I know this guy. I mean, not exactly this guy but pretty much.
i work with this guy…the type of guy to say “i got covid like a week before it got big, im the one who gave it to everyone at work, haha.”
…yeah.
I can’t tell you how many people walked into my store at the height of that shit and said, “Well, I got the wuflu. It ain’t nothin’. Just a dang cold.”
Or, “shew buddy, China bug is about to wipe me out buddy. I ain’t never been so sick in my life. cough cough cough Whatchu wearing’ ‘at democrat rag for? You can still smell a fart cain’t yuh?”
omfg… “shew buddy”…get out. get out of my town, out of my head XD too gd real
Corporate subsidies and corporate tax evasion are always in competition for big dollar values. Not to mention unpaid wages.
Meanwhile there are POOR people getting some FOOD??!??!?
I likes the song when I saw it on Tik Tok. Now I’m getting videos for right wing politics. I just thought it sounded good. Had no idea that it would become a nazi war cry.
Yeah, I get it. It’s like conservatives who use “Born in the USA” at political rallies. Sometimes you gotta listen to the lyrics
I just thought it sounded good
Listen to more music. His voice is mediocre and his message is disgusting.
Thanks for recommendation, love finding new music.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/t-MX5P1LCuw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
You could be mad at both… why is this a black and white issue? EBT abuse is real.
I have seen people literally sell the milk they get from EBT that was intended to be used for their baby. They bragged about being able to get the new iphone with it. I have seen homeless who buy bottled water on SNAP only to dump and resell the bottles so they could get cash for their addictions. Why would i not be mad at that just as I am at how corporate bailouts didnt help anyone except the top .01% of society?
Edit: so many hexbears. I dont care to respond to Kremlin bots.
No you haven’t.
No but I have seen homeless people picking up other’s littered recycling and taking it to the grocery store for the pennies deposit and that’s basically the same thing
Why would i not be mad at that just as I am at how corporate bailouts didnt help anyone except the top .01% of society?
You could start by having the tiniest bit of class consciousness instead of being a fucking serf.
If you are more angry against some poor people addicted to opioids than you are against the billionaire oligarchs who made their money off of addicting millions of people to opioids… you might have a severe case of myopia.
“Yeah, rich people take orders of magnitudes more money from society in order to reinvest it in very concretely destroying society further, but did you consider that someone who was over-prescribed opiods as part of a deliberate campaign by the Sacklers also take up money coping with the addiction they ended up with?”
Fuck off. There are important societal benefits to welfare, while corporate bailouts and the like are a cancer intended only to give the rich more money.
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” ― Anatole France
I have seen homeless who buy bottled water on SNAP only to dump and resell the bottles so they could get cash for their addictions.
If you’re going to lie, why make up the most nonsensical lie imaginable?
They saw a captioned video on the TikTok and actually believed it
I’ve seen this first hand a good few times - believe me or not because I don’t want to be too specific about my experience. You’ve got to be super desperate to pour out a 40 count of bottled water for $2-4, but people with nothing else but SNAP/EBT/etc funds will do it.
It’s sad and wasteful, but it’s also such a marginal thing compared to the Sacklers making the opium wars look like a prank that I don’t see how it can even brought up in the same conversation - except as deflection.
I’ve seen no shortage of people reselling water bottles with water in them (common especially in places with lots of tourists) but just selling the fucking bottles?
If you live in a state with a bottle deposit. The $0.05-0.10 is paid with the government aid, but returned as cash to the redeemer. It’s a poor and laborious return on investment, but doesn’t require actually hustling to sell water like that to tourists.
It’s such a comical lie, it’s almost insulting how bad it is
[Removed a bit too much hostility.]
I work with homeless people, many of whom have substance abuse issues. I’ve heard of all sorts of ways to get money for drugs (by the way, $2-4 isn’t going to get that done, not even close) and have never heard of anything close to this ridiculous.
It’s unbelievable. As someone else pointed out, with selling them you’re looking at $40, not $2-4, for standing at an intersection or in a park. And you don’t need to do it 30-40 times to get your fix.
They’re drugs Michael, how much could they cost, $3?
If opiods were as cheap as this person claims and as deadly as cops claim, the U.S. would have dropped them on Afghanistan, not encouraged the locals to grow them.
Gob, go run to the opioid store and buy mommy one fentanyl.
