A protest song for our times: “Rich Men North of Richmond”
I put Oliver Anthony’s song “Rich Men North of Richmond” in Thursday’s “Roundup” post, but I have a lot more to say about it. First, in case you missed it, here’s the song:
I also noticed that commenter “huxley” wrote about the many reaction videos to the song. So I decided to watch a few and they were fascinating. So many people seem extremely moved by the song – almost stunned at first – and often say the same things about it with similar expressions on their faces. Just a few lines into it, their eyes widen with surprise. Then they get very solemn and start nodding. Sometimes they cry. Often they say that the singer is telling the truth and that you know from his voice and his face that he really means it.
Oliver Anthony’s sincerity come across almost the moment he opens his mouth. He’s got that authentic country twang and his voice has a sob in it – not a weak sob, but a powerful one that speaks of years of anguish combined with strength. People get it – people of all kinds. And not just in this country, either; the reactors are international.
The tune is pretty good and his voice is even better, but best of all are the lyrics. He starts the song at full throttle and jumps right in and hits hard. The words have a relentless, driving quality that just keeps on coming and coming. The listener no sooner hears one heartfelt and well-expressed thought when it’s followed by another, and then another. There are no wasted lyrics at all – no throwaway filler rhymes.
Anthony starts with four lines of complaint about hard work for little money, and then segues into an observation on “what the world’s come to / for people like me / and people like you,” drawing the listener in. The message is we’re in this thing together, and that message is immediately received by all the reactors I watched. There’s little doubt that this sense of shared emotions accounts for some of the viral spread of the song, as do the lines “Livin’ in the new world / With an old soul.” I’m not sure whether the reference was intentional, but to me that part conjures up Brave New World, where the inhabitants are subject to nearly complete social control by manipulative elites – and sure enough, Anthony follows it up by a reference to our own rich elites (north of Richmond) who want “total control.” That’s another line that usually gets a knowing nod from all the reactors.
Most of the listeners seem to understand what Anthony means by “Rich Men North of Richmond,” too. It’s even easier to see what he means when you look at a map: Washington DC is located right smack north of Richmond, Virginia.
Then there are lines about fat people eating sweets purchased with welfare checks supported by other people’s taxes – sure to rile a lot of people on the left, but all the reactors didn’t seem the least bit upset by it. There are references to Epstein’s island, without naming his name, and couched in a pun about “miners” and “minors.” Anthony doesn’t leave out the fact that young men are dying prematurely – or, as he puts it, “puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground.” Is that from suicide, drugs, drinking, accidents, or homicide? It’s a brilliant way to refer to self-destructive behavior, and he links it to despair “Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down.”
I’ve often thought that, as rhymed poetry has faded and is so rarely written anymore, song lyrics – and in particular the lyrics of country music – have taken over. There’s tremendous power in a music lyric because the words-and-music combination can touch the heart and the brain in a different way than prose or even spoken poetry. Songs cut through right to the core.
When I was a teenager, protest songs were all the rage. But they were almost uniformly from the left. Oliver Anthony’s song is a type of protest song, too, but it transcends politics and is almost purely populist. These days, populism is more on the right (and embodied by candidate Trump), but it is hardly limited to the right. “Power to the people!” was one of the cries of the leftist radicals of my youth, and leftists were once the champions of the working class. No more.
Anthony’s song has gone viral very quickly, and I don’t doubt it repels most of those “rich men north of Richmond” and everyone who thinks they should have “total control” of the rest. But for the most part, people don’t want to be controlled. And they see that today’s elites don’t seem to care about them and aren’t even very good at pretending anymore.
Here’s just a moment at the start of one of these reaction videos:
And here are just three out of so many comments I’ve seen at YouTube:
It’s profoundly moving to observe the moment of realization on people’s faces, when what they’ve always known deep within them rises to the surface. The voice of the silent majority, echoing from the heart of the Appalachian mountains, has a resonance that’s incredibly touching people all over the world.
Whatever the lyrics, whatever side you lean, when a song speaks to EVERY single one of us, it’s powerful & beautiful. We need more artists that make music that brings us all together as we should be. Loved that you were real & honest with your emotions. We ALL have to stick together.
His voice emits the anguish we are all feeling.
Maybe we really are “all” feeling it.
NOTE: The song also made me think of this scene from Network, which came out in November of 1976, shortly after the election of Jimmy Carter:
The beginning of Anthony’s song – “I’ve been selling my soul” – also conjured up the lyrics of another working man’s complaint song, “Sixteen Tons.” I know a lot of different versions, but this happens to be my favorite:
Here’s another reaction video; there are so many more:
“I’ve often thought that, as rhymed poetry has faded and is so rarely written anymore, song lyrics – and in particular the lyrics of country music – have taken over.”
_______
I believe that song is considered to be where lyric poetry started.
One point about the protest songs of our youth: do not forget that my own favorite of them, The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” was at least as popular on the right as on the left. We used to enjoy pointing out how it fit our side better than theirs.
When I was a teenager, protest songs were all the rage. But they were almost uniformly from the left.
A classic from the past is the song by Buffalo Springfield variously called “Stop, Hey, What’s That Sound?” or more properly “For What It’s Worth.” A great song, and I always thought it was about Kent State or something like that.
Apparently, it’s common knowledge that Stephan Stills wrote it about the night the LA cops shut down the rock’n roll club named Pandora’s Box at the corner Laurel Canyon Dr. and Sunset Blvd. and a small riot broke out. How odd. How dare they deprive us of our sex, drugs, and rock’n roll.
