• SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Centrist” aka “I’ll still vote for racist fascist misogynists instead of anyone else”. Fuck off!

    P.S. And he thinks welfare is a problem like some blubbering Reganite reject.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      1 year ago

      Really, I think centrist normally just means totally uninformed. They’ve buried their head in the sand so they don’t realize what’s wrong.

      • TheJims@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Centrist means you’re too embarrassed to admit you’re a republican.

        • Skelectrician@lemmynsfw.com
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          1 year ago

          You know, some people have some sort of nuanced opinions instead of just picking a colour. Maybe if everything weren’t such a fucking battle between the 51% and the 49%, maybe you wouldn’t end up with the least capable candidates from either side.

          • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            Sure. I have a more nuanced opinion too. The fact is that we have two conservative parties, but there’s a lot of good options to the left. A centrist (in the US) has seen everything that’s been done by the conservatives and still somehow isn’t further left (or right if you agree with the crazy shit) of our conservative parties. There’s plenty of nuance to be had, but it isn’t in the center of the two parties.

          • lingh0e@lemmy.film
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            1 year ago

            I know people who only admit to voting Republican because they make enough money to have a vested interest in Republican tax cuts. Get a couple glasses of wine into those people and they’ll start exposing their “nuanced opinions” like how much they hate the gays.

            If your nuanced opinions still motivate you to vote republican, you’re still a piece of shit.

    • rbesfe@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      When did he say he votes republican? And I think his criticism of welfare is that it’s run inefficiently, not that it should be abolished

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lol you must be one of those vote blue no matter who types. You’re anyone else is always a dem isn’t it? And if someone votes anything else than blue or red, they’re throwing away their vote right?

      • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        You’re the one who is blinded by ideology.

        The GOP in the US literally tried to overthrow the Constitution in 2020, and hasn’t said they won’t do it in 2024.

        If the choice is between the Dems and some magical third party who is going to pop up out of nowhere, hell yes I’m voting Blue no matter who.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yea… I’m the one that’s blinded, while you literally just said you will blindly vote blue.

          • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The Left had four years to put Bernie on the ballot. I contributed to him myself. We’re heading into 2024 and the GOP’s top candidate is still Trump. Who is your alternative to Biden?

            • 4lan@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Bring us a rational Republican and we’d have a choice to make. As of now it’s democracy vs fascism. Easy choice

              Go ahead and get froggy in 2024, FAFO if you must

              • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Last ‘rational Republican’ candidate was Eisenhower, and he was considered too Left for Bill Buckley, who championed Reagan.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              At this point, trump and biden should be disqualified for just their age. They’re dinosaurs, vote wise, Presidential voting doesn’t matter as much as local and state does. I’ve tried to vote independent as much as I can, and vote for someone that at least hits 50% of what I believe is needed. Dems do make the pass sometimes but other times I don’t feel comfortable voting for any candidates.

              Also Bernie got Ron Pauled by the Dems. Dude should definitely been the one put up against trump

      • yata@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        And if someone votes anything else than blue or red, they’re throwing away their vote right?

        As long as the US election system is the way that it is, then yes it is an undisputed fact that voting for third party is the same as throwing your vote away. It is a shitty system and it is in desperate need for a change, but it doesn’t make it less true.

        • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It’s worse than throwing your vote away. It’s a shadow vote for the most popular candidate who is most diametrically opposite from your views, in that it is taking a potential vote away from the most popular candidate who is closer than them. It’s letting perfect get in the way of better.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          And I’ll continue to vote 3rd party. My conscious is clear. The system is broken but I’m not feeding into it. Red and blue teams are burning the US to the ground. Hell the tribalism for the blue team just in this post is insane.

          • kescusay@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            You’re absolutely feeding into it, by depriving yourself entirely of a voice in elections. If you’re consistently voting 3rd party, that has exactly the same impact on who gets elected as dropping your ballots in the trash can instead of the ballot box.

            In your quest for ideological purity, you’ve achieved irrelevancy.

            • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Which is fine by me. I’d rather know I didn’t contribute to the mess everyone else is making.

              • kescusay@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                That’s…

                Okay, I’m not going to beat around the bush. That’s stupid, selfish, and morally repugnant. You’re hurting the most vulnerable among us so you can pretend to meet some lofty ideal of political purity.

                I don’t have that luxury. You see, I have kids, and they have to grow up in whatever world we leave them. On top of that, my son is trans and my daughter is gay, so I have to vote pragmatically to protect their rights.

