In the 90's I was a Domino's Pizza Manager, and I carried, as did most of my drivers. It was in a town in middle Georgia. Now corporate policy was if you get robbed, don't resist, give them what they want and they will leave. That policy might have worked 20+ years ago, but by the 90's the perps would rob you then shoot you just for street cred. That "no resist" policy was put in place to protect the store and the company from lawsuits if the perp got killed because the employee resisted, the company can say "Well the *former* employee violated our policy and resisted so we are not liable," because you know that the family of the now dead perp will go looking for a bottom feeder lawyer to get one of those ghetto lottery verdicts and companies have much deeper pockets than the former employee, but with the violation, the company has no liability and is *off the hook*. We knew the odds and accepted the risk. Later I was transferred to a store inside the Atlanta area and I didn't carry and got robbed, beaten, pistol whipped and stabbed by 2 15 year old *minority yuuths*. Fun times. Years later in late 2006 and early 2007 when I was delivering pizza after Ford shut down before my present employer hired me, I was delivering pizza to keep the wolf at bay, I had 3 robbery attempts on me, they weren't in the hood, the trailer parks, the apartment complexes, they were in the middle class subdivision with a high section 8 population, you know the houses with lawn furniture inside, and the flashy cars well pizza boy carries a pistol and I pulled it every time and they saw it and ran. Pizza boy was married and had a young son at home and Pizza boy was going home to his family. As soon as my present employer hired me, I gave the pizza places my 2 weeks notice and I haven't worked it since.
WHat will fix this stuff is tort reform, and loser pays for bullcrap lawsuits.
Wiki Commons
An Oklahoma a 7-Eleven clerk named Stephanie Dilyard was fired for defending her life with a gun.
After 59-year-old Kenneth Thompson allegedly attacked Dilyard, she told KOKH-Fox 25: “This was a situation where I felt like I was put into a corner between choosing between my job, and my life, and I’m always going to choose my life because there’s people that depend on me … .”
Dilyard had worked at the 7-Eleven on a shift from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. for about two years. Then, at about 11:59 p.m. on November 13, according to local media reports, she refused to accept what she thinks was a counterfeit $100 bill for several items.
Thompson then allegedly became violent.
“He threatened me, and said he was gonna slice my head off, and that’s when I tried to call the police,” says Dilyard. “He started throwing things at me, came behind the counter. I tried to run off, but he grabbed his hands around my neck, and pushed me out of the counter space, and that’s when I pulled out my gun and I shot him.”
Thompson then left the store and made his way to an intersection in Oklahoma City, Okla., (MacArthur Blvd. and Northwest 34th St.) and he called 911.
Police arrived and Thompson was taken to a nearby hospital. He was later charged with assault and battery, threatening acts of violence, attempting to pass a fake (counterfeit) billand a felony warrant for violating parole.
Oklahoma’s “Stand Your Ground” law legally protects individuals who use force in self-defense. According to local reports, police confirmed that Dilyard is protected under Oklahoma’s self-defense law.
Dilyard’s job, however, was not safe. She was fired by 7-Eleven for using a gun to defend herself. “They said that they were going to separate from employment because of a violation of policy,” said Dilyard.
Dilyard said that she hopes her ordeal will serve as a wake-up call for other clerks, especially women. People need to be prepared to defend themselves, just as she was. “If I’ve known that there’s a potential that somebody is for real on taking my life away that I will do whatever it takes, and I hope that women see that, and they’ll do the same thing. You have a right to defend yourself,” she told local media.
The corporate media contact for 7-Eleven was asked for comment, but the company has not yet responded. This article will be updated if or when they do.
*Apparently I had a "Sensitive" content warning on my Monday Music.......I have no idea what that was about.
This is a concern, I blame a lot of this on the lack of "civics" being taught in school, plus several generations of students that were taught to despise their country and Western civilization because they were taught that it is the root of all the world's evil. and if it is gone, then utopia will arrive. Unfortunately if that happens, the safe warm existence they are used to will no longer exist. We are seeing it in Europe as the slow conquest of Europe by the march of islam that unfettered migration has let in and their institutions have betrayed their people in the name of "multiculturalism". It is coming here and in several generations we will not recognize our country unless it is stopped. I will be gone as are my friends, but my son and my descendants will have to deal with it.
I clipped this from "Newsmax"
America is losing its unique American identity, and it's happening with not just the blessing of judges and politicians, but also their active participation.
The United States was founded on three fundamental principles: Individual liberty, a free market economy, and personal responsibility. But all three are bring turned on their heads.
