Lost My Marbles on the Street, Man

I don’t know about you, but I love folk music. Specifically, I love my folk music. And I’m not talking about music that I’ve personally produced. No, I mean the music of my folk. Down in Dixie we like our Charlie Daniels (may he rest in peace), David Allan Coe, Earl Scruggs, Hank Williams (Sr. and Jr.), Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and all of the rest. While some of the most famous of our boys are still touring, there has been an upsurge in new talent. This new talent has taken on the form of a bluegrass strain. You can find a lot of these artists on the
YouTube channels GemsOnVHS and Mashed Potato Records. Some of the more popular ones are Sierra Ferrell, Esther Rose, Josh Okeefe, and, the subject of this article, Benjamin Tod’s Lost Dog Street Band.

Lost Dog Street Band was formed by Tod, a native Tennessean, and his wife Ashley Mae back in 2010. Their most viewed song on YouTube is “I Went Down to Georgia” with 6.5 million at the time of writing. Admittedly, I am a big fan of their work. While Tod’s rendition of Steve Earle’s “The Mountain” is a masterpiece in its own right, I’m not the type to take time out of my day to write an article praising a semi obscure bluegrass and folk band (though perhaps I should be!). We’re going to narrow our focus down to one song in particular: “Green Eyed Gal.”

“Green Eyed Gal” was released on Lost Dog’s 2013 album entitled “Life’s a Dog-Gone Shame.” The song’s protagonist is a young boy from Georgia who met the love of his life in a “graveyard on a foggy Winter mornin’.” They grew up together and got married in the springtime. Then came the war. This Georgia boy went to fight, dying on a battlefield in Virginia. It is a lovely tune and I’d encourage you to listen to it. Here’s a snippet of some of the lyrics:

The Union army left our bodies
And I heard cryin’ God for mercy, Lord
Looked my breast pocket, found a torn photo of you
And I did pass into a lonesome tune
Oh, and where have you gone my green-eyed gal?

My encouragement to you to go listen to this has some urgency. The video for the song has been pulled from GemsOnVHS’ YouTube channel. Why? We need only turn to the band’s official Instagram account to find our answer. There, we will discover a passional post by Benjamin Tod on the current racial political climate. Concluding his thoughts, Tod writes the following:

Furthermore, I will be taking down some content I have created over the years that
glorifies confederate history. I was younger and was disillusioned by “the lost cause” and revisionist bullshit. It is a step that I have to take for my own conscience and I will make no apologies for it. I also deserve no applause for it.

Well, he certainly won’t be getting any applause for his decision. There is no forgiveness or remission of sins in the religion that is multiculturalism. Ultimately, it is up to the band to make decisions like these, though I do want to take the time to consider openly the reasoning provided by Tod. After all, his concluding remarks read like a sincere conviction.

Tod starts by telling us a bit about himself: “I hate identity politics and political correctness.” Of course, one wonders if he is aware of the fact that the mob he is trying to appease doesn’t hate either of those things. Tod continues, “I believe in western values and individualism. I love trucks, guns, old dogs and country music.” It is sad to see it, really. A man who claims to value Western ideals is in the process of making concessions to a mob that doesn’t value those ideals. His fans likely hold the same ideals as he does. So, why bother with the concessions?

He goes on to articulate some common talking points which he has encountered while in his “circles.” Points such as the problems in the black community arising from a lack of “personal responsibility,” poor “leadership and culture,” and a “victimization culture.” Tod then asks, “can you admit that any percent of those problems in the black community are from opportunity we share amongst ourselves or from how authority treats black Americans differently?” A fair question, but a tired one. The triteness of these two points (white privilege and systemic racism) cannot be overemphasized. I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel here, so I will settle on a couple of excerpts.

Jared Taylor on white privilege:

Frankly, if I’ve got white privilege, I’d like to cash in. Sounds like useful stuff in that
knapsack. Clothes, maps? That means if I get lost and it starts to rain, then so long as
I’m white, I can just reach in there and pull out a map and a raincoat? And if I’m broke, I
just write myself one of those blank checks?

No, apparently it’s not that simple. But Peggy’s [Peggy McIntosh] trying to explain, and she lists no fewer than 50 specific, unearned advantages of being white. I read them all, and they fall into four categories: Ridiculous, wrong, inevitable because whites are the majority, and inevitable because people of different races behave differently.

When it comes to addressing the charge of systemic racism there are really two key areas worth looking into: affirmative action and policing. The truth is that minorities, particularly blacks, have many advantages when it comes to university admissions and the workforce in this country. These advantages come in the form of affirmative action programs, i.e. legalized descrimination against whites:

Affirmative action is the law of the land, is practiced by America’s most prestigious
institutions, and is praised by a chorus of media partisans. It must be a good thing. Many government agencies and private companies even put on seminars designed to explain that anyone who objects to affirmative action is “racist.” As a consequence, many whites have been so thoroughly stripped of common sense and self-respect that they cheerfully submit to discrimination.

What about policing? Surely with all of these riots happening across American cities there must be some legitimacy to the claim that blacks are the subject of racist policing? Not the case:

Every year, American police officers have about 370 million contacts with civilians. Most of the time nothing happens, but 12 to 13 million times a year, the police make an arrest. How often does this lead to the death of an unarmed black person? We know the number thanks to a detailed Washington Post database of every killing by the police. What is your guess as to the number of unarmed blacks killed by the police every year? One hundred? Three hundred? Last year, the figure was nine.

Moving along, Tod advises you to “look deep in your heart” and say “black children get the exact same opportunities as white children or that authority treats black people exactly the same as white people 100% of the time.” “I don’t think you can,” he suggests. And he’s right, I can’t. But no one should have such utopian expectations. Not even all white children get the “exact same opportunities” as other white children. Nor does authority treat all white people “exactly the same” as other white people. It is an absurd expectation to want perfect equality, circumstances be damned. I’d wager that a lot of Tod’s fans know this. They are likely rural white folks that make an honest living. Their kids don’t have the same opportunities as Neil deGrasse Tyson’s kids have. And, they definitely aren’t treated the same by authorities. So why focus on this radical notion of equality between blacks and whites when we don’t even see such a realization within any given racial category?

Tod states that his mind “works in numbers and statistics more often than not.” If so, I’d encourage him to read American Renaissance’s publication The Color of Crime. The “numbers and statistics” should tell Tod that whites aren’t the problem. They haven’t ever been the problem. And, ultimately, they never will be the problem. Whites have been demonized. The
elusive monolithic “white” is a bogeyman for those who lack self responsibility. They aren’t interested in making themselves into productive and valuable individuals. Rather, they are interested in devaluing others so as to feel a sense of moral superiority.

-By Dixie Anon