Fuck this bible thumpin reactionary hillbilly dork.
“But he goes after both sides!”
No, He punches down on poor people. Fuck off with that.
How do you punch down on poor people when you are living in a camper? His song is #1 on iTunes in the US/UK/Australia, #2 in Ireland and Canada. But it certainly couldn’t be because it resonates truth for the masses. No, it is because he is punching down on the poor and you are so smart to have figured it out. The few negative opinions I have seen about this song have been from people it is calling out. Tool.
Having something resonate with a bunch of people, and saying something true isn’t always the same thing. You can say a bunch of dumb bullshit about society that resonates with people but isn’t really true, just like how he does. You have just fallen for the grift. Get his dick out of your mouth.
Did you know that iTunes play counts are hidden and he has pitiful numbers on Spotify? He’s not popular. He’s being astroturfed by fascist propaganda channels. He’s the Sound of Freedom if it was a backwoods white supremacist hick.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this song. And it is a real feeling that people have.
But it is also just whining.
The way he goes from talking about people without anything to eat and then talks about how someone that poor and fat shouldn’t eat a fudge round just seems to be a confused message.
Is big government the problem? Or is it lack of corporate regulations that then allow big companies to pay people less than what they need to survive.
Washington can do things to fix what he is talking about, but I would be shocked if he is interested in any policy that helps poor people or people drowning in student or medical debt.
I think he’s talking about people that have deliberately gotten themselves so fat that they get a disability check from the government for it. I definitely have a problem with where he’s placing the blame, but he’s talking about what he sees around him.
I’m from an area similar to him, and the number of people trying to line themselves up for government assistance as their career is substantial. I think it speaks to the hopelessness of the area we live in these days, on top of generational poverty. Things have always been bad around here, but they got a lot worse after mining, and its supporting industries fell apart.
It’s the worst of both worlds. They regulate away our right to unionize and strike.
Fat shaming, welfare queening, both sidsing, slack jawed backwater hick bullshit. I grew up around dipshits just like him. 1, they’re hypocrites that live off the system and haven’t been able to see their own cock without the assistance of a mirror in 15 years but because they’re white it’s ok. 2, Their “color blindness” and concern trolling falls away behind closed doors. It’s empty platitudes and surface level enlightened centrist garbage and nothing more. He doesn’t mean a word of what he’s singing and the people that “resonate” with it don’t either. It’s just 4 minutes of dog-whistling and right wing propaganda.
Their “color blindness” and concern trolling falls away behind closed doors. It’s empty platitudes and surface level enlightened centrist garbage and nothing more.
Color blindness itself is basically a way to decouple yourself from the political economy you are a subject of, which is in no way “color blind” and has more or less created these system of classification. I don’t even subscribe to DiAngelo’s individualist notions of “white fragility,” I think they can even serve to reify the notion of race, but people saying they’re color blind is such a dismissal to address the world around you.
If you want the truth instead of the myth being pushed by the fascists who are astroturfing this guy all over social media, you can watch this video. It’s long, but there’s a ton of evidence in the first 10 minutes.
Living in a camper…off the grid on 90 acres of land that he owns and plans to build a farmhouse and raise livestock on. Working class my ass…
He bought it, yes, but technically the bank owns it yet. IIRC he says he owes $60K on it, and he’s paying it off. Very common practice.
With this debt, and working a standard job, he doesn’t have the means to raise livestock atm. So yes, he’s planning to, someday.
How do you punch down on poor people when you are living in a camper?
You can totally hate on poor people while being poor yourself. I’ve seen it loads of times. The mentality is “I deserve welfare, but those people don’t! They’re cheating the system!”
The few negative opinions I have seen about this song have been from people it is calling out.
Short, fat people?
Most of the lyrics are benign and he has plenty of musical talent. But the lyrics that comment on politics are just incredibly brain dead, I don’t know what else to tell you. It is proposing welfare recipients as the reason for poverty, but what percentage of tax returns go to welfare? Obviously like, nothing. Additionally his own region of the country has some of the highest rates of welfare recipiency and if that was cut off does he really think that would improve anything?
I think the reason it leaves so many people with a bad taste in their mouths is because clearly a bait and switch is being performed. The first part draws your attention to the issues the singer is experiencing in his life such as low pay, then in the middle he goes on to talk about the “Rich men North of Richmond-” which if that is in reference to DC politicians then fair enough- in addition to welfare recipients as if those two things are related. He is just running defence for the wealthy by trying to distract people from the problems downstream from general extreme wealth inequality by trying to convince us fat people buying candy is causing everyone’s problems. Not to mention the humour there is in seeing someone that looks pretty severely overweight themselves calling out other fat people (much like how he is an apparent working class man going after over working class people.)
In my opinion the purpose of the song is just to turn poor people against each other so we won’t get any ideas about taxing the rich or anything like that. This is probably be reason why lovely people like Matt Walsh were early promoters of the song.
The name of the song itself is a huuuuuggggge dog whistle, imo. Tells me everything I need to know about the target demographic.
How is that? I’d honestly like to know. It raises my hackles, but i can’t really explain why.
“Rich men north of Richmond”… I’m not american, so maybe that’s why i don’t quite get it
Probably has something to do with the Mason Dixon line (civil war border) and Richmond being the northernmost city of the South.
Kinda weird when your song talking shit about politicians contains an explicit reference to the folks you’re talking about being north of the capital of the Confederacy.
Dude is a full blown nazi, his YouTube channel had (possibly still has) a playlist of videos titled something like “videos to make ya think”, including stuff about the dancing Israelis conspiracy theory.
Anyone have the numbers of social welfare spending vs corporate welfare spending for a recent year? Say 2020-2022? I can’t find it.
I’m too lazy to look up the numbers, but I think the premise of this argument is rather weak.
Money spend on social welfare, vastly improves poor people’s lives. When you spend it on corporate welfare, the money tends to go into the pockets of people who are already pretty comfortable.
This is a simplification of a multifaceted issue, but by and large I think this holds a lot more water than just comparing numbers.
Also: There was a pandemic in the time period given, so there might be some selection bias.
Means testing is something that wastes a lot of public welfare funds and is usually a tool utilized by those who want to cut programs as an example of welfares inability to work. If we got rid of means testing then corporate welfare would be shown for how truly useless it is. I’m not arguing with you or anything, just adding some more detail to the topic
He’s a Jewish conspiracy level Nazi.
And unfortunately he’s also a pretty damn good singer.
Like my hackles were up the whole time I was listening to the song because I knew this is some sort of like Republican redneck protest song against the liberals, but at the same time I had to admit the guy can fucking sing and it was a good song.
We really need to step up our protest song game.
AJJ aka Andrew Jackson Jihad has been around making protest songs for awhile.
I love AJJ, they are a mainstay on my playlists. Their songs are good to great in the lyrics department. But musically they’re not super amazing. Their lead singer also has not a great singing voice. I don’t think any of their songs could be called “catchy” - and none of them are going to get the attention this guy’s song did, and a big part of that is their songs aren’t as good - again, simply from a music standpoint.
I feel like I should be happy to not recognize this person.