The election of Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Semite communist Muslim, as mayor of what was the center of capitalism, should have shocked everyone.
Mamdani is a 34-year-old Ugandan native who didn't become a U.S. citizen until 2018 and has never run so much as a Kool-Aid stand.
As a result, New Yorkers can look forward to a loss of private property rights, crippling taxation, and a rise in crime due to a diminished police presence.
In addition, at least 10 other un-American Marxist Mamdani clones won local races across the United States this month — an off-year election.
We can expect many more at the 2026 midterms.
Mamdani's campaign came to the attention of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who gave a warning a few months before his assassination.
"It's not Islamophobia to notice that a man who wants to globalize the intifada is about to run America's largest and once greatest city," he said.
"It's not Islamophobia to notice that Muslims want to import values into the West that seek to destabilize our civilization."
Kirk concluded that "It’s cultural suicide to stay silent."
A month later, Kirk addressed the broader issue of immigration in general.
He believed that the sharp decline of married, 30-year-old homeowners from 1960 to the present was attributable to a breakdown of the social compact.
All too often government figures bend over backwards to accommodate immigrants who commit crimes or engage in dangerous behavior.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg released an Algerian migrant taxi driver who was charged with sexually assaulting late-night female passengers on two separate occasions.
The cabbie, Mohammed Bellebia, 34, was arrested on Dec. 19, 2024 and charged in both cases. Later, he was permitted to plead guilty to disorderly conduct and was given a conditional release.
Well, what the heck, sexual assaults may be acceptable in Algeria, as a form of flattery, right?
Remember the Indian immigrant, Harjinder Singh, who made an illegal U-turn on a Florida divided highway, resulting in the deaths of three people?
It turned out that he was given a commercial driver's license (CDL), despite the fact that he couldn't speak, understand, or read English.
He was later charged with and pled not guilty to three counts of vehicular homicide and three counts of manslaughter.
In response, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy restricted the ability of non-U.S. citizens to obtain CDLs, and last week Duffy announced that California had illegally issued 17,000 CDLs.
"After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed," said Duffy. "Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked."
However, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Department of Transportation from enforcing its restrictions on foreign CDL holders.
It ruled that the government failed to follow proper procedure and didn't provide sufficient justification for how the rule would promote safety.
Meanwhile, last month another illegal alien commercial truck driver was under the influence of drugs when he rear-ended several vehicles at high speed with his rig, killing three people.
We're supposed to believe in free markets, not socialism.
Also, this is supposed to be America, not Uganda, Algeria, India, or the Tower of Babel
More than a century ago President Theodore Roosevelt warned America about immigrants who refuse to assimilate to our way of life.
"There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag. . . We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language. . . and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
That quote, along with our founding principles of individual liberty, free market economy, and personal responsibility, should be prominently displayed in the offices of every judge, district attorney, and politician in America.
And it wouldn't hurt for New York City voters to review it also.
If we're going to survive as a nation, America has to become America again.
I ran across this and thought it was pretty good, I have watched this movie several times and have picked up more things from it every time I saw it. I didn't know that this had inspired the "Magnificent Seven" until much later and even inspired that strange movie "Battle beyond The Stars" that came out in the early 80's. THis movie set the standard for every Samurai movie that followed.
Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 masterpiece has been on my list for a long time. It’s the film that inspired The Magnificent Seven and influenced everything from Star Wars to A Bug’s Life. But even though it’s been imitated countless times, the original still hits the hardest.
The story’s simple: a poor farming village in 16th-century Japan is being terrorized by bandits who plan to return after harvest to steal the villagers’ crops. Desperate and outmatched, the farmers decide to hire a small band of samurai to defend them. They find seven — each with his own personality, flaws, and strengths — and together they train the villagers, fortify the town, and prepare for the inevitable assault.
On the surface, Seven Samurai is an action film about a ragtag group of warriors facing impossible odds. But underneath, it’s a meditation on leadership, honor, humility, and what it means to live by a code.
If you’ve read our earlier piece on the Bushido code, you’ll recognize many of its virtues woven throughout the film. Kurosawa shows what the code looks like in practice.
It’s been a month since I watched the movie, and I’m still thinking about it. But I haven’t been thinking about the action scenes. I’ve been thinking about the life lessons I gleaned from the film.