The reaction to this song gives me some hope that people will resist the “Brave New World” model of our future. I would also point out that the remaining normals in that World were living in the southwest. Aldous Huxley, in his last few years, lived just down the hill from my in-laws in Bel Air, Los Angeles. In those days, Los Angeles was still normal.
I was raised in a blue-collar environment. White collar jobs were few in my small mountain town. The economy was based on tourism. The season was from June to Labor Day. It was seven days a week, 10-15 hours a day to earn as much as possible while the tourists were in town. The rest of the year was spent trying to stay solvent until he next summer.
The beautiful mountains and the outdoor activities for residents’ children were a major draw for people to live that life. It was a wonderful place to grow up, and it instilled a work ethic in all of us who grew up there.
Even though I made it to Commanding Officer of a squadron in the Navy and became an airline captain, I never lost sight of the men and women who make things work. The mechanics, the plane captains, the admin workers, the refuelers, the ordnance specialists, flight attendants, passenger service reops, and on and on are an indispensable part of the whole picture.
This song tells us how the rich men north of Richmond (the Swamp), have forgotten that it takes all kinds of skills and workers to keep an advanced economy like ours not only working, but growing and offering more opportunities to everyone.
Trump was getting us on that growth track when Covid hit, and the Swamp showed their indifference to all the working people that they look down on. The people who are the indispensable workers/small business owners that keep the economy going and growing.
It appears that the Swamp wants as many people dependent on them as possible. Believing that they can stay in power indefinitely that way. It’s slowly hollowing out the middle class and Anthony’s song is a protest against that.
When I entered the work force in 1954 there was an expectation that if you worked hard and made good decisions about money and jobs, that you could become middle class with an opportunity to eventually retire comfortably.
A lot of people aren’t seeing that today. Thus, the impact of the song.
TommyJay,
I was going to mention that about ‘For What It’s Worth’.
Maybe because I wasn’t born or at least was very young but I actually like a lot of the ‘political’ songs of the late sixties early seventies and find them to have a lot of truth to my ears that weren’t there at the time. ‘Fortunate Son’ and ‘Ohio’ are both great songs to me and while they are specific to the time they are still somewhat universal to me.
This one on the other is as hard hitting and true today as it was in 1971. Best anti war song ever IMO. And amazing vocal performance also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQUXuQ6Zd9w
Almost 108,000 comments on first vid. People experiencing what the song is about.
I think most, if not all, commenters here are now financially secure. Some of us actually struggled on the way up. Some have a tendency to say, “I did it, so can you”. Not so easy these days.
My home in Santa Clara County California cost me the equivalent of three years gross pay. In order to buy a home in this neighborhood now would cost 1.2 million. Pretty tough for average family.
“By Kammer’s estimate, the monthly payment for a $1 million home would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $6,256 a month —a figure that’s based on the homebuyer coming to the table with a 20% downpayment and taking out a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage.” PLUS property taxes.
Of course, there are cheaper places to live, but the pay is lower, so people still struggle.
Much is said about people leaving California. What is seldom mentioned is retired seniors can sell their paid off house for a million or more and get the heck out of here.
Many more would leave were it not for family ties. The kids, grandkids, and great grand children keep the geezers here.
Inasmuch as I am seventy-three years of age, I happen to have born into “the protest generation,” so I know a bit about it. As it also happens, I was born into a very working class family (steel worker and stay-home mother). When I saw the “protest singers” and listened to their “protest songs” I was quite unmoved, because I immediately knew that their schtick was entirely bogus. I lived and worked with the “common man” and “the people” whom they pretended to want to have the power, but I never once saw any power actually flowing to my people, who simply continued to do what they always did, viz., work for a living for themselves and their children, whom they hoped would have things better than they did. How many times must the cannon balls fly? Hell if we knew; we must’ve been at work when it happened. Civil rights? Who had time for that? Working swing shift takes up most of your time and all of your energy. The prototypical “protest singer” of all time is the execrable Bruce Springsteen, who pretended to be a regular guy but used his money to buy a fabulous, sprawling horse farm where his daughter could practice, practice, practice to become an equestrienne. Just like my sister, right? Sure; no thanks Mr. “Born to Run.” Keep your hypocritical protest mewlings to yourself. However, at this point, I detect nothing of the stink of the left-wing protester about this Anthony chap. The jury is still out, however, because opportunities for corruption of even the most authentic among us abound, but I’ll be rooting for him regardless.
These guys have a big youtube reaction channel and their reaction is good also if you get past the first couple of minutes of their banter. Dude on the right in the gray shorts gets it.
Their reaction has over 1.5 million views in 6 days and almost 9,000 comments and those aren’t from people like us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zf9odZDzRo
I’ve watched several reaction videos to this song as well and the line about men “putting themselves six feet in the ground” gets me every time. I moved from suburban Washington DC to small town West Virginia a couple years ago so this song really resonates with me. It’s only a ninety minute drive from my old home to my new one, but it might as well be a different planet. My one sliver of hope for this country is that ordinary people of all races and ages can wake up and realize that much of the old left/right divide has been replaced by the Rich Men North of Richmond vs. everyone else.
The protest song that always haunted me was Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a Rocket Launcher”. I was a teenager the first time I heard it. I didn’t understand exactly who he was angry at but I could feel his disgust in the words he was singing. Rich Men North of Richmond has a similar anger, although not the violence.