Surely it’s a bit, LMAO. How is that something that could even be witnessed? Where is the open air empt water bottle market even located? :data-laughing:
You can return empty bottles in some states, but it’s for 5 cents. The guy I spoke to last Thursday about his fentanyl addiction told me he needed about $100 to get his fix for the day back when he used. It’s just absurd.
If you’re going to lie, why make up the most nonsensical lie imaginable?
Worked for Reagan.
wow, I can’t believe someone would commit moral failures such as buying an iphone. the absolute outrage.
sounds like people shouldn’t be impoverished. that’s the conclusion you should be drawing, not this moral crusader thing of looking down your nose at impoverished people. If poor people are doing things you find distasteful, why not focus your energy on the people who create and spread poverty in the first place? and no, that’s not poor people. It’s the capitalists and their servants in the state
“The homeless people were on the streets making welfare fraud and I saw one of the welfare frauds and the welfare fraud looked at me.”
Yeah man, I live in a fucking nice apartment and make enough money that I can sit on my ass listening to racist fake bluegrass and posting on obscure Internet forums, my entire life rests upon a literal mountain of human suffering that I am blessed never to have to come into contact with. But you know what I’m really mad about? A homeless dude making $3.
Post hog liberal
Why would i not be mad at that just as I am at how corporate bailouts didnt help anyone except the top .01% of society?
Scale. The amount that the capitalists steal from you is orders of magnitude larger than whatever infinitesimal amount of tax dollars (well, more accurately, cents) you lose because an unhoused person used a loophole to buy drugs. Personally I can’t even imagine being angry at the two people you mentioned. Nor is there a realistic way to prevent those things that wouldn’t punish the 99% of people who just use EBT to buy food like its intended.
(I also really don’t care if people find a way to use EBT money to buy something else in general. Like I can’t think of a single reason to be bothered by that. And I life off EBT and only ever use it the “correct” way.)
Ah yes someone selling a few dollars of milk is definitely the same as a corporation stealing millions. Ah yes. These two are the same.
Wonder what the milk to iPhone exchange rate is these days
According to this person 1:1
Only if it’s whole milk, if it’s skim milk that there is lesser milk. I once saw a man drink that and his dick fell off. Need at least 3 of them milks for a iphone.
Idk man, just seems like small potatoes, and rare. Everyone has to eat and I find it doubtful that the skinny EBT amounts will fund an addict’s lifestyle significantly if the food is resold on the secondary market.
When it comes to government waste? It’s not nothing, but I think you’re right, it is technically small potatoes. But it isn’t rare, I’ve heard 2 very credible firsthand accounts. The result of one I’ve actually witnessed, repeatedly.
So idk exactly how that SNAP/EBT stuff works, but it’s just a certain amount loaded up on a card. I thought it was $200, and $200 went a hell of a lot further in 2017. My friend had a deal worked out with his neighbor, he’d “purchase” that $200 SNAP/EBT card for $100. They’d take that to the store & eat really, really well! 😂
We justified playing into it because if we didn’t buy it, they’d just sell it to somebody else. So why not us? Why shouldn’t we get the food? But yeah those neighbors wanted $100 CASH more than a $200 card to buy food. Is this behavior rare?..probably not as rare as you think. But definitely not common, and small potatoes.
That’s because a lot of Americans are under the impression that poor people are poor because they’re lazy, and not because they’re victims of oppression. They even cling to this absurd belief when they themselves are the victims of similar oppression. Must be lead in the water or something…
Actually it’s “forever chemicals” that they’re drinking https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/08/what-are-pfas-forever-chemicals-what-risk-toxicity
It is basically a slightly different variations of this
I’ve lived in very poor, rural, white American places, and it’s unironically all about skin color.
White and poor? It’s because the Democrats illegally steal your money with taxes, and any welfare is just you getting back less than you deserve.
Black and poor? It’s because you’re bad, and any welfare is the Democrats buying your vote and supporting you destroying the country with your violence.
Can confirm. There is no such thing as a “white welfare queen”.
It’s an outcome of puritanical Protestantism in the modern day. It’s nicknamed prosperity theology. Lack of wealth is seen as a moral failure, rather than a societal one. To be wealthy is to be granted abundance by God, and to be poor is to be punished for misdeeds in the eyes of God. It’s a cruel ideal that is deeply embedded into right wing American religious spaces.