                Realistically, you know the next president is going to be a Democrat or a Republican. Other party candidates have a 0% chance of winning. Out of those party choices, which ones are currently pushing horrifying lies about people like my kids? I can pick the party that would literally murder them if they could get away with it… Or I can pick the party that wouldn’t.

                If I go your route, I’m silencing my ability to use my voice in the interests of my own children. Why would I do that?

                And why would you?

                • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  This is why I stated you vote in local elections. They mean way more than on the presidential scale. And until the electoral college is removed. You’re vote means fuck all as well. It’s why Trump was elected in the first place.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m pretty sure this guy is not a Democrat just because he talks about diversity. I don’t know many anti-welfare Democrats who talk about fat welfare queens. That’s pretty antithetical to the sort of things the party wants and very on-point for Republicans.

      • sndmn@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        You must be one of those idiots that make baseless assumptions.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The distinguishing mark of so-called “conservatives” in the US is not, in fact, conservatism — that is, a desire to cherish and protect the good in their society.

    Rather, it is betrayal.

    They are not conservatives, but rather traitors — betrayers. They betray their faith, placing Trump ahead of Jesus. They betray their country, placing Putin ahead of Washington. They betray their species, placing oil companies ahead of humanity.

    Conservatism can only be redeemed by embracing the actual good of our actual society. You can only conserve that which really exists. That includes the “melting pot” of multiculturalism.

    • comedy@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It would be cool if they were all about conserving wildlife, natural features, forests, clean air, and clean water. Or the rights to vote and have privacy.

      But no, they just want to conserve the power of a small group at the expense of everyone else.

    • FishLake@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Imagine a pretend political ideology called cleavism. Given its name you say it’s all about cleaving the good in society from the bad, whatever the hell that means. But there are so-called “cleavists” out there who insist cleavism is about joining the bad and the good together. What gives? Well, in practice cleavism has little to do with the two opposing definitions of “to cleave” (“to split” and “to join”). It’s really just named after some guy with the surname Cleaver or something.

      Political ideologies aren’t medical diagnoses. You can’t derive their meaning like you can with atrial arrhythmic induced tachycardia cardiomyopathy. If you try this naive etymology out on anarchism then you’ll reduce that ideology to nothing more than a non-substantive, meaningless, circular definition. Conservatives conserve. Liberals liberate. Socialists socialize. See? Meaningless.

      Unfortunately for the entire world, conservatism has never been about “protecting the good in society.” That’s just a vapid and empty wish for what you want conservatism to mean. You’d be hard pressed to find any reputable political science text that would trivialize one of the most dominate ideologies of the past two centuries like this. Let alone claim there is some inherent goodwill baked into the ideology.

    • MorgoFett@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I feel that’s every internet article in today’s news dystopia. Clickbait headlong, taking you to a site that gives your device more cancer than a Gawker media site, where the actual tweet doesn’t even load.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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”.

      • pyromaster55@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Brawler Yukon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          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.

          • pyromaster55@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Exactly this. My hard right coworker showed me this song because i complain regularly about modern conservative country, and how the old-schools of country (Cash, Hank senior, Woody Guthrie, etc) knew the struggle of the working man and would not be modern republicans. He made me listen to it thinking it was a gotcha “what do you think about this guy” and I listend a few times, read the lyrics, and my man has 2 bad lines in the song, based on the lyrics he’d be fighting for stronger social safety nets and equal rights for all after a single night in the bar with a lefty.

            • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              I don’t think he even needs the night in a bar, he’s already there. He’s a blue collar guy from West Virginia turned to Country-Folk music and his music…well…it’s the music of the American Proletariat.

              He’s not the Conservatives Guy and never was, he just got thrust into the spotlight because DeSantis brought him up during the debates and that resulted in an unfortunate knee jerk reaction from Liberals looking for a reason to tear him down.

              We can toss around terms like “problematic” regarding his one line about welfare but denying the authenticity of everything else is foolish, it genuinely resonates with the American Working Class.

              Edit:

              Doubt me?

              Watch this.

              Or this.

              Or this.

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
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                1 year ago

                Nobody’s denying the “authenticity” of the song. It’s that it betrays a basic lack of understanding of the US and its problems.