Here is the video of Cockburn singing “If I had a Rocket Launcher”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O9HFjErMMlA
Fullmoon:
I’ve never known financial want. I grew up in a home that was middle class or a bit upper middle class – or maybe professional class? I went to public schools from kindergarten through high school but elite colleges and law school. My father was a lawyer and CPA in private practice at a time when that could provide a very solid income for a family of four. However, he had grown up poor – and I don’t mean working class poor, I mean dirt poor, very poor. His father was an immigrant from Belarus, in poor health and already 40 years old when my father was born, and he made almost no money (not sure if he ever learned English; he died in his 50s in the 1920s). My father and his brother had to work from the time they were five years old. And I grew up in a middle class neighborhood in a working class community, and I’ve lived in working class communities for much of my adult life. So I suppose you might say I’m a strange sort of hybrid of classes. Perhaps that partly accounts for my politics.
The Rich Men North of Richmond is most telling, and I fear their power. The majority of Americans are funded from DC, and that is a tell for socialism.
Let us little people arise and rebel against this fat cat oppression, most of which I partisanly note is by Democrats, who fill the mass of federal bureaucracy and work to oppress us.
Beat me to it, “fake” was the word I was thinking of. Although I wouldn’t say the singers knew they were fake, they probably thought they were virtuous. It was funny, though, how things filtered down after a while, both long hair and attitudes.
Many of the elites who are critical of this song are the same people who still don’t understand how Trump ever got elected.
The guy who wrote the NR article attacking this, Mark Antonio Wright, also wrote the most obnoxious Never Trump article during the 2016 primaries. So bad he got attacked in the comments and had to qualify it the next time he wrote.
I do have to thank him, as it made it easier for me to come around to supporting Trump.
My Wife and I very comfortable, but when we first married there were some interesting time. Me Wife taught school for 30 yrs, when it meant something. I bounced around from job to job, but we made it. Our parents were children of the Depression and WWII. Both our Mothers grew up on farms, Mom in IL and MIL in Alabama. My Dad lost his Dad while he was in his teens. One time while visiting his Mother in San Antonio we drove past an elementry school. My Dad turned to his Mom and said “Remember the time I was kicked out of school”? I was about 9 or 10 at the time and I could not believe my Dad was kicked out of school. I asked him why and he replied “Because I didn’t have any shoes”. WOW! He never did finish HS, got his GED in 1947 while still in the Navy. Wife’s Father was older, born in 1912, was in a dead end job when WWII started. He joined the Army, was in the 82nd at the age of 30, and “Old Man”. Our Fathers worked hard and raised us good. Mothers were Housewife’s, but my Mom did work some. We weren’t given anything, we worked and earned it. The song does resonate with us.
…but to me that part conjures up Brave New World, where the inhabitants are subject to nearly complete social control by manipulative elites – and sure enough, Anthony follows it up by a reference to our own rich elites (north of Richmond) who want “total control.” That’s another line that usually gets a knowing nod from all the reactors.
–neo
I want to bold that part. The real news may not make it past the diktats of our All Benevolent Elites, but a lot of Americans, I bet the majority, know the score.
Several mentions of protest songs, but I’m a little surprised no one has mentioned either “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” or “Eve of Destruction.”
What if, at the next mega-rally, Trump says…
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!”
I didn’t watch this video, instead one on another website. Had to stop it, sounded like off-key yelling, not singing.
I am a big fan of classic county music. Here’s Claude King’s Wolverton Mountain, with a silly video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpmztcX_BtI
@ Chuck > “Although I wouldn’t say the singers knew they were fake, they probably thought they were virtuous.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tDZ5lriIIc
Bonus points if you know what this song is without looking.
The Weaver’s cover of Sixteen Tons was catchy, but I can only hear that song in Tennessee Ernie Ford’s voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1980WfKC0o
It was written by Merle Travis in 1947.
Sung by himself here. Starts with a great anecdote about Chet Atkins, and a shout out to Ford.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bdHRlG9T9I
The concert clip also includes “Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette” — which is not a favorable view of that fiery habit, although there are some super hot licks on the guitar.
And referring back to Neo’s comments about lyrics and poetry, the chorus to Travis’s song is a limerick!
You can’t keep a good protest song down.
Jeff Beck and ZZ Top perform Tennessee Ernie Ford’s first Number One Hit, 16 Tons at The Wharf Amphitheater in Orange Beach, AL on September 30, 2022.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzpNUNZ0Nwg
One point that separates 16 Tons from Rich Men is that the earlier song didn’t have any overtly partisan lyrics; although Oliver’s are generally populist and a condemnation of the elites of both parties, he does single out some recognizably Democrat examples.
However, the generation that made 16 Tons a hit may have intuited some implicit critiques from the times and the context.
@ Neo > “The song also made me think of this scene from Network, which came out in November of 1976, shortly after the election of Jimmy Carter:”
Unfortunately, leaning out the windows yelling “I won’t take it anymore” doesn’t actually seem to accomplish anything significant.
It took us only 5 years to elect the first President who tried to respond to that plaint, and he didn’t get nearly far enough, but it was another 35 before we got the second one and we all know what happened then.
(Reagan and Trump, just for the record.)
Why do we have open borders? I don’t remember any public debate about this issue. When you look at Blue discussions there are never any reasons, just total acceptance, virtue signalling, and ridicule of any opposing views.
I operate a tree nursery in rural Texas south of Houston. Immiseration of the lower working class has gotten much much worse in the last two years, most likely from open borders. People who could always find something are now broke, out of work, and hungry. Other parts of the country are certainly much worse.
AesopFan, yes, “Sixteen Tons” will always be Tennessee Ernie Ford.
I have a feeling that the liberal media has already received it’s marching orders and sprung into action, researching Anthony’s past looking for ways to discredit him and ruin his life.