Here are seven lessons I took away from Seven Samurai:
1. Lead With Humility and Serve Others
The first samurai we meet, Kambei Shimada, will lead the group of samurai defenders and shows what real leadership looks like before he ever picks up a sword. In one of the film’s opening scenes, a child has been kidnapped and taken hostage in a hut. The kidnapper is threatening to kill the child. Instead of going in with guns, I mean swords, a-blazing, Kambei shaves off his topknot — symbol of status and pride for a samurai — to disguise himself as a monk to rescue the child. He didn’t ask anything in return for his services and walked out of the village like a boss.
Throughout the rest of the film, you’ll see him rubbing his head where his topknot used to be. I reckon it was a reminder to him that sometimes to live the Bushido code fully means giving up the outward trappings of prestige.
That moment rescuing the child sets the tone for everything else Kambei does in the story. He leads not by asserting dominance, but by accepting responsibility and serving others. When he recruits the rest of the team, they follow him out of respect for his example, not his rank. He earns their trust through his humility.
2. Sweat More in Preparation, Bleed Less in Battle
Once Kambei agrees to defend the village, the samurai don’t rush into heroics. They spend most of the film preparing — studying the terrain, training the farmers, fortifying walls, digging moats, and mapping out every approach the bandits might take. The villagers think the samurai are just standing around, but Kambei knows what Sun Tzu wrote centuries earlier: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war; defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
When the attack finally comes, the outcome feels inevitable. The bandits charge straight into the traps that the samurai had laid days earlier. Their premeditated preparation beats the enemy’s in-the-moment berserkery.
While we like to think of courage as spontaneous — as a flash of bravery that arises when danger appears — the foundation of bravery is built in advance. The calm you can call up in a crisis will manifest in direct proportion to your readiness to face the challenge.
3. Be a Quiet Professional
My favorite character in the film is Kyūzō. The guy is a certified badass. He barely speaks throughout the movie, but he communicates through his actions. He’s a master at his craft with the sword. His effort looks effortless (the art of wu wei!). When a boastful samurai challenges him to a duel, Kyūzō wins with a single strike, then walks away without gloating.
One character described Kyūzō thusly:
He has the real samurai spirit. He is totally fearless. Yet, at the same time, he is gentle and modest — look how he acted after we went and got that gun. And how he went too — just as though he were going up into the hills to look for mushrooms.
We live in an age that rewards noise over skill. Kyūzō teaches us that there’s power in being a quiet professional. Real mastery is self-evident; when you’re truly good at what you do, you no longer have to announce it.
4. When You Are Strong, I Am Strong
There’s an aphorism in Latin that I love: vales, valeo.
When you are strong, I am strong.
While the seven samurai came from a different culture than the Roman centurions, they embodied this universal principle of teamwork and camaraderie.
The seven samurai come from different backgrounds. Each one has a distinct temperament and personality. One is a war-weary veteran, another a prankster, another a naïve young apprentice. They argue, joke, and occasionally butt heads. But when the bandits attack, they fight as one.
Heihachi, the humble woodchopping samurai, makes a banner for this ragtag group. It consists of six circles and one triangle. The triangle represents the non-samurai, Kikuchiyo ; the six circles represent the actual samurai on the team. It was a symbol of their unity.
You can’t win life’s battles alone. The trick is finding the right men to stand beside you and being the kind of man they can count on.
And what’s interesting is that as you make others strong, you make yourself strong. As Kambei puts it, “By protecting others, you save yourself. If you only think of yourself, you’ll only destroy yourself.”
Vales, valeo.
5. Honor Is Earned
Kikuchiyo, the film’s comic relief and erratic trickster, is a fraud. He carries a fake samurai pedigree, hiding the fact that he’s the son of lowly farmers — the very people the samurai are hired to protect.
But he desperately wants to be a samurai. He wants to prove himself worthy of honor in a world that says he can’t have it. Kambei sees the unbridled thumos in Kikuchiyo and, instead of rejecting him for not being a true samurai, brings him into his fold to help direct that energy toward something bigger than himself. By the end, Kikuchiyo earns his spurs, so to speak, by living the code of the samurai. He dies defending the village, becoming the samurai he so desperately wanted to be. Rather than letting his past define his life, he creates his legacy through his noble actions.
6. Keep Your Sense of Humor (Especially Under Strain)
One of the things you’ll notice throughout the film is that even in the most stressful moments, the samurai are laughing. Humor was an important part of maintaining morale.
Heihachi, the woodchopping samurai, is typically the source of that laughter. He isn’t the strongest fighter, but he’s indispensable. When everyone is grim-faced and exhausted, he cracks a joke or hums a tune to boost everyone’s spirits.