                Like, he complains about high taxes. If he’s actually talking about working class / poor people, their taxes really aren’t very high. The US does have a progressive tax system and people near the bottom aren’t taxed that much. On the other hand, unlike most countries, the US also doesn’t have a good safety net to help the least fortunate out. Because of that, taxes might feel like an awful burden when you’re poor because you aren’t getting the benefits… and then he goes on to complain about welfare… the very benefits that poor people should demand.

                He (himself fat, if not obese) complains about obesity, and links it to welfare (also taking pot-shots at short people for some reason). It’s not like people on welfare are eating so incredibly well that they become obese. It’s that when you’re poor, the system in the US makes it hard to eat nutritious food. First of all, processed food is relatively cheap, and it doesn’t go bad, so it’s a smart thing to buy if you’re on a budget and catch it on sale. If you buy fruit and vegetables, they might go bad before you can use them. Many poor people also live in food deserts, so getting to the store to buy fresh food is very hard. If you’re only working a 9-5 job and have a reasonable commute, and can easily get to a grocery store, you can afford the time to do meal planning and cook for yourself. If you’re doing unpredictable shift work, and have to get around using unpredictable and slow public transit, and getting to a grocery store is an hour-long detour, it’s hard to avoid unhealthy food because you can’t count on being home to cook regular meals. Finding inexpensive but healthy food out in public is very hard.

                On the subject of welfare / food stamps and obesity, I read recently that people having their food stamp / SNAP funds stolen is very common because SNAP only uses a basic swipe card that’s easy to steal. Stealing people’s SNAP money is rarely investigated, and they don’t get their money back. For that reason, a lot of people on SNAP go to the store and spend all their SNAP money the moment they get it. If it’s all spent, it can’t be stolen. But, what can you buy that’s going to last you a month until your next payment? It isn’t fruits and veggies, it’s canned foods, processed foods, high-sugar foods, etc.

                So, yeah, he’s “authentic”, but he’s also misinformed about the world. He’s blaming welfare / welfare recipients as much as he’s blaming the “rich men north of Richmond”, when problem B is much, much more of an issue than problem A.

                • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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                  1 year ago

                  If he’s actually talking about working class / poor people, their taxes really aren’t very high.

                  When you’re working 60 hour weeks at $20 an hour to gross $4,800 a month but your take home pay $3,300 it feels pretty high.

                  …and then he goes on to complain about welfare…

                  He complains about welfare abuse, not welfare itself. It’s a key distinction.

                  …complains about obesity

                  I don’t hear it that way at all.

                  You’re also skipping over all of the other messages in the lyrics to hyperfocus on the one you disagree with so that you can dismiss the whole thing. Where are you on the mental health crisis, corrupt politicians, and holding the lower class down? Because those messages are ALSO in there.

      • holiday@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        If you listen to him talk in interviews it’s pretty clear he has empathy. Hopefully this starship to fame for him opens him up to different opinions/viewpoints.

  • MaxPow3r11@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    All these people know is hate.

    They can only support “their own” for so long before they start directing their hate and rage at each other.

    Cycles keep spinning.

  • TheJims@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    They’d like him better if they knew he fucked an ostrich. Bunch of fuckin’ degens.

  • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    "We are the melting pot of the world and that’s what makes us strong our diversity. And we need to learn to harness that and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from it.”

    Conservatives: No, that’s exactly the tool we’ve been talking about.

    It’s saddening and hurtful that overt racism is accepted and trendy in The United States of America. I genuinely don’t understand how the most foundational core component of this country is lost on so many people. The US was founded to escape persecution and oppression (as it persecuted and oppressed the natives and later did the same with “imported labor”). Oh, yeah… I guess hypocrisy and contradiction is right there within the core too.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 year ago

        But only the white ones who own property. The rest are scum who aren’t allowed to vote. And don’t even get me started on the non-whites. /s

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know if I like them wearing their racism on their sleeve better than back when they were hiding it.

  • maniajack@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    This article is garbage, here’s “thing someone said” + random twitter comments about it. So one, it spreads the toxic original message of hate from rando idiot conservatives toward the idea of diversity and a melting pot. Then two, it makes us liberals broadly associate all conservatives with the hate message from rando twitter accounts. Imo this is garbage “journalism”. If prominent conservative thought leaders are commenting about something on twitter it could be newsworthy, but you probably know that it’s probably not when they include users such as “TriangleCyclops”, “DPZCrypto”, “BoxingMD1”, etc. Yep those 3-4 tweets must represent literally millions of people’s exact thoughts.

  • dx1@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Finally a song that captures our thoughts and perspective and how we really feel!

    (the song is complete fucking garbage)