I found this compelling the the man is the real deal.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/rich-men-north-richmond-artist-turns-down-8-million-stunned-music-execs-says-nothing
I think anthony’s plea, is more akin to no 6’s cry in the prisoner’ i am not a number, i am a human being’ now this has echoes in part of beale’s shpiel, ‘i am a person I have value’ the philosophies that ubs, say cbs proferred by the 70s, robbed people of their self worth, was it the war, the inflation the crime, everything that was a break in the social contract, klaus’s gospel in the mouth of ned beatty is you don’t matter you are a cog, you are a serf, that you thought otherwise was an illusion,
What the hell is going on at NPR? News this morning had no mention of Maui, Biden, or Trump! Just Hillary: we’re all gonna die!
In reference to the talented musician who is the subject of this thread, I just hope he or some other patriot creates a song about the shame of this nation imprisoning hundreds of political protestors, and in squalid conditions!
I didn’t think that anyone could destroy their credibility as bad as the medical profession has, but damned if our judges didn’t outdo them!
Song title says it all.
“Then there are lines about fat people eating sweets purchased with welfare checks supported by other people’s taxes – sure to rile a lot of people on the left, but all the reactors didn’t seem the least bit upset by it.”
From what I’ve seen, most of the people upset by that line are people who are or have been on food stamps and/or welfare.
Anyone who’s ever shopped at a big grocery store has witnessed people buying steak and seafood with food stamps and then pulling out cash to pay for their beer and cigarettes.
At one point while on shore duty in the Navy, I worked an extra job so my wife could go to nursing school. I worked at a “convenience store”. I can’t tell you how many times I saw people come in and buy dime candies in multiple purchases and pay them with single food stamps so they’d get coin change, then use the coins to buy a pack of cigarettes or bottle of cheap beer or wine.
I don’t remember the exact context of it, and I believe it was shortly after Katrina blasted through New Orleans, but I remember there was a video of an older woman crying about how she’s not been provided the “entitlements” she deserves while sitting in a living room equipped with a big screen TV.
We’ve all seen those types of things and those of us who’ve worked our whole lives, sometimes two or three jobs, to support ourselves and our families and have never asked another soul for a dime can relate to that line in the song.
I’m not heartless…people sometimes need help when things outside their control happen. Sometimes people even need help to recover from a bad decision they made and that help can get them back on the right track. But that’s the proper role of charity. It is not the proper role of government to seize the fruits of labor under threat of violence and “redistribute” it to people who’s skillset is often devoted to scamming the system and getting as much for nothing as possible.
“Oliver’s” words ring very true. to many of us.
it’s new wave feudalism what they want
https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1692901538497261658
@Neo – somewhat similar family background – father was a lawyer, with a BS/BA, who spent his career mostly in banking and real estate. Only person I knew of who could total a column of figures row by row, instead of adding by columns, like we were taught in school, and I do to this day. Family got comfortable when I was in HS. That allowed us to go to college wherever we wanted to, and could get in. He drew the line on grad school – we paid for that ourselves. I followed that with my daughter. The difference between our family histories is that my grandparents all had college degrees, and thus didn’t suffer as much during the Great Depression. His parents were college professors, with his mother teaching accounting (funny story – I had a female prof in B School who was proud of breaking into academia there, and I never burst her bubble, that my grandmother had done so at that school 30 years earlier).
The relevance of this is that I went to college during the protest era. Freshman year, in an all male dorm was spent planning how to beat the draft and stop the war in Vietnam. My class (1972) timed it perfectly, since that was the year that the draft ended. In any case, I saw the war differently, refusing to attend anti war protests and the like. For me, it always seemed like an elite copout. Those in my class (those attending more elite colleges) trying to save their own sorry asses, while those who couldn’t afford to do so, buckled down, and did their civic duty, many dying in rice paddies halfway around the world. Except that most of the protests were while Nixon was President, and most of the dead were the result of escalation and gross mismanagement by LBJ, McNamera, and Westmoreland.
That is the difference I see here – the Vietnam war protesters were mostly young elites protesting to save their sorry white asses, while this song, and the one it replaced as #1, are working class protests against the elites, who are screwing over everyone else, for their personal benefit. We all know that the Dems in general, and the FJB Administration in particular, have raised graft and corruption to stratospheric levels. And, yes, the GOPe is in on it too, as junior partners. Their stupid masking and travel restrictions applied to us, and not them. The $Trillions$ squandered in supposedly fighting inflation in reality mostly went to line the pockets of the elites, and anyone who ever took a Monetary Economics class could have predicted that spending that level of money, that we didn’t have, would be inflationary. The elites didn’t care – their rake on the flood of money being squandered was far more than the inflation felt by the rest of us.
The working and middle classes are waking up to this. That’s a good part of why we got Trump. Contrary to what the MSM tells us, it isn’t just poor whites. Plenty of Hispanics, and even Blacks, share these sentiments. Music can be a very powerful tool of persuasion, and it is hard to stop the signal. If Google, FB, and Microsoft try to kill the signal, they are fairly easy to bypass. It takes seconds to move the video files by FTP, if nothing else. I don’t see this as the end of protest songs, but the beginning.
Every time I hear this song I am reminded of my mother and Trump. I’ll try to explain.
Both of my parents were kids during the Great Depression (GD). For my father, the GD was something that was happening to other families & neighborhoods. For my mother, the GD was happening to her family & neighborhood. My grandfather lost his factory job early on, and did odd jobs – in a generation of men who were good with hands, he still stood out – until WWII started. They were the families growing & canning vegetables to have food during the warm & cold months, patching-up everything, celebrating Independence Day with one hot dog – no bun – for each of them, and listening to FDR on the radio. They were also the citizens who came to believe that only the Democrats cared about the working man.
