STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis has railed against the U.S. government, saying that we are "allowing the dumbest fucking people in this country to dictate what our lives are and aren't." The outspoken conservative rocker, who reinvented himself as a solo country artist in the last decade, voiced his views before performing a new song called "Am I The Only One" during a recent livestream. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I feel like my fucking chest is gonna explode when I hear these fucking idiots that call themselves experts about anything. "I swear to God, I don't know what has happened to this country, but we are listening to and allowing the dumbest fucking people in this country to dictate what our lives are and aren't. We've allowed a federal government that has the given authority to do eighteen things efficiently and properly, and look where we are. Eighteen things, people — eighteen. Those are the powers they're given by the Constitution. Eighteen. Everything else is supposed to happen at the state and local level, so that it's connected to you. "How many people actually know the Constitution — outside the people that are watching this thread right now, because if you're watching this thread, then you don't hate me for the things that I say. "See, here's the problem," he added. "And this is it in a nutshell. And it applies to so many of you out there that are listening, that aren't listening. I'm about to turn 49 years old. I was alive for, let's call it, 40 years before this incessant assault on our history, on our culture, on everything, for political purposes. They're attacking our character so that they get further in their political life, and we're allowing it to happen. "I'm gonna paraphrase Einstein right now. Einstein said that — and I say 'paraphrase' because I don't know if I'm gonna get it exactly right — he said that this country and this world, it won't be destroyed by evil men; it'll be destroyed by good men that stand idly by while evil men do what they do. I want you to think about that." Lewis originally performed "Am I The Only One" in March at a solo concert in Texas — a state which removed all pandemic restrictions that same month. The as-yet-unreleased track, which finds Aaron asking if he is the only one fed up with the state of the country right now, features such lyrics as: "Am I the only one, who can't take no more, screaming if you don't like it there's the fucking door, this ain't the freedom we've been fighting for, it was something more, yeah, it was something more." Apparently addressing the removal of Confederate statues, Lewis sings in the song: "Am I the only one willing to fight for my love of the red and white, and the blue, burning on the ground as the statues coming down in a town near you, watching the threads of Old Glory come undone, Am I the only one. I can't be the only one." Lewis also criticized Bruce Springsteen at the end of the track, singing: "Am I the only one, who quit singing along every time they play a Springsteen song." Springsteen can best be described as Lewis's political polar opposite, having been a vocal opponent to former U.S. president Donald Trump on many occasions. Last August, Bruce went as far as to allow the use of his song "The Rising" in a video that aired during night one of the Democratic National Convention. Lewis, who is widely considered to be one of the most politically conservative musicians in rock, told the Anchorage Press in a January 2020 interview that he considered the first Trump impeachment by the House Of Representatives as the clearest representation of what's wrong with America these days. Lewis was a staunch critic of President Barack Obama, telling a crowd at one of his solo concerts in 2016: "Barack Obama should have been impeached a long fucking time ago. Every fucking decision he makes is against the Constitution, it's against what's good for our fucking country, and he is truly the worst fucking president that we have ever had in the history of this fucking country." That same year, Lewis told Billboard that he would support Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential race, even though he was "disappointed" by the real estate mogul "with the bickering and the name-calling." Lewis added that he voted for Senator Ted Cruz, Trump's closest competitor in the Republican nomination race, in the Massachusetts primary.
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