• rebul@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • ssboomman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Raise_a_glass@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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.

          • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And so is the corporate music machine that markets this excuse for a protest song, it’s just another culture war debate masquerading as politics.

      • taigaman@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Cleverdawny@lemm.eeOP
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          1 year ago

          I doubt there’s more than five people who have deliberately gotten themselves into disability by getting themselves fat. It’s incredibly hard to get onto disability and “I am fat” doesn’t cut it, you have to be able to not move to have even a chance

          • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 year ago

            My mother is clinically diagnosed with a psychological disorder that caused hallucinations, anxiety and delusion. She tried to get disability for 30 years. She never got it even though she was institutionalized multiple times

            • Cleverdawny@lemm.eeOP
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              1 year ago

              Yeah. My brother in law has severe physical and mental disabilities which makes him unable to work at all and he can’t get on. Been trying for a decade and a half. It’s like these people think you can send a letter to the government saying “I am fat and lazy” and you’ll get money.

        • stoneparchment@possumpat.io
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          1 year ago

          You said it yourself-- the reason those people need to make weird choices like trying to find any way to qualify for more government assistance is because historically their income came from industries that don’t and can’t exist anymore. They don’t have any other choice. The solution is actually more availability of assistance resources so people from those places can have enough stability to be able to make choices like learning new skills or moving to a new place. Why can’t people like him-- who see this happening to the people around him, his neighbors, his family-- empathize?

        • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          No one has “deliberately” gotten morbidly obese.

          I’m not absolving anyone of all personal responsibility for their body and what they put in it, but you should read about food deserts and similar. Many folks in this country ONLY have access to a McDonald’s and a gas station snack aisle.

    • BarrelAgedBoredom@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • banneryear1868@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Sunforged@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Aw yes because punching down never resonates with the masses. We’ve never elected politicians who distract from real issues by blaming poor people who don’t use them bootstraps…

    • seitanic@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 year ago

      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?

    • Aaliyah1@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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…

      • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Aaliyah1@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          What does this even prove? If I take out a mortgage to buy a house, the bank “technically owns” my house. Does this make me not middle class?

          • CoffeeJunkie@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Well, I don’t really care for the subtle, haughty undertones in your initial statements & acting like he’s some super well-off dude that has no problems. “off the grid on 90 acres that he owns”. He’s working on owning it, he wants to own land…and he’s going about it in a modest way.

            But oh my god , he’s planning to do stuff on that land. Eventually. He plans to build a farmhouse & raise livestock. The sheer audacity of these life goals. That he doesn’t have cash money for, but is working towards.

            Something tells me a house he builds is probably pretty different from a house you would build. It doesn’t have to be some crazy-ass expensive mansion.

            You then casually dismiss this man by saying “working class, my ass”. He’s gone through his past, IIRC a lot of warehouse/industrial work. He dropped out of high school, got his GED. I think that pretty much fits into the definition of working class. It does get a little more hairy when exploring what is middle class, because it does mention “owning land”. Okay. But there’s also emphasis on education & white collar professions…that’s not this guy at all.

            And maybe his dreams of owning land, building a home, and raising livestock are the main cause of his suffering. Life is exponentially harder for him because he is actively striving for life improvement, not living in a tiny box & watching Netflix on the couch.

            I think that’s the main source of his frustration that shines in his song, he’s working hard & then what little he makes is “taxed to no end”. The system makes it so hard for average, ordinary people to get ahead and actually do something of value with their lives.

            • Aaliyah1@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              Hahaha haughty? “The poor renter looking down on the middle class landowner.” Lol, what the fuck are you talking about.

              Tell me, have you ever lived in a rural area? Or been a farmworker? Because I really honestly can’t tell if I’m dealing with city folk who equate farmer who owns land with farmer who does farm work, or if I’m dealing with middle class folk who don’t understand the privilege of owning property, even if “the bank technically owns it.”

              Something tells me a house he builds is probably pretty different from a house you would build.

              Brave of you to assume I could even consider building a house anywhere, much less buying one.

              And yeah I really don’t give a shit about his past or education. Is Jay-z working class because he grew up in the Marcy projects? Is Richard Branson working class because he left school at 16?

              Life is exponentially harder for him because he is actively striving for life improvement, not living in a tiny box & watching Netflix on the couch.

              This tells me everything I need to know about you. “Average and ordinary” for you and “average and ordinary” for me mean completely different things. Have you ever talked to an actual poor person?

    • Rambi@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

    • Agent_of_Kayos@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, because a group of people have never rallied up for something they believed is true but isn’t…wait…