Oliver Anthony: evaluation

Transcript context

…In all domains of life from food to the music industry, honestly to education, also to government itself, all of it. Your music is also just the soundtrack to that spirit that makes America great, of just constantly trying to revitalize itself. When the bullshit piles up a little too high, there’s that revolutionary spirit that says we need to fix this shit. And that inspiration that created this country was from years of people living under tyranny. We forget the story of the people who really created this country. It’s funny. One of the statements I made at the very beginning that got taken way out of context, but I wasn’t in a position to even begin to have a conversation about it, is I made this comment early on at one of the shows about how our diversity is a strength, but that term has been hijacked now to mean something a lot different than what it really means. But it’s like think about how many different people came together just at the founding of this country. People who spoke different languages, different cultures, religions, ways of thinking. So many different people came together to even create this place now, and we’ve just forgotten about all that. They didn’t all come here because they wanted to ride on some miserable boat ride and risk their whole lives to live in some crazy jungle essentially that had no structure, no infrastructure, no medicine. They didn’t come here for some glorified camping trip. It’s because they were tired of generations of being persecuted and living under tyranny and not being allowed to practice their … It’s not like they wanted freedom of religion and they didn’t want separation of church and state because they were a bunch of goody two-shoes and they love going to church every Sunday. It’s because they weren’t allowed to believe in what they believed in because some asshole king or some hierarchy told them they couldn’t, and they were just tired of it. That’s what we’re losing now, is we’ve forgotten that we’re those people. The same structures that have plagued this country are … they’re multinational corporations and it’s just the ideology behind them, and their structure is what the problem is. Yeah, I mean it’s multinational corporations. It’s nation states that are deeply corrupt and are authoritarian and ultimately abuse power and yes, create elements of tyranny. And from that, the human spirit rises. Like I said, with songs like the ones you Write or at the founding in this country, that’s why all this diverse outcasts come together and write something as crazy as all men are created equal. What a gangster line. I guess not an easy thing. We take a lot of that stuff for granted now, but that’s not an easy thing to come up with. That’s a really gutsy thing, to see the value in all people equally. And of course they also were suffering from delusion. They didn’t see Black people as equal. They didn’t see women as equal. But even that first leap of all men are created equal, that’s a gigantic fuck you to the past.…

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