When you’re staring down impossible odds, a little levity can save your sanity. Nietzsche famously said that the spirit of gravity, of taking things too seriously, can hobble your ability to act nobly. Strength without levity is fragile and stiff. Humor makes you more flexible. Laughter elevates.
7. Live for Honor and Purpose, Not for Reward
At the film’s end, though the villagers are safe, four samurai have fallen. Kambei looks at their graves and says quietly, “This is the nature of our trade. We always lose.”
The samurai fought not for glory but for honor. They were tragic heroes. They fought even when they knew they’d inevitably incur casualties.
In a world that measures everything by return on investment, Seven Samurai shows us that some things are worth doing simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Final Reflections
Weeks after seeing this film, I still catch myself thinking about Kambei rubbing his shaved head or Kyūzō silently taking care of business. And it makes me want to be more disciplined, more humble, more useful.
I can see why Kurosawa’s story has been copied so many times. It’s about sacrifice, teamwork, and redemption. The samurai fight and die for people who can’t pay them or do anything else for them. They do good because it is good. It’s an ennobling film.
So if you haven’t seen Seven Samurai, make time for it. It’s long and slow by modern standards, but absolutely worth it. You’ll walk away wanting to be a better man.
For us it was a family affair, I served, my brother did, Dad, Granddad, and so forth, I had relatives on both sides of the "war between the States", I could trace my lineage all the way to when my family settled Ga with "James Oglethorpe", but I think we were there for stealing bread or something... I recall when I was "knee High to a Grasshopper " and I was talking to my Great Aunt Dora whom was the family historian, member of " The Daughters of the Confederacy" and I asked her while she was talking about the history of our family and I commented because even back then I was a history nut, I asked"were we the guards or the debtors" She replied in the most haughty southern genteel voice possible "We don't discuss such matters". Well I guess that answered that one, LOL One of my Grandfathers later became a judge, but paid for his law school training by running shine in middle GA. I know, I saw the car and noticed the spigots in the trunk of the plain brown plymouth with poverty caps when I crawled under it to chase my baseball and I asked my dad"Why did Grand papa's car have water spouts in the trunk?" My Dad commented "I will tell you when you were older." and he did. Dang, LOL
This day was created originally as "Armistice Day" after the "War to end All Wars" and people wanted to honor the veterans from that conflict. The Day was set as 11/11/11/11th. Or November which is the 11 month, the 11 day, the 11th hour and the 11th minute. The day was called "Armistice Day" until after WWII, it then was called "Veterans Day."
There are 3 holidays that honor the United States Armed forces, We have Armed Forces Day that honors those that are serving We have Memorial Day that honors those that died in service or those of us that crossed over to Valhalla or Fiddlers Green.
And Veterans Day to me traces its lineage to those of us that stood watch on the borders of our civilization since the days of the Romans standing watch on the Danube to guard the frontier so those of our people could sleep secure at night knowing that they were safe from the bad people. Veterans like me and those like me presented a blank check to Uncle Sam to write in any amount including our lives if necessary. We mustered out but we know many of us that didn't make it to this stage and that is where Memorial Day comes in and Veterans day honors those of us that did make it and this day honors us and those like us. It is a unique category because the veterans in our society is a small segment like a warrior class and Veterans tend to come from family traditions, meaning that it is a father son, uncle cousins nieces, Aunts, moms kinda thing. This Day humbles me to a great degree because of what it means and I will honor those of us that crossed beyond. Our job as Veterans is to ensure that the traditions are not forgotten and passed on to the next generations.
Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and I could have ran with "Lee Greenwood "God Bless The U.S.A." but to me "Paint it Black"was more appropriate. Partially with the music video that I use. I have more of a tie in with the older veterans than the younger veterans, we 80's and early 90's veterans learned our lessons from the people that went to the Southeast Asia War games as they called it and came in second. We took the lessons that they paid in blood, sweat and tears and forged a machine that crushed the 4th largest military in the world.
Vietnam was a taboo subject for a while the wounds that the conflict left on the American Psyche was deep. We had won the battles but lost the war because we as a nation had lost the will to fight it thanks to the media and the hippies and the antiwar movement that was funded by the communist party and liberal donors. it took several years before Vietnam could be discussed outside of the veterans. My Dad was a Vietnam Veteran, he did a tour in 1968 and dealt with the tunnels of Cu-Chi and the Tet Offensive, then he returned in 1972 for a second tour. For a while especially in the 1970's, the Vietnam vet was portrayed as crazy or dangerous. The specter of Vietnam dogged every use of the Military or any support during the 1980's, from Grenada, to Beirut, to Honduras and Nicaragua. The Ghost of Vietnam were finally laid to rest during Desert Storm.