FYI – I always enjoyed listening to my grandparents tell stories about their childhoods; especially my maternal grandparents. The two of them were probably the last generation to truly experience “Pioneer Life”. When she was a little girl my grandmother’s family left North Dakota for a better life – in a covered wagon. When she met my grandfather, she was teaching in a one room schoolhouse on the prairie. My grandfather was one of 12 kids, and his family lived in a sod house on the prairie. When he was 8 his dad pulled him out of school – never to return – gave him a horse, bedroll & pistol; and put him to work following the family cattle as they roamed the prairie looking for food – by himself. Both of them were lifelong readers, and understood that education was the key to a better future for their children. Their daughters were class valedictorians, scholarship winners, and eventually successful professionals.
The adults discussed politics in our house; however, these were adults that knew how to disagree without being disagreeable. Good role models. My mother was going to vote for the Democrat in any election – and my father the Republican – they would joke about canceling each other out. Jokes aside, my mother had no use for any Republican office holder – even when her staff relied on them for help – and would often roll-her-eyes at the mention of a Republican (e.g., Reagan). She did more than roll-her-eyes when it came to Trump during the 2016 election: red in the face, anger in her eyes, denunciations from her mouth. If I was home for the weekend, I made sure to hideout in her study while she watched the Sun AM political shows – Meet The Press, This Week, etc. – even though I watched them at home.
Trump won, and had been in office for about 3 years when my mother asked me one night: Why do you support Trump. Was both surprised by the question, and by the lack of anger in her voice. It was not a short answer, and I explained that when I was younger my focus was on my career and trying to build the same life for myself that she & dad had provided; which was not as easy as it looked when I was a kid ^^. That made her smile.
^^ = of the many mistakes the Boomers/ Gen X have made, giving their kids the “economic results” without having to work for them is one of the biggest (give fish v. teach to fish).
Along the way I supported the various trade agreements, movement of jobs overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor, etc. – and the explanations that progress always entailed a certain amount of “destruction”. However, once I was happy with what I had I started to really “look around”. Which led me to question why was it OK to destroy the industrial jobs & regions of this country – North, South, Midwest – just so we could save a few dollars on sheets, TVs, tables, washing machines, etc. or have a little bit bigger stock portfolio. Me not wanting those jobs did not mean it was OK to deny others those jobs – to deny them their choice of “the pursuit of happiness”. A large and prosperous “blue collar middle class” was a good thing for this country.
Trump is the first President in my voting lifetime that is actually working to bring back those industrial jobs. To correctly identify that it was not necessary to sacrifice those jobs and our capabilities to have a better future. To correctly identify that Economic Security is National Security. That is a big reason why I support Trump. My mother smiled and softly said: OK.
Fast forward ~6 months, was visiting my mother again, and she asked me to help her cleanup her email inbox, wanted to make sure she did not delete important emails. Watched her delete dozens of emails until she was left with friends & family, charities & doctors, banks & brokerage – and an email from the Trump campaign thanking her for her donation. Got it. My mother often avoided a “straight line” to make her point, and there was no way on gods-green-earth that she was going to say out loud the words: I donated to Trump. But she wanted to me to know. And that’s when I knew with 100% certainty that the little girl who grew up in a working-class neighborhood on Brown Street – and as an adult had led a life far removed from that – had never forgotten the working man.
That is why this song reminds me of my mother and Trump. And yes, I think this song is terrific.
Neo, thank you for posting on this.
I cried when I first heard it. Cried a few hours later when I decided to listen again. Then I saw the first compilation of the reaction videos and the emotion hit real hard again. I’m stunned by my reactions to it. I’m not even a country music fan.
If you haven’t seen the woman from Nigeria’s reaction video, look for it. She gets so emotional that she tells her followers she has to do something she’s never done before with any other song. She plays it again. And she gets even more worked up. She apologizes because she can barely talk. She feels his pain deeply.
Variety had a column about it. So did Christianity Today. The reactions of lefties are just so telling. Variety seems convinced that it is likely that Anthony is a conservative plant. Christianity Today just seems to want to confirm the suspicion that genuine faith in Jesus left the building a long time ago. One would think that liberals would be able to relate to a little guy who is suffering. Somehow, they can’t. They can’t even pretend to anymore. They seem to love big government more.
My wife has some family from the hills outside Gatlinburg. Serious Appalachian poverty backgrounds. Anthony’s genuine-ness just leaps off the video. I ‘know’ him. A whole lot of people do and will. Powerful stuff.
BTW — Newt Gingrich has another bombshell. Or it should be. He says DC Dems were putting heat on Atlanta DA to put another hit on Trump to distract from the bumbled special counsel appointment news on Hunter.
Dick Ilyes: “ Why do we have open borders?”
You’re right. This is never discussed even among conservatives. It’s clear to me that the Democrats fully intend to legalize the entrants and register them to vote as Democrats.
Here is a cartoon that expresses my feelings better than words can:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-16-at-8.58.46-AM.png
Here is another cartoon as a bonus:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2023/08/Screenshot-2023-08-15-at-10.10.23-AM-768×684.png
I have no problem with the intent of the song; but, I really didn’t care for the alleged musical aspects. (I do suspect that he could play a mean guitar or mandolin)
I suppose for many the song does capture pent up frustrations, then through the miracle of social media it went viral.
On the subject of protest music, happy to say that do to the schedule of deployments and other considerations I missed most of the protest songs by the lank haired, tie dyed, pot infused dissidents back in the day.
