message that the original Rage Against the Machine lineup would stand by. I don't know if I'm jaded because I wasn't really mature enough to critically analyze the political climate in the 90's around the time Rage Against The Machine debuted. I think this might contribute to why the music is still awesome to me without referencing anything that I've developed a sour taste for. To me, the message of RATM seems more likely geared to a fantasy that feels very true in our hearts, which makes the band easy to connect with. Meanwhile, Prophets of Rage sounds like they are responding to a very clearly defined political message which makes me a little uneasy.

It makes me wonder if my opinion of Rage Against the Machine would be entirely different if I were 28 years old in 1991. I also wonder if young children would grow to hear Prophets of Rage in their adolescent years just as I did with Rage Against The Machine and absorb the refined anger fuel and connect with the explosive attitude they deliver without being savvy to the facts and minutiae that make these problems very real and complicated.

When we look at history, we look at things like the native American Genocide, the Great Depression, drafting for the Vietnam War, and the riots in Birmingham Alabama and other similar terrible things in a very disconnected way. We just look at the facts of what happened like you would view animals in a zoo. We don't really know what its like to think like those people were thinking during that time period, or be in their shoes. We just observe them like primitive cave men who are fucking retarded and don't think like we do now. Maybe when all this crazy shit going on these days becomes history it will hard to hold the same opinions we have about it today.

Of course black lives matter! Of course marijuana isn't toxic for the general public! Of course, people didn't want to be spied on by drones! These are very real reasons to be angry; very real reasons to demand change! But we know only because we are here now living in it that its far more complicated than any history book could accurately give it credit for. When we inevitably evolve into the retarded socialist progressive landscape the majority of general public wants, they will be able to look back on these events in their sensationalized memory of it and see people trying to restore peace in the country as these primitive ignorant fuckheads who demanded we live in the name of tradition, and wanted God in our schools and whatever the stereotypical bigoted republican agenda is. People will read these history books and think what terrible apes we once were.

Ughhh... It's all very depressing.