Canceled By The Left AND The Right

My latest YouTube Video

Here’s The Video:

And here’s the transcript:


Canceled by The Left and The Right

My immigration video from 7 years ago has been popping off again, and picking up new subscribers.

If that’s you ... Welcome.

I’ve been gone for a couple of years, but I’m trying to get back to a regular posting schedule.

This is what’s left of Blue Collar Logic. In exile after the Eaton Fire took my neighborhood and almost everything I owned.

But I’m alright. I’ve been exiled before.

In fact, I’m one of the few people who’s been canceled by both The Left, AND The Right. Depending on my mood, that either pisses me off ... or makes me proud.

Let’s start the truck and get into it.

Intro

I’ve spent most of my life in and around Los Angeles. Since 1986, I’ve been a performing singer song-writer. My music is mostly acoustic, and lyric driven.

This makes me Folk Music adjacent.

In this country, folk music has always been associated with The Political Left. Civil rights, workers rights, women’s rights, gay rights, immigrant’s rights.

Your standard left-wing menu.

I was never a committed partisan. But I voted Democrat, because that was the air I breathed.

But in early 2017, my musical tribe was freaking out. The Access Hollywood tape had been expected to SINK Donald Trump.

And when it didn’t, and he was sworn in ... it was near-total hysteria.

We immediately had the pink hat marches, and soon after, we were fully engaged with the Hashtag Me Too movement.

The MANHUNT that seemed to take out everybody EXCEPT Donald Trump.

On days off from my real job ... painting houses, I’d been making some Facebook videos with another blue collar musician. Picking apart the narratives being echoed by our progressive friends.

So in response to the moral panic of that moment, I made this:

Hashtag HE Too.

In it, while firmly condemning any abuse of women, I examined a few of the ways that ATTRACTIVE women often abuse and damage MEN.

I reminded people of what every thinking person knows ... that being an asshole is not limited to one gender.

To use a modern phrase ... I said the quiet thing out loud.

The response was immediate. Our viewers loved it. And MANY women were positive about the video.

As you can see here.

But then a militant feminist group saw it, and spread the word to other groups. Soon we were the target of an organized protest.

We hadn’t violated Facebook’s community standards, but THEY were under pressure.

So they made a few adjustments to the algorithms.

At that time, we had 80,000 followers. Suddenly, we had almost zero views.

People who’d friended us on our personal pages got in touch wondering where the videos were.

Facebook had cut NOTIFICATIONS. So when we posted, none of our viewers saw the videos in their FEEDS.

We were gutted. We’d worked really hard to get that following. And overnight we were dead in the water.

Because people would not allow ...my INDIVIDUAL opinion to challenge their GROUP opinion.

That was my first experience with cancel culture.

We recovered, went to YouTube, and posted that same video. 350,000 views and nobody freaked out.

So we made lots more videos. I was the center-right guy, and my partner was a bit more conservative.

But we BOTH were on the vanguard of pushing back at what soon would be called WOKE.

A LOT of people appreciated us countering the strict doctrines that were dominant in this town.

Friends would sidle up to me here and there, saying, “Hey man ... I watch all your videos. Keep up the good work.”

But then word got out within the music scene. And I couldn’t get a gig to save my life.

I was suddenly persona non grata in Southern California. Dead to my liberal friends.

But we kept making videos and soon we had subscribers all over the country.

All over the world.

Now STRANGERS were recognizing me ... asking for selfies. That was pretty heady stuff.

Maybe I leaned into it a little harder than I should have, but I kept my cool.

Mostly my videos took on identity politics in its many forms. From a common-sense standpoint.

And yes, I did defend a President who made me cringe most of the time.

He’d been elected fair and square. And he was working off of a conservative wish list that had been around for decades.

I figured that he’d be a one-and-done disruptor.

And maybe when the dust settled, he’d have reminded Democrats that working people of ALL colors were struggling.

Boy did I get THAT wrong!

My audience was initially made up of Trump skeptics like me. People who’d held their nose to vote for him.

Because they wanted to break the progressive death-lock on American culture.

