Imagine you’ve been blessed in life like musician and actor Steven Van Zandt. You’re wealthy, you’re famous, you’re talented, and you’ve been married to the same woman for 40 years.
Now you’re 72 years old and can do anything you want with your life. You can travel or stay home. You can visit old friends or make new ones. These are your Golden Years, and you have the reputation and means to do anything you want. All doors are open. Everything is at your fingertips or a click or phone call away. Best of all, by all accounts, Van Zandt and his wife still enjoy good health.
Doesn’t that sound like heaven here on Earth? What a wonderful position to find yourself in: a life well lived, a great marriage, and resources—not to mention a secure artistic legacy.
How many people in history have been similarly blessed? It’s a lot fewer than one out of ten million; I’ll tell you that.
And yet…
Look at Van Zandt on Twitter being manipulated into losing his ever-loving mind over a local political story….
How do seemingly intelligent people allow themselves to be so manipulated by cable news that it holds this kind of control over their emotions, behavior, and limited time?
Here we have a silly political drama playing out in Nashville… Naturally, the corporate media have twisted it into the equivalent of 9/11 to juice their moronic viewers into outrage and increased ratings. And here’s Van Zandt, a guy sitting on top of the world, allowing himself to be manipulated into so much hate he jumps on Twitter to call for the extermination of fellow human beings.
@StevieVanZandt
“Outrageous doesn’t begin to describe the actions of these Republican White Supremacist scumbag cowards and pussies that need guns to feel like real men,” Adolf Van Zandt tweeted over the weekend. “GenZ, Gen Y, Gen X will unite and exterminate these cockroaches once and for all.”
This comes just days after a transsexual took a gun into a Christian school and “exterminated” six people, including three children. This comes just days after another self-identified transsexual was arrested for planning another school shooting.
Van Zandt deleted the tweet and then replaced it with one nearly as bad, where he raged against and dehumanized people on the right by calling them maggots and cockroaches.
“To avoid spending half my day deleting Foxsucking scumbag Russian bots and MAGOTT cockroaches like you!” Benito Van Zandt tweeted. “Go take away some women’s rights, keep some Black people from voting, go harass a Trans event, go shoot some kids, do what Republicans do best and get the fuck outta my feed!”
He ended up deleting this tweet, as well.
Ever since, like the spoiled baby he is, Van Zandt’s been tweeting and tweeting, trying to explain while remaining defiant and hostile.
Whatever.
Guys like Fuhrer Van Zandt aren’t anything new on the left… Violence, hate, and bigotry from the same party that fought a civil war to hold on to their slaves is to be expected. But what I find pathetic is a grown man and a very successful one reduced to yelling on Twitter like some green-haired, randomly-pierced college dropout who bags groceries for a living as he counts down the days to season two of Ms. Marvel. I get why someone like that needs to turn his anger outward instead of doing the kind of soul-searching that will only lead to dark places. I get why someone like that would find MSNBCCNNLOL as the only engine that offers a false sense of virtue and self-esteem. I even get why celebrities feel the need to take to Twitter now and again to assure the McCarthyites who run show business that they embrace the Conformist CorrectThink.
What I don’t get is how something like this happens to a Steven Van Zandt.
Especially at age 72, why would anyone waste even one minute of their emotional energy allowing cable news to distract them from all the beautiful things in life? There are so many books to read, so much music to discover, and films to watch. There are still walks to take and places to discover… This guy has the resources to enjoy and embrace it all with the love of his life on his arm. Instead, he’s sitting in front of the TV, allowing himself to get freaked out over a Nashville nothingburger when he could be doing anything he wanted with the woman he loves.
I’ll never be rich. I’ll never be famous. I’ll never leave behind a legacy. But never would I give CNN, MSNBC, or even Fox News that kind of power over me.
What a sad, hateful little man Van Zandt is. What a waste of all that money and freedom he enjoys. He’s a slave to pettiness, to things that don’t matter…. He’s hypnotized by liars and propagandists to ignore all the beautiful things in life.
I know he hates me and wants me dead, but I still pity the guy.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.