Charlie Daniels Should Stick to Fiddlin'

Loves work, God, Donald Trump. Not offended by crotch grabbing.

by Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I gotta be quick but I have to say something about this moron. I see Charlie Daniels is at it again. I commented on Daniels some time ago and not knowing much about him I assumed he might just be some naïve Southern white musician. But I was much too easy him, put it down to immigrant naivete even though I've been here 40 years. He is one of those Southern racists who tries to cover for his racism behind the “conservative” mantle and also his claim to care simply for his Southern Heritage.

Daniels’ latest column on CNS News attacks what he calls “the left” meaning the Democratic Party which is a party of Wall Street, so he’s criticizing the left wing of the 1%. just to be clear.

Like many people whose view of the world (not his bank account) is based on ancient Christian mythology Daniel has a yearning for the good old days, for that old racist Apartheid system where people like him could do anything to, and say what they wanted about, people whose color, race or political views they found offensive.

Daniels expressed his views on the confederate flag controversy in a previous column when he wrote:

“The Confederate battle flag was a sign of defiance, a sign of pride, a declaration of a geographical area that you were proud to be from. That’s all it is to me and all it has ever been to me.” (my added emphasis)

Either Daniels is a backward right wing racist or he’s a bit of an idiot and if it’s the latter, and I don’t think it is, idiots are dangerous at times. Daniels clearly longs for the return of the “gallant” South, his beloved Southern Heritage and he sees the return of the US Civil War part 2 when he writes:

“We may be reaching a time when the nation tires of the daily protests, the acid rhetoric and outhouse vocabulary, the scowling faces, the outrageous hyperbole, the unsubstantiated accusations, and the totally classless and out of touch remarks directed at the weeping widow of a war hero are starting to become empty and somewhat disgusting to Americans who want to see our nation begin the long journey back to stability and booming prosperity.”

Giving a bigoted individual whose mindset is stuck in the admiration for a defeated (somewhat anyway) Apartheid system a fiddle is one thing, a pen and paper and a market of readers is another.  Daniels might want to consider what the US Civil War was actually fought over. It wasn’t just a geographical area, it was a clash of two social systems. It was a war between Northern industrial capitalists whose system of accumulation and wealth is based on free labor paid wages, and a Southern plantation bourgeois whose source of wealth was a brutal agrarian system based on chattel slavery and a system of slavery based on the god given superiority of one color of people over another, the European over the African.

There were whites that opposed the system, some openly, probably most not, and Daniels could identify with that. He could openly condemn the Southern slave system but he does not.  He chooses to ignore what the Southern system of slavery actually was and simply talk about defiance and heritage and what it means to him. Well it’s clear what it means to him, he supports it and yearns for its return. 

Here's news for you Charlie. You don't fool me nor millions of others. You're defiance is a defense of racism and brutality. Your pride, is a pride of racism and the supremacy of white skinned people. Your pride of an area you come from is fine if you were opposing others from that same area that support the latter and if you fought them in some way, but you are with them as you don't condemn them. You are on the wrong side Charlie.

He’s probably never read Alexander Stephens’ defiant statement about the Confederacy and what it actually stood for when he said:

“The new Constitution has put to rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution-----African slavery as it exists among us-----the proper status of the Negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and the present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as “The rock upon which the Old Union would split.”……The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically…. These ideas however, were fundamentally wrong.   They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error….

Our new government is founded on exactly the opposite ideas; it’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon, the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that Slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

Alexander Stephens, VP of Confederacy. March1861

I’m sure Daniels hasn’t a clue what socialism is, like many with limited capacity for critical thought, he thinks that a national health system is socialism or that Sweden is socialist. He opposes that terrifying communistic idea that people should be able to receive decent health care without going in to bankruptcy. Mind you, he's probably doing alright so what are people complaining about.

Daniels wants the criticism of the misogynist Trump to stop,  “It’s time for unity, time for both sides to put the knives away, stop playing “gotcha,” put America first for a change, and find sensible common ground.”  