WRT to the war protests, I find them ironic in retrospect. Most of the protestors against the war that was initiated by a Democrat President and expanded exponentially by another Democrat President became life long Democrats. That is if they had the mental energy to participate in the political process at all.
Some discussion here of poverty.
On a personal level, my family brushed against poverty during the years that my Dad was off to WWII, and for a few years after, as he got re-established. The interesting aspect was that back in those days. people didn’t demand, or expect, entitlements. They just endured the best that they could. Family, or Church, not government, were the safety nets.
I can state from experience that people who sing of Appalachia, and other notorious pockets of poverty, never visited Suwanee County, Fl prior to the ’50s or so; nor wrote a protest song about it. History books that talk of FDR’s New Deal skip over the fact that he apparently did not give a damn about the rural South. In Suwanee County; as of 1947 (my last experience) if you left town, or a major highway– no electricity, no telephones, no paved roads (to be honest, most folks could not afford cars anyway, and mules didn’t care if the road was paved), no convenient public transportation**, no law enforcement or medical services within reach.
The Big Democrat government did play a role. Of course they did. They limited the tobacco acreage (the primary cash crop) very severely for small farmers. That was convenient for big operators, who could buy up those allotments cheap since many families would have trouble buying seed, fertilizer, etc on the meager income from their allotments. FDR also used the hardened sons of those farmers to win WWII.
** Public transportation was Greyhound, or more likely, Trailways. If you hiked out to the highway, they would stop for you. Of course, you had to have the fare.
Disclaimer. My Uncle had numerous skills; e.g., carpenter, pipe fitter, and could get a war related paying job, so did not farm during some of the war years; and abandoned farming a few years after the war. But, during the war, he had the rare car. He also had a battery powered radio, and was the source of war news for nearby families–all of whom had boys in uniform. What he did not have were any of the utilities that we now consider necessities. It would be interesting to see how the Greenies cope if they succeed in taking society back.
They discussed the song on The Five Friday. Jessica Tarlov predictably objected to the fudge rounds line, forgetting Oliver complained about starving people on the street. He doesn’t object to some aid, just don’t abuse it.
Back in my college days, mid1980s, I wasn’t there but some friends were joking that they used a rolled up food stamp to snort cocaine.
Grandma probably helped out so neither my sisters or I had to worry about prep school or college, but dad started an injection molding plastic business. I barely saw him for years.
Frustration with the ruling class in this country has a long history. But in the past, we knew very little of what went on.
The elites at least tried to be pro American, and somewhat competent.
Trumps election brought that out in the open. People began to see what was really happening, and just how incompetent and clueless the elite are, and have been for decades.
This 3 minute song hits all the points, and it resonates with us, and by us, i mean people everywhere in the world.
Neo has written on the long march through our institutions, and it is absolutely true.
Most of us, at this point, realize that it isn’t about left vs right. It is an elite that knows it has an undisputed right to rule over us. To think for us, tell us what to say and what to do.
propaganda is very effective, very very effective. Read the responses on twitter, or any other platform, and you can see how effective it is, and how prescient Orwell and Huxley were so long ago.
Do we vote ourselves out of this mess? That is the question, and many of us understand what that means.
Consider this, if Washington and the other founders were transported to DC in the morning, by noon, most of the capital would be in flames, and most of the occupants would be hanging in the national mall.
Our capacity for enduring outrage, for being manipulated, has increased since I was a boy.
Salami tactics, taking things little by little, are working for the elite.
At some point, enough is enough. Whether you want what is coming or not, the 2024 elections will be a tipping point.
“Some have a tendency to say, “I did it, so can you”. Not so easy these days.” Full Moon
And that’s what the song is about. The demolition of the “American dream” – a decent paying job, a home of your own, good schools for your children, law and order, a chance to have a reasonably comfortable retirement. These were possible and accepted as real up until about 25 years ago, when our good jobs were rapidly being exported to China.
The book, “Hillbilly Elegy” by J.D. Vance is an earlier, long form of this song by Anthony.
What Vance wrote about was the disappearance of factory jobs that decimated his family.
What Anthony is adding is that government has become oppressive and is doing more damage than good with their SJW, ESG, DEI, Green New Deal, etc. policies.
You’re right about the change. It is much harder to aspire to improving your lot in life today.
This song hits home, despite my successful professional career in Dallas, New York City and Washington, DC. I was well into my adult years before I realized that my family was living paycheck to paycheck when I was a kid. I had a blast then! Never felt hungry or neglected and always loved. My dad had risen from the son of immigrants to wearing a suit and working in NYC, all because of his strict upbringing and determination. (He says he lied about his age to enlist in the Army Air Corps during WW2 and I have photos of his service.) We eventually moved back to the Midwest where my parents grew up, my father became an entrepreneur, and we did very well (but not by Silicone Valley standards!). Growing up I had the benefit of the nuclear family, a somewhat strict upbringing, and learning that to succeed you must put in the effort. Sad to say, our country is on the verge of collapse, largely as a result of putting aside such common sense.
There has been some talk about “Sound of Freedom” appealing to the “hidden viewer”. This is a person who usually doesn’t go to movies and is sometimes repelled by what he sees if he does, or what he hears about one or another of them.
I’d suggest you don’t need to be a C&W fan to appreciate this, it being likely indistinguishable in sentiment from some labor-leaning song from the Thirties.
However, C&W fans identify with a lot of the sentiment already and so there’s your guaranteed base, plus a lot of other folks who have thought the same thing but in a different meter.
