[Forward from Doug: Chris Lunsford, who named his music enterprise Oliver Anthony after his grandfather, is this amazing soul just like the 100s of millions of amazing souls in our country (and billions of beautiful souls around the world).
He is the “poster boy” for all of the Left’s imagined “far right” or “alt right”or “white supremacists” degradations. They are blithely labeled such in a disrepectful, dismissive way by the so-called powerful elites in government or money centers. A few years ago, Chris might have also been dismissed as “deplorable” or someone “clinging to his guns and Bible” by astoundingly arrogant “Let Them Eat Cake” cretins, idiots, fools and psychopaths empowered and enriched by our hyperfinancialized eCONomy.
Suddenly, his message and emotion reached 10’s of millions people by simply singing his wisdom from his heart (and YouTube didn’t censor it). Here’s this amazing guy who isn’t “special” according to prevailing thought, but he shows that EVERYONE is special; that each of us have an amazing constellation of thoughts, feelings, understandings and experiences that are common, yet still truly special.
I talk a lot about the “Virtues of Fly-Over people” in my post They Don't Even Know From Where Their Food Comes. They are people dismissed as unimportant by our criminal or deranged elites, but they have a understanding, common sense and grounding that academic or government types rarely have:
Most people who live around and work in “government,”universities, big Media, big Tech, show business, government think tanks, NGOs, the Federal Reserve usually are amazingly ignorant, full of their academic and/or Marxist theories, full of leftist propaganda and frankly full of shit. They haven’t done an honest days work in their entire lives. They don’t even know from where their food comes. They can be and often are completely wrong about everything for all of their lives and never have to face any consequences.
The supposedly unsophisticated “flyover”people are belittled and even hated by the undeservedly wealthy in the big ”money center” cities on both coasts or those who inhabit the “Clinton Archipelago.”
Clintonistas hate them because their horse sense, derived by honest work and struggle, trumps their highly vaunted academic “learning” nearly every time. The people with horse sense (Conservative types, Trump sympathizers) are nearly always right because they are reality-based and have wisdom through experience, ie., common sense. Doug out]
Lunsford is a former factory worker and lives in the forgotten part of the US, Appalachia, an area plagued with an opioid crisis and abandoned factories. The song tells the story of working-class folk who struggle daily while being ignored and mocked by political elites just north of Richmond.
Lunsford detailed in a lengthy Facebook post that he turned down a $8 million deal from stunned music industry executives:
People in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off 8 million dollar offers. I don't want 6 tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don't want to play stadium shows, I don't want to be in the spotlight. I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they're being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place.
Since going viral nine days ago, he has received over 50,000 messages from people reacting to the song. He said some messages include stories about "Suicide, addiction, unemployment, anxiety and depression, hopelessness and the list goes on."
Lunsford provided more details about who he exactly is...
My legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. My grandfather was Oliver Anthony, and "Oliver Anthony Music" is a dedication not only to him, but 1930's Appalachia where he was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times. At this point, I'll gladly go by Oliver because everyone knows me as such. But my friends and family still call me Chris. You can decide for yourself, either is fine.
In 2010, I dropped out of high school at age 17. I have a GED from Spruce Pine, NC. I worked multiple plant jobs in Western NC, my last being at the paper mill in McDowell county. I worked 3rd shift, 6 days a week for $14.50 an hour in a living hell. In 2013, I had a bad fall at work and fractured my skull. It forced me to move back home to Virginia. Due to complications from the injury, it took me 6 months or so before I could work again.
From 2014 until just a few days ago, I've worked outside sales in the industrial manufacturing world. My job has taken me all over Virginia and into the Carolinas, getting to know tens of thousands of other blue collar workers on job sites and in factories. Ive spent all day, everyday, for the last 10 years hearing the same story. People are SO damn tired of being neglected, divided and manipulated.
In 2019, I paid $97,500 for the property and still owe about $60,000 on it. I am living in a 27' camper with a tarp on the roof that I got off of craigslist for $750.
There's nothing special about me. I'm not a good musician, I'm not a very good person. I've spent the last 5 years struggling with mental health and using alcohol to drown it. I am sad to see the world in the state it's in, with everyone fighting with each other. I have spent many nights feeling hopeless, that the greatest country on Earth is quickly fading away.
He concludes with:
That being said, I HATE the way the Internet has divided all of us. The Internet is a parasite, that infects the minds of humans and has their way with them. Hours wasted, goals forgotten, loved ones sitting in houses with each other distracted all day by technology made by the hands of other poor souls in sweat shops in a foreign land.
When is enough, enough? When are we going to fight for what is right again? MILLIONS have died protecting the liberties we have. Freedom of speech is such a precious gift. Never in world history has the world had the freedom it currently does. Don't let them take it away from you.
Just like those once wandering in the desert, we have lost our way from God and have let false idols distract us and divide us. It's a damn shame.