Why would a worker of any background want unity with Trump or any representative of US capitalism? Every freedom and social right we have we won from them, Democrat or Republican and Trump is just the most degenerate and crude of them. he is the representative of a system in decay. When does American capitalism not put “America First”?  It is bombing 7 countries. It murdered 3 million Vietnamese and sent 67,000 US workers to their death doing it. It has destroyed a nation state, Iraq, a country and people that never threatened the US in any way. Daniels, with his classless worldview, well, that’s not exactly true, he supports the US capitalist class, its right wing anyway, and doesn’t care enough about US workers to mention what these global offensives lead to, cuts in social services, lower wages and benefits on the job.

Daniels doesn’t savage Trump for the racist and anti worker he is. He doesn’t slam Trump and defend immigrants, the community that he himself comes out of. Daniels’ the fiddler has nothing but contempt for women it’s easy to see that, racism, hatred for labor and sexism always go together. He condemns government as he goes after women in powerful positions, that terrifies types like Daniels. Praising the Trump agenda and those that support him he writes, “Nancy Pelosi and her prissy little white dress brigade of thumbs-downers fly in the face of all that.” One can just taste the contempt for women in that sentence.  As readers of this blog know, I am a socialist, I do not support either of the two capitalist parties but even bourgeois women like Clinton and Pelosi have the right to not be discriminated against because of their gender. I am sure that the leading role of women in the developing resistance to Trumpist misogyny is very disturbing to Daniels

His column appears in CNSNews, the media outlet owned by L. Brent Bozell III, the right wing activist, writer and media mogul well healed and well connected to political figures. Bozell also sits on the board of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, now that’s an organization with a long record of fighting against oppression, racism and sexism isn’t it. It’s the only religion with its own state and its CEO is elected by 100 old male misogynists and who knows how many child abusers. Bozell is known for his reference to Obama as a “skinny ghetto crackhead,"

Daniels continues his paranoid rant, “Democrats were so sure Hillary was going to win and continue the Obama march toward single payer health care, more power for the teachers unions, the packing of the Supreme Court and all the other socialist bits and pieces of the Obama agenda.”

People with brains have to laugh at the concept of Obama being a socialist. Obama is a slick, bourgeois politician. He was good for the US ruling class. He was a classy representative as was his wife Michelle; they loved him. His foreign policy was aggressive as he continued the massacre of the people of the Middle East and beyond. Poor Daniels, he just can’t accept that a black man could be president of the US and will never forgive the American electorate for putting him there.

Daniels ends his pathetic commentary with the usual “god bless America” although why god should do that I’m not sure. He advises us to “pray for our troops, our police and the peace of Jerusalem.”

I wonder if he knows where Jerusalem is?  Is he aware of what the first British governor of Jerusalem said about the formation of the state of Israel? Mind you, this doesn’t matter when your dealing with a person whose views on foreign policy and society as a whole is based on the Book of Revelations. And he hides this phony “I love America” attitude behind the call to pray for our troops. Is that so.  No matter what they do?  Should the Germans have prayed for Hitler and their troops? I guess Daniels would think so.

As for praying for the police, I don't hate individual cops or wish them personal harm. It is not about individuals, it is about a social force whose role in society and in history is to keep the oppressed in their condition of oppression, whether it was slaves or workers trying to build unions. As strikebreakers after we built unions and so on. Daniels doesn't offer prayers for the victims of police murder. There are police I am sure who do not agree with what some police forces have done, but they can't and won't say anything, they chose that role and they have to live with it but I don't pray for  this armed body of the state. And look how confused Daniels is. He condemns the US government as if Trump isn't part of it and then prays for an armed wing of it. Stick to fiddlin' Charlie.

Daniels most likely has health care, he can’t be short a few bucks. I think a few years working in a chicken factory or hog farm would do him good. It might not cure him of his racism but he may well consider his position on health care or the lack of it.