I don’t wanna judge this guy yet. He could mean well. The song has a great message until it doesn’t.
“They want to know what you do and think!”
Yeah fuck the man!
“Fat people on welfare shouldn’t be eating fudge!”
…what?
But he seems young, kinda wholesomely uneducated, passionate, and genuinely has a good voice/can play pretty well.
I’m not surprised conservatives latched on.
I’m glad to see he’s shaking them off.
The songs ok, but that lyric seems to defeat the purpose. Hopefully his future hits do a better job keeping his message clear and consistent. Hopefully that message is “eat the rich” and not “starve the poor”.
If you aren’t exposed to certain issues you may not know how serious they are, or even that they exist. I grew up in a small town in NC, and you would not believe the amount of genuinely good, compassionate, empathetic people that held really shitty beliefs because that’s what their parents and others they trusted tell them.
I had friends on snap benefits that would complain about “welfare queens” (read, young black mothers).
It’s important to realize that many of these people aren’t evil, they are a victim of their circumstance as much as anyone else. They were taught to be hateful, and while it’s not your responsibility to unteach them, if your decide to take that on, and they are open and willing to learn about how others struggle, and what they can do to help, you very quickly see that their naivete actually is pretty wholesome.
They were just lied to by the folks they should have been able to trust, and that cycle can go on for generations.
Hopefully that message is “eat the rich” and not “starve the poor”.
I wouldn’t go holding my breath. He’s pretty clearly on the ignorant conservative train, he just happens to maybe be a little less racist than most of them.
I’ve watched a few of his non music videos to see if I sniff it out and I don’t catch a bad vibe from him beyond that lyric.
I think the general issue with Conservatism as a modern ideology is that it only spreads through uneducated crowds. We can’t blame people for the bad education they got.
He talks about the pure joy he’s getting out of people enjoying his content. He even deliberately tried to deliver a message of inclusivity to ward off the conservative crowd from making him their mascot.
Getting overnight fame is hard and I hope he handles it well and in a way that enables him to share his talents for good.
Good on you for recognizing that this man could have a good heart and be a possible ally. The 2016 era has made us jump to conclusions immediately and shun anyone who seems sympathetic to conservatives. I get that and fully understand it, I do the same.
But the problem is that doing so pushes people in the middle towards conservatives. We can say his welfare lyrics are unacceptable without making him into a total pariah. He holds a lot of similar beliefs to us, and I bet you could sway him over a beer. He’s not a stubborn and hateful conservative, he’s a misguided moderate. We only create more enemies by our own hand if we shun everyone.
I’m inclined to think that his comments on diversity here are indicative of him rejecting a conservative idol position.