Ah, yes. I remember Jesus explaining this in the lecture on the mount.
That sounds like something supply side Jesus would do
This isn’t political memes
Memes supersede the idea of political memes and encompasses them as well
Can I ask what made you feel the need to share your bitching and moaning about a meme you could’ve easily scrolled by with the rest of the class?
There was somewhere this could be posted where Americans can meme about their politics, this isn’t a “general” meme that people from outside the US would understand or care about.
Let me know what else I can do for extra credit.
Users will continue to post about things that affect them in their own location, which sometimes means posting about stuff that isn’t globally understandable.
It’s meme community lmfao, are you really crying about pedantics
xD
I legit actually like country music. Country music and punk rock. Both of them are just three chords and the truth
And man, when this song started, dude came in hot. I loved it. And then he went flying right off the rails.
A friend sent it to me, and at first I was hopeful… then I was like ‘hmm… strange choice of wording’ then I was like ‘oh, that was deliberate’ as it started to sound more like propaganda and less like a legitimate statement.
Exactly what I thought, the first verse and most of the chorus is legit working class anxiety. The rest is blaming other victims of the system, and while it references “rich men,” it contains no criticism of their wealth, the reference to taxes is more the opposite.
Well it kinda does criticize them, just only if they are located above a certain geographical point
honestly I’m still shocked people are buying into Reagan’s welfare queen nonsense 40+ fucking years later
Meanwhile in the real world: White people are the ones that have historically benefited the most from welfare programs and the “Welfare Queen” made 8k$ from her scheme.
Step 1 to believing welfare queen nonsense: Be racist and imagine said queen as being black
Or Hispanic or native American or an immigrant
Immigrants aren’t even eligible for EBT until they’re citizens but it doesn’t stop the whining from the right
Yeah, their propaganda outlets tell them that immigrants are eligible for everything and are indeed sucking up most of it.
When in reality all they’re eligible for is WIC if they’re pregnant or a young mother
Which is a completely fair and humane policy of course, but only if you see non-citizens as people.
And their children as anything more valuable to society than an anchor baby for their parents to stay in the US
Thanks for the heads up. That is a good song?
This song does such a good job with communicating the conservaive trinity:
- persecution complex
- mad about things they themselves voted for
- mad that the other is getting something, which is obviously undeserved
I’m ootl, what’s the song?
Rich Men North of Richmond, by Oliver Anthony
Rich men North of Richmond
Now I’m debating if I want to give him more views…
Thank you! I watched it!
I still have no clue what the deal is with it, since it doesn’t seem too different from any other hipster singing similar Country songs as that, but at least now I’ve heard it, so thank you
It’s not exactly a lyrical masterpiece.
Rich Men North of Richmond Lyrics
[Verse 1]
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away[Pre-Chorus]
It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is[Chorus]
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond[Verse 2]
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare[Verse 3]
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down[Pre-Chorus]
Lord, it’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is[Chorus]
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond[Outro]
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay“I wish the government would help people.”
Welfare exists.
“No, not like that.”
These lyrics reflect completely legitimate working class anxieties but supports the system that perpetuates them. “Taxed to no end,” the corporate tax rate has been brought down by lobbying for decades. The obese focus is on one hand legit since eating like shit is cheap, but it has blinders on about why that is, since it’s not convenient to their point.
These parts are all completely legit, although the lyrics are pretty bad. The same things have been said by much better voices in much better ways.
I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
Young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground
‘Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin’ them down
Overall it’s a great example of politics in America right now and how the working class is exploited by the right wing, as well as how liberal media, in the mainstream “dialogue,” fails to address the working class anxieties and instead focuses on the “controversy” of the song. The coverage isn’t really about the lyrics, it’s about the way people are interpreting them politically, and it all favors and perpetuates the exact same system.
So persecuted that a bunch of rich guys put their thumbs on the scale and ascended his music to the charts because they agreed with the message. The Rich Men North of Richmond want total control, no not the ones I agree with, the other ones.
Yeah, I totally agree with everything you said. The anxieties felt by people on the far right are real, they’ve just got a skewed perception of the cause of their problems.
In his interviews he claims he is a centrist but takes issues with teachers turning girls into boys and boys into girls.
So he’s a centrist™?
He may have been looking at globe when answering that one.