It never occurred to me that they would develop such a deep LOYALTY to this guy.

But that’s what happened. They got attached to him.

And to each other. And to having some juice at long last.

They were not about to leave the stage politely.

After Trump refused to concede in 2020, I looked at ALL of the evidence.

Then I told my people what I’d found. Yes, there was massive dirty politics by the blue team.

But no, the election was not stolen at the ballot box.

For Christ’s sake, these are our NEIGHBORS manning the polls!

Not a popular opinion.

We had just hit 299,000 subscribers. Four years of hard work.

But my stubborn commitment to the truth ... meant we’d gone as far as we could.

I held my ground as subscribers left in droves.

Now my videos were bleeding the channel dry because I would not adopt hare-brained conspiracy theories.

When Stop-The-Steal finally ran out of gas - most of our audience lapsed over into Stop-The-Vaccine.

It was lightening fast. Joe Biden had inherited The Coronavirus.

So ... The red team had to stop HIM from stopping IT.

The anti-vax movement, right of center, was 100% political.

I’d been tracking fatalities on STATE-RUN health sites ... especially red states. Getting the data straight from the horse’s mouth.

As the vaccination process stalled, it was clear to me that beer-gut sixty-something MAGA dudes were dying at a rate ten to twenty TIMES greater than they would if they’d just taken the shots.

And worse ... they were EVANGELIZING one another AGAINST their own best chance of survival.

It was a mass Kamikaze mission.

I tried. I really did.

Even tracking down an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins, who was also an M.D..

He’d grown up in the south, and had lots of conservative family.

I interviewed him on our channel so that he could answer the many fears that were SUPPOSEDLY driving Vax Resistance.

But my audience was now as hive-minded as any wokester ever was.

And because I tried to save them from each other, I was now a TRAITOR who must be shunned.

During that period, Blue Collar Logic lost FIFTY THOUSAND subscribers.

Down below in the comments of THIS video, people will be claiming that it was the MANDATES they objected to.

That’s a lie. The mandates only happened BECAUSE Trumpers were boycotting the vaccine.

You know, the one that their hero moved heaven and earth to give them?

Logic had been leached out of our audience, and been replaced with fantasies.

To my partner’s great credit, he never leaned on me to change my tune. Still it broke up our channel. He started his own and moved to Idaho.

I never got any death-threats. But for months I had nasty hate mail in my inbox.

Both of us lost our YouTube income, roughly a grand a week, and gradually, I stopped posting videos.

So yeah. I’ve been canceled by both sides.

It’s clear to me that partisanship ITSELF is the problem.

Once you’ve split the voters into two warring tribes, you have crippled the legislative process. And sharply degraded the overall civility of life in this country.

With prodding from the profiteers, our innate desire to win beats out our COOPERATIVE instincts every day of the week.

Especially if we’re led to believe that losing POLITICALLY means losing EVERYTHING we hold dear.

Add greedy soulless algorithms to the mix, and you’ve got the recipe for a great nation’s demise.

I now refer to myself as POST-Partisan.

I’ve lived behind enemy lines on both sides of the war. I’ve read their maps. I speak their languages.

My goal now is to take on a list of the wedge issues without partisan prejudice or fear.

Just think them through and give my own considered opinion, and let the chips fall where they may.

I’ll comment on the news as well, but don’t expect a hot-take on every story. There’s ENOUGH knee-jerk nonsense out there.

If this sounds helpful to you, give me a like and subscribe to the channel.

I refuse to believe that this country is past its prime.

But letting the hard-partisan combatants go unchallenged ... WILL sink us eventually.

It’s time for an awful lot of objectivity. And a fair bit of courage.

I’ll do my part if you’ll do yours.

On a side note, my friends and I produce monthly musical events in Southern California.

All are welcome. No political litmus test required.

Lots of food and drink. Lots of laughs.

If you’d like to get on our mailing list, you can contact me through my Substack.

You’ll find the transcript of this video over there, and ninety essays, long and short.

If you leave me a comment there, I’ll read it.

YouTube comment threads are just way too much.

Anyway, thanks for listening.