I decided to roll with "Paint it black" It is a Rolling Stone song that was used in the opening credits of a TV series that we GI's watched in the barracks. We liked the realism, the attention to detail, they had used Vietnam veterans as advisers to ensure the realism and gritty reality...for 80's TV anyway. When the show came on, the dayroom was full as everybody clustered around the AFN broadcast of the show. This song is the only song by the Rolling Stones that I really liked.....We would cheer when the soldiers would shoot up Charlie and the firefights. The interplay of the people was very well done, we liked the way the new LT played by Stephen Caffrey was mentored by the platoon sergeant played by Terrance Knox. All the other guys also played well on each other and at the end of the video, it showed the 3 soldiers standing at attention and saluting the flag on TV at the end of the broadcast day....when they played the national Anthem. That was telling for me. The simple patriotism showed represented the beliefs of the Veterans in their country..
"Paint It Black" is a song recorded in 1966 by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. A product of the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it is a raga rock song with Indian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European influences and lyrics about grief and loss. London Records released the song as a single on 7 May 1966 in the United States, and Decca Records released it on 13 May in the United Kingdom. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath, though it is not on the original UK release.
Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, all five members of the band contributed to the final arrangement, although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. In contrast to previous Rolling Stones singles with straightforward rock arrangements, "Paint It Black" has unconventional instrumentation including a prominent sitar, the Hammond organ, and castanets. This instrumental experimentation matches other songs on Aftermath. The song was influential to the burgeoning psychedelic genre as the first chart-topping single to feature the sitar, and widened the instrument's audience. Reviews of the song at the time were mixed and some music critics believed its use of the sitar was an attempt to copy the Beatles, and others criticized its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential.
"Paint It Black" was a major chart success for the Rolling Stones, at eleven weeks (including two at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including one atop the chart) on the Record Retailer chart in the UK. Upon a re-issue in 2007, it reentered the UK Singles Chart for 11 weeks. It was the band's third number-one single in the US and sixth in the UK. The song also topped charts in Canada and the Netherlands. It received a platinum certification in the UK from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and from Italy's Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI).
In 1965, popularity of the Rolling Stones increased markedly with a series of international hit singles written by lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards.While 1964 saw the band reach the top of both the albums and singles charts in their native United Kingdom, other bands from Britain dominated the American market, such as the Beatles. In 1965, the Stones crossed over to the American Market with their first number one single, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", and first number one album Out of Our Heads. That year also saw the Stones reach the top of the charts for the first time in countries such as Finland, Germany, and South Africa.
This success attracted the attention of Allen Klein, an American businessman who became their US representative in August while Andrew Loog Oldham, the group's manager, continued in the role of promoter and record producer.[4] One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars. Their October–December 1965 tour of North America was the group's fourth and largest tour there up to that point.According to the biographer Victor Bockris, through Klein's involvement, the concerts afforded the band "more publicity, more protection and higher fees than ever before".
By this time, the Rolling Stones had begun to respond to the increasingly sophisticated music of the Beatles, in comparison to whom they had long been promoted by Oldham as a rougher alternative.With the success of the Jagger-Richards-penned singles "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) and "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966), the band increasingly rivalled the musical and cultural influence of the Beatles, and began to be identified as one of the major pillars of the British Invasion. The Stones' outspoken, surly attitude on songs like "Satisfaction" alienated the Establishment detractors of rock music, which music historian Colin King explains, "only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world – an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on".
"Paint It Black" came at a pivotal period in the band's recording history. The Jagger/Richards songwriting collaboration had begun producing more original material for the band over the past year, with the early model of Stones albums featuring only a few Jagger-Richards compositions having been replaced by that of albums such as Out of Our Heads and December's Children (and Everybody's), each of which consisted of half original tracks and half cover songs. This trend culminated in the sessions for Aftermath (1966) where, for the first time, the duo penned every track on the album. Brian Jones, originally the band's founder and leader over the first few years of its existence, began feeling overshadowed by the prominence of Jagger and Richards' contributions to the group.