My father used to say that some obesity in the lower income folks might be because comfort food is the only comfort they can count on. Doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate Albinoni instead of Hank Williams.
But now…we have a litany of what afflicts a lot of folks and, unlike other songs about such issues, we have a target. Rich men north of Richmond. That is, imo, an additional appeal. Don’t need the guitar and the dropped “g” to appeal to the “hidden listeners”.
A CODA to my previous comment: I play guitar and like to sing. Chords for this song are already posted online. I can’t get through it without crying. What a damn shame.
It’s a song in the tradition of Woody Guthrie, and it’s fascinating and meaningful that the left hates it and the right loves it. It shows how much the Dems/working class : Reps/elite paradigm has flipped. That flip is part of why the left is trying so hard to kill the song, it points to how far they’ve left average Americans behind.
The majority of Americans are funded from DC, and that is a tell for socialism.
=
In your imagination only.
Mark Antonio Wright
==
I’m wondering which tech mogul has bought control of NR.
Oldflyer
As the “Solid South” was going to vote for FDR regardless, he didn’t figure he needed to court the Southern vote. My uncle told me that his county in rural Illinois didn’t get electricity until 1940. My grandmother in Oklahoma told me electricity arrive in the late 1930s, if I recall correctly. The feds lagged in getting electricity to Suwanee Cty, Florida, by comparison.
While in 1947, the South and rural South was behind the rest of the country, it was catching up.
CHART 3 Regional per Capita Income as Percentage of National Level, and Regional Percentage Share in National Total Personal Income and Population, Southern Regions, 1840—1950
Here are the figures for 1930 and 1950 (eyeballed)
From 1930 to 1950, per capita income in the South, as a percentage of national per capita income, rose about 20 percent. Some of that increase may have come from the Great Migration of poor blacks from the South to the North.
By 1950, the South was more like the rest of the country than it was 20 years before. Income was not the only indicator of this. In 1952, Eisenhower got 48% of the vote in the South, a good indication that the Yellow Dog Democrat dominance of Southern politics was ending.
(Trick question: for those who believe that Goldwater’s vote in 1964 turned the South Republican, ask them who got a higher proportion of the Southern vote- Goldwater in 1964, or Eisenhower in 1956 or 1952)
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c2475/c2475.pdf
AesopFan,
Thanks for posting the ZZ Top/Jeff Beck video. I had no idea they played together! Two of my absolute favorites. Now I’ve found a few additional videos of them playing together.
Thanks again!
He’s got that authentic country twang and his voice has a sob in it – not a weak sob, but a powerful one that speaks of years of anguish combined with strength.
And yet…. as someone who took up playing trad music back in those ‘protest song’ days, there is a difference. EVERYONE there spoke with a country twang, that was the local form of the English language. But the local form of the music was very little involved with ‘oh I’m so oppressed and those capitalists are so evil’. Rather, it was a form of music which shared much repertoire and was mostly sung – under unamplified circumstances – at home, at church gatherings WITH one another because everyone had known those songs for generations. The first generation of country recordings is a wide testament to it.
But, glory be, there were some folks in New York who realized how attractive the musical form was, and how it might be deployed as bait to preach a more political – oh, very leftist political – gospel, and that’s where those protest songs were generated, eagerly praised by activists who put on country twangs, sold lotsa records, and sung them for, or at (not with, unless they dished out choruses) big audiences eager to hear how downtrodden was the singer, even if his family published the New York Times.
So I’ll still take mine, such as survived that political cheerleading, with the flavor of the original, and the wit and subtlety its music and lyrics, and leave the politics to the exhibitionists.
@ Bruce Hayden
“The working and middle classes are waking up to this. That’s a good part of why we got Trump. ”
• 100% agree.
• I’ll add that it strikes me that a significant percent of the “Ever Trumpers” are actually “Only Trumpers”.
• Meaning they were not voting before Trump – all dem/ rep candidates are same, not truly care about working man – and they are only voting because they perceive Trump as being different.
@ Abraxas “Here is a cartoon that expresses my feelings better than words can:”
NOTE: Powerline doesn’t allow hotlinking (per the error message I got), but you can cut and paste the URL into your browser search bar.
I saw TWIP this week also, and noted the first one.
The second one didn’t work for some reason.
Here is another thing that deserves a protest song.
Lomborg is addressing the Maui fire debacle in particular, but his points have wide applicability.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/08/19/we-are-not-learning-bjorn-lomborg-says-politicians-hide-behind-climate-change-to-duck-responsibility-for-failures/
Except that global warming (of the anthropogenic variety) is not a real problem: the agitation and grifting about it is. IF there is indeed a looming disaster from natural causes heating the Earth, we can’t do anything to stop it, and need to focus our efforts on mitigating the consequences — because that’s the smart thing to do.
Don Surber pulls out all the stops in addressing some of the Anthony h8ers. (h/t SusanM at AccordingToHoyt)
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/nr-chooses-communist-song-over-rich?publication_id=1115457&post_id=136040027&isFreemail=true
J. E. Dyer celebrates Anthony’s viral hit for many of the same reasons most people do, but she also references an analogous situation from much earlier.
Both posts are worth reading in full, here are some (not very) short excerpts.
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2023/08/15/one-guitar-announces-itself-to-the-world/
https://libertyunyielding.com/2014/11/09/one-guitar-25-years-fall-berlin-wall/
Now, nearly 10 years later, we can see clearly that Americans are NOT free, and we know now that they were not as free as they had thought they were in 2014.
