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2·1 year agoIf you’re interested in what this guy is actually saying, vs. what people say that he’s saying, there are a pair of fascinating videos on his channel from before and after the song went viral.
A couple of thoughts I’ve had:
- He is smart AF. This guy isn’t a dumb bigot hopped up on MAGA propaganda. He may have partway fallen for some of it, but that’s why they spend billions of dollars on propaganda: it works.
- The pain and disillusionment he’s making music about are real. It’s stuff that’s happening to him and his loved ones. He’s not a rich, made-for-Nashville country music star.
- He’s definitely absorbed some conservative propaganda, but he also sees through a lot of their BS.
- He goes into the “wellfare” line a bit, and for him it’s about the cycle of government dependence and how people feel trapped by some social programs. I think with a little more perspective he’d be singing about food deserts and how hard it is to eat fresh vegetables when your grocery store is a dollar tree.
- There was a line about “normalizing pedophilia” which makes me think he’s fallen for some of the anti-lgbt+ propaganda from the GOP. I really hope that’s not the case.
- He definitely says the people on the GOP primary stage were who he was singing about in the song, not “populist saviors”.
- I think he’s halfway to realizing that it’s not really a culture war. It’s a class war, and people like him are losing.
When you’re too racist even for black Republicans, you know you screwed up.
Republicans do not care what people like you think, because you are “socialists” trying to “destroy America”.
Biden says he is pro union but time and again backs management over labor.
I disagree, I think Biden has been the most pro-union and pro-labor President in my lifetime, by far. That article is a year out of date, and the Biden admin has kept it up since then. If they’d gotten BBB passed, we’d be in New Deal 2.0 territory. And that’s in two years.
I disagree. I don’t think Biden is cordial at all, I think he’s realistic and knows how to get stuff done. Look at the debt ceiling negotiations - Biden wasn’t cordial to McCarthy. He knew the GOP had the leverage to get something out of it, and negotiated with them to make sure they got the least he could manage. He said he would work with them, but he called McCarthy and the rest of them out on their BS multiple times. O’Bama on the other hand, I thought let the GOP get away with way too much, and was way too conciliatory to them. At the time it was debatably the right strategy, but we see how it played out in hindsight.
The democrats have had 15 years to get ANYTHING done on guns, climate change, health care, and student loans and they didn’t do jack shit.
If you ignore everything the Democrats have in fact done on those topics, then sure, they haven’t gotten ANYTHING done.
The thing is, I think with just a tiny shift in perspective, that part of the song becomes about food deserts, and how social programs are often designed to keep people in the system, not help them get out of it.