Despite having contributed to early songs by the Stones via the Nanker Phelge pseudonym, Jones had less and less influence over the group's direction as their popularity grew primarily as a result of original Jagger-Richards singles. Jones grew bored attempting to write songs, and with conventional guitar melodies. To alleviate his boredom, he begun exploring Eastern instruments, specifically the Indian sitar, with a goal to bolstering the musical texture and complexity of the band's sound. A multi-instrumentalist, Jones could develop a tune on the sitar in a short time; he had a background with the instrument largely from his studies under Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar.
Over 1965, the sitar had become a more and more prominent instrument in the landscape of british rock. The Yardbirds had attempted to record "Heart Full of Soul" with the sitar as part of the arrangement in April, however they had run into problems getting the instrument to "cut through" the mix, and the session musician responsible for playing the instrument had trouble staying within the 4/4 time signature of the song. Ultimately, the final version of "Heart Full of Soul" featured a fuzz guitar in place of the sitar, although the song's distinctively Indian timbre remained. Following similar Indian-influenced experimentation by the Kinks on "See My Friends" that nonetheless still used guitar as the primary instrument, the first British band to release a recording featuring the sitar was the Beatles, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" released that December on the album Rubber Soul. Following a discussion with the Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison, who had recently played the sitar on the sessions for "Norwegian Wood" in October 1965, Jones began devoting more time to the sitar, and began arranging basic melodies with the instrument. One of these melodies morphed over time into the tune featured in "Paint It Black"
Initial reaction to "Paint It Black" was mixed. Some music critics found the addition of the sitar to be simply a case of the band copying the Beatles.n his book Brian Jones: The Making of the Rolling Stones, Paul Trynka comments on the influence of Harrison's sitar playing on the Beatles' song "Norwegian Wood" from the Rubber Soul album and draws parallels with Jones' droning sitar melody on "Paint It Black". Responding to claims that he was imitating the Beatles, Jones replied: "What utter rubbish", comparing the argument to saying that all groups using a guitar copy each other merely by using the instrument. Jonathan Bellman, an American musicologist, agreed with Jones, writing in a 1997 issue of The Journal of Musicology that the events are an example of concurrent musical and instrumental experimentation. Jones' sitar part on the track influenced the development of a whole subgenre of minor-key psychedelic music.
Lindy Shannon of the La Crosse Tribune felt "Paint It Black", the Byrds' "Eight Miles High" and the Beatles' "Rain" were straying from the "commercial field" and instead "going into a sort of distorted area of unpleasant sounds". Staff at Melody Maker lauded the track, calling it "a glorious Indian raga-riot that will send the Stones back to number one".Writing for Disc and Music Echo, Penny Valentine praised Jagger's singing, writing that it was "better than ever" but was critical of the track's sitar Guitar Player's Jesse Gress cited "Paint It Black" as originating the 1960s ragarock craze.In a review for New Musical Express (NME), Keith Altham considered "Paint It Black" the band's best single since "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" was released the previous year. A reviewer for Billboard predicted that Aftermath would become another hit for the band, citing "Paint It Black" as the focal point of this hard rock album and praising Oldham's production. The Herald News considered the song a "top record... for teeners", and in The Sunday Press Nancy Brown described it as a "pulsating, blues-soaked romantic tear-jerker".In the San Francisco Examiner, Ralph J. Gleason lauded the song for its "hypnotizing tone" and "same qualities of ambiguity and obscurity as some of the previous Stones hits". In April 1967, while hosting the television documentary Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution, Leonard Bernstein praised the song for its "arab café" sound, and cited it as an example of contemporary pop music's ability to evoke disparate moods through instrumentation.
In a retrospective review, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called the song an "eerily insistent" classic that features some of "the best use of sitar on a rock record", and in another AllMusic review wrote it is "perhaps the most effective use of the Indian instrument in a rock song". Writing on the song's 50th anniversary in 2016, Dave Swanson of Ultimate Classic Rock considered the song, like its parent album Aftermath, to be a major turning point in artistic evolution for the band, noting: "'Paint It, Black' wasn't just another song by just another rock group; it was an explosion of ideas presented in one neat three-minute package." In 2017, ranking Aftermath as one of the best albums of the 1960s, Judy Berman of Pitchfork described the song as "rock's most nihilistic hit to date".vid Palmer, editor of the Cullman Times, wrote that the "attitude" songs on Aftermath – particularly "Paint It Black" – influenced the nihilistic outlook of punk music. Stereogum critic Tom Breihan praised the song as a strong example of the band's brand of "swirling doom-blues", and praised its heavy sound and dark lyrics as ahead of its time when compared to the landscape of popular music in 1966.