Today, America IS the place that IS organized to repress freedom. Today, the Left has nearly succeeded in remaking America into the “ugly, brutal, and predatory” reality of the false image they tried to foist on the world during the Cold War.
Will Oliver Anthony’s one guitar be the tipping point that finally inspires the ordinary people (Hilary’s “deplorables”) to tear down the metaphorical wall of tyranny that was moved from Berlin to Washington DC, built and maintained by the Rich Men (and women) North of Richmond?
Dyer’s invocation of the past Communist parallel to the present America invites a comparison to this recent post from Powerline’s Scott Johnson, which excoriates General Flynn for making a comparison of America today to the conditions in Germany that led to Hitler’s ascension and enabled his genocidal actions.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/08/flynns-fatuity.php
However, the Powerline commenters overwhelmingly disputed Scott’s point of view, and agreed with Flynn: not discussing the analogous (NOT identical) factors of then and now is guaranteed to ensure that Bad Things Happen, even if they don’t involve cattle cars and poison gas.
“Maybe it’s you. That just said, “Okay, here’s my child,” — and put on their masks, kept them out of school, and sent them to the gender-bending doctors to be mutilated.
The pandemic pulled the curtain back on the lies told by the establishment. People are seeing that EVERYTHING is a lie. Everything about Covid was a lie. 100% lies. That’s hard to do.
If the men north of Richmond and their lying partners in the media and tech can lie that egregiously and relentlessly about Covid, what else is a lie? Oh, global warming. Oh, vaccines in general were never tested as we were told. Oh, those job and inflation numbers look pretty strange. Oh, the FBI is a criminal organization. And the CIA. And the DOJ. And the IRS. And the ATF. Damn, the whole freaking government is a lying, stealing, cheating crime family.
And the great financial crisis. The crooks walked. Hmmmmm. What was that about insider trading and Congress? Freaking crooks. As are Hunter and Joe. And Hillary and Bill. And Barack and his husband. Oh, btw Epstein didn’t kill himself. And the criminal pedos are still free and protected.
And BLM riots weren’t peaceful. And an election that was blatantly stolen.
Men aren’t girls, the border isn’t secure, blue cities are crime spree hellholes, white supremacy isn’t a thing, but Antifa is.
Everything Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth say is a lie. Including “and” and “the”. Every damn thing. And hard working nobodies in the sticks are figuring it out. No matter how much bullsh&t they get buried under.
I don’t know for sure what Flynn meant. But, to push a metaphor, when the temperature of the pot starts to rise, the frog has some considerations. If he jumps, he’s going to have to leave pretty much everything behind. Might even have to shuck his clothes. Doesn’t know what is out side the pot. Wait another day. Tomorrow might be okay.
And then there’s the favorable interpretation of slightly menacing incidents….
Because, if you really Get It, you’re going to have to do some scary and serious stuff from which there is no return
There’s no way to get back into the pot.
Yale grad Kevin D. Williamson
==
I don’t believe Kevin Williamson ever attended Yale. As far as I’m aware, he spent all of his first 27 years living in Texas and has returned there in recent years.
About 12 years ago I think both major U.S. parties realized they needed to work together to ensure the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements don’t come to realize they (Tea Party and Occupy) both share a common enemy. Now add to that group the Bernie Bros., earnest supporters of BLM (not the grifters), Ever Trumpers…
More and more people understand the “Richmen in Richmond” are not on their side. Thus far the ruling class has been effective in fomenting internal squabbles among the groups that oppose them to keep them fighting among themselves.
Risky stuff. It leaves a huge vacuum for a leader with a populist message to rise up and unify those groups.
People will interpret this song in line with their preexisting political ideology.
There are those that believe this song affirms the policies and ideology of Bernie Sanders (like an individual I saw on youtube). Others will find this song affirms their conservative socio-economic beliefs (in line with many of the comments on Neo’s blog).
This song may cause folks to reflect upon today’s situation – which is a good thing – but unfortunately I do not think it will change anybody’s mind about who they will support when in the voting booth.
I don’t think so, the occupy were just a tool of larry fink, and other parties, of course the people who forced the bank crisis, frank and dodd, then imposed rules they had no care about following, holder of course, represented not only 17 of the gitmo terrorists, but purdue that had addicted a generation, with oxy,
admittedly with hindsight we see that the koch brothers were not our allies, either,
so it’s a lot of pogo ‘we have met the enemy, and it is us’
“ There’s no way to get back into the pot”
True, but I don’t think fighting back is conscious effort people make. Some just have it in them.
Avi
First, you have to convince yourself, which is to say allow circumstances to convince you, that there is something happening which requires the sacrifices of jumping.
It is not uncommon for humans to rationalize various issues which, while possibly ominous, aren’t that far off the usual and expected.
Not like “Red Dawn”. But if you find a judge–related to the head of the Township Board of Commissioners–has allowed qualified immunity to the building inspectors who required you to do something to your property which resulted in a $110k fine from the state DNR, what do you do? (I hope this is fiction). And how does the implication of that affect the view of the next quiet, on-paper, no-fuss atrocity?
You’re out a chunk of cash so upsticks and finding someplace else is difficult. Are you supposed to shoot somebody? No lawyers in town want to get crossways with the judge? The sheriff’s deputy you see most often coaches your grandson’s soccer team. So…?
Okay, so this is not all that common. Happens but…stuff happens.
Looks around. It’s only happening to Jews. Now what?
Jimmy Dore, an old school lefty, covered this song. There are sane leftists who are not establishment shills.
stan:
Covid 19 killed a f’n lot of people, premature deaths.
An uncomfortable truth.
Learn what “everything” and “all” actually mean.
Or not.