… And The Controversy Immediately Stops
Governor Greg Abbott, a man who has not even two shades of gray because everything is just black or white, has decided that the arguing over whether Chris Kyle is a hero needs to stop.
Texas will officially celebrate 2 February as “Chris Kyle Day”, in honour of the Navy Seal whose portrayal in the movie American Sniper has caused intense controversy while breaking box-office records.
Greg Abbott, the new Republican governor of Texas, announced the creation of Chris Kyle Day in a speech at a veterans event in Austin on Friday. According to a statement from the governor’s office, Abbott said his decision had been taken “in honour of a Texas son, a Navy Seal and an American hero – a man who defended his brothers and sisters in arms on and off the battlefield”.
That settles it.
Not surprisingly, Greg Abbott never served his country in the military.
We had to live through the Duck Dynasty fracas. Now this Chris Kyle controversy. When will these A**Hat politicians like Abbott start doing their official duties instead of messing with people’s minds over stupid diversionary crap.
1@Angelo Frank
2“Diversions” are all the Tea-hadists and their empty headed supporters have. I expect free bread and circuses to start appearing in Austin by March 15th.
Same day as Ground Hog Day no irony there.
3Chris Kyle hailed from Odessa, which, according to Texas Monthly last week, has the highest crime rate in the State. You live by the gun, you die by the gun. Way of life.
4How about snipers from other countries during WWII? What were their totals? Where would Kyle rank amongst these snipers?
Kyle did the job that he was trained for, why all the excitement?
ww.militaryeducation.org/10-deadliest-snipers-of-world-war-2/
5A killer is not the same as a hero. Kyle’s actions may have saved lives. And he did put himself at risk. However, those admirable parts of his story need to be balanced with the ugly parts and there were plenty of those.
It was pretty ugly to take a victim of PTSD to a shooting range.
6Chloe Bear for the win! Gots to love the irony.
7The right needed a “hero”, even an imperfect one. Kyle didn’t die heroically in combat by any means. He was “helping” a soldier with PTSD by letting him shoot off guns. Lets see, the last time this fellow heard guns going off was…in combat! It sounds like he flipped and thought Kyle was the enemy, and now Kyle is dead and his children fatherless because of his egregiously bad judgment.
8Hasn’t he ever heard of Veterans Day or Armed Forces Day? Those are days for celebrate the military. I don’t think we should celebrate one special person. He did his job but I don’t think we should brag about it. What is wrong with this country to celebrate killing people?
9movie review by Chris Hedges. If somebody made me go to the movie I’d take a book and sit out in the lobby.
Chris Hedges: Killing Ragheads for Jesus – Chris … – Truthdig
10http://www.truthdig.com/report/…/killing_ragheads_for_jesus_20150...
Truthdig
Jan 25, 2015 – The film’s title character, based on Chris Kyle, who would become the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, will, it appears from the sermon,…
I agree with LynnN and Kate: How stupid can you be to expose a PTSD person to gunfire.
11I know war is hell, and things happen in war that we don’t want in our society at large, but this whole thing seems to be just a glorification of guns and the “good” they can do.
“Hero” is used much too often and usually inappropriately today.
Sucker kids into thinking the whatever war is “to keep our country safe”, deploy them over and over, and when their minds and hearts are broken go stingy with VA services, but by all means reassure them that they are “heroes.”
The best thing any parent can do is to teach their kids skepticism and cynicism.
12If the definition of “Hero” is how much you can glorify guns and killing “other” people, then Jesus is one of the greatest villains of human history.
13So… we celebrate with six more weeks of winter?
14Abbott may not be a disabled veteran, but our elderly next door neighbor sure thought that’s what put him in a wheelchair until we disavowed her of that idea. She found it hard to believe a tree branch had fallen on him instead. I wonder how many other “low information” voters in this state shared the same belief when they went to the polls.
15TTPT, and I doubt that Abbott rushed to disabuse anyone of the idea that he was a “war hero.” You could also fill in your neighbor about how he sued for megabucks but did his best to stop anyone else from doing the same thing after their own injuries.
16Um, I’m not carrying any water for Chris Kyle’s service. Apparently he was a very good shot, and he probably kept some of our people from getting killed. I’m not going to see the movie either; I’ve studied enough about WWII to keep me trying to prevent war, certainly our wars, until I die. All sorts of ugly things happen, and the reasons were never good enough. Never. Glorifying it obscures the truth.
However: this same guy died trying to help other people who served, which is better than our Congress. It doesn’t matter whether WE approve of his method or his activities. His vetting process failed and he paid the ultimate price. You can get PTSD from exposure to circumstances not related to war too; no one knows what your trigger is, maybe not even you. Sometimes the trauma is buried very deep. That young man could have just been annoyed that Mr Kyle hit the target every single time! The important thing is Kyle is dead and he was murdered/killed by someone he was trying to help. Far more heroic -and kind!- than any service record, IMO.
17Oh yeah, I forgot-Greg Abbott is a hypocritical pandering horse’s patoot.
18@Rhea—Yeah, we did tell her the whole tale but, you know, in this county they vote a straight Republican ticket because it’s easier. You just check that one box and you’re done. No uncomfortable thinking involved.
It’s like this exchange between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes “Monkey trial:
Darrow was asking Bryan when the “Great Flood” took place and Bryan said he couldn’t fix the date, although he did say that some biblical scholars put it at 4004 BC.
Darrow then asked, “What do you think?”
Bryan responded, “I do not think about things I don’t think about.”
19TTPT, I could say that it would be an excellent thing if the one-box-straight-ticket option were eliminated by the people in charge of elections, but that would be like trying to get turkeys to sell hatchets in November. I think I remember seeing that option somewhere, but it’s not on the Maryland ballot these days at least.
20Without people like Chris Kyle we would have no one to protect us from those imaginary weapons of mass destruction.
On the other hand, I prayed to Zeus that we would win that war and He answered my prayers. So let’s give credit where credit is due, by Jove!
21just haVe to say, I never saw Abbott in a wheelchair until he started running for governor. The first time I got really mad at him was when I found out that after he was crippled for life, he got almost ten million dollars because of it, then he turned around and made sure no other Texans could ever get more than $250,000 for a similar problem. But then I am not a historian. Feel free to correct it.
22Speaking as a veteran, I am always against politicians–esp. those who never served–making use of one military person’s heroism (whether you call it heroism or not) to inflate his own importance and vote-potential.
Nor am I thrilled when other veterans then think that politician is really patriotic and wonderful because he does something dead easy (declaring a day in the name of X) when in the rest of his time he’s doing not one damn thing to benefit the state or the country.
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