I have no problem with uncle craker having a differing opinion. But I do have a problem when you haul your differing opinion up the stairs of a public stage and actively try to hurt others.
id be willing to wager a $20 he used A.I. software and tweaked it for these lyrics. everyone commenting has been skirting, what i think, to be just a new trend in bait music.
The song is bad yet just cognitive enough to cause a stir.
Don’t forget how infectious stupid can be, especially when under pressure
As it’s relevant, let’s remember the video Hank Green posted on TikTok discussing how “for every word expressing a negative emotion in a headline, that increased the click-through rate to that article by 2.3%” and "if they make us disgusted, outraged, frustrated, scared? Then? Then we start thinking about clicking
It looks to reference this article from Nature:
Robertson, C.E., Pröllochs, N., Schwarzenegger, K. et al. Negativity drives online news consumption. Nat Hum Behav 7, 812–822 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4It’s easier to be a pessimist in a pessimistic situation than to be an optimist I suppose
Throwback to when @destineenstark gave an 8m3s discussion and analysis on TikTok spelling out how DESPITE Jason Williams swearing that all the video from “try that in a ‘small’ town” is all original and genuine, one thing is from Berlin, Germany, another from Plovdiv, Bulgaria, another stock image from somewhere else…
Someone here mentioned this dude lives in a camper as somehow proof of his working class bona fides. Yeah…he lives on 90 acres of land that he wants to build a farm on and raise livestock. Doesn’t exactly scream “working class.”
Not that it matters. He could’ve written this song sitting down at the bottom of a mine at the end of his shift right before he was diagnosed with black lung and it still would’ve been a shitty racist song.
Also has anyone looked into how this shit got so popular? At least Jason Aldean is a known guy so it makes sense that song got popular, but with all the talk of industry plants this Oliver Anthony guy feels extremely sus. Especially for some nobody living off the grid somewhere in the middle of Virginia
Yeah…he lives on 90 acres of land that he wants to build a farm on and raise livestock. Doesn’t exactly scream “working class.”
I mean props to them for using the well documented “equating farmer (owns land) with farmer (does farm work)”, it does usually trick people
not only this, but I think most of the people moved by this song are middle class anyway, and they don’t view owning property as any sort of privilege. I’ve already gotten one guy going “well actually the bank technically owns it and he’s paying it off.” Like bruh, have you ever talked to an actual poor person?
Rocking up the working class bank to get a loan for a 90 acre property
nah, i hear if you tell them you’ve never worked a day in your life and plan to suck the teat of the state forever, they’ll just give you a -1000% loan with a one cent down payment
and then you can just get your 90 acres.
remember, it’s the homeless who are the real landlords.
Absolutely a plant. Nashville has been an arm of conservative propaganda since at least 9/11.
Image Transcription:
Picture of Oliver Anthony singing with the caption above: “When the government gives more of your tax money to corporations but you’re mad someone used EBT to buy snacks”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please message and let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for images for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
Good job! Thank you for doing that.
The hero we need, but don’t deserve.
Fuck this bible thumpin reactionary hillbilly dork.
“But he goes after both sides!”
No, He punches down on poor people. Fuck off with that.
How do you punch down on poor people when you are living in a camper? His song is #1 on iTunes in the US/UK/Australia, #2 in Ireland and Canada. But it certainly couldn’t be because it resonates truth for the masses. No, it is because he is punching down on the poor and you are so smart to have figured it out. The few negative opinions I have seen about this song have been from people it is calling out. Tool.
Fat shaming, welfare queening, both sidsing, slack jawed backwater hick bullshit. I grew up around dipshits just like him. 1, they’re hypocrites that live off the system and haven’t been able to see their own cock without the assistance of a mirror in 15 years but because they’re white it’s ok. 2, Their “color blindness” and concern trolling falls away behind closed doors. It’s empty platitudes and surface level enlightened centrist garbage and nothing more. He doesn’t mean a word of what he’s singing and the people that “resonate” with it don’t either. It’s just 4 minutes of dog-whistling and right wing propaganda.
Their “color blindness” and concern trolling falls away behind closed doors. It’s empty platitudes and surface level enlightened centrist garbage and nothing more.
Color blindness itself is basically a way to decouple yourself from the political economy you are a subject of, which is in no way “color blind” and has more or less created these system of classification. I don’t even subscribe to DiAngelo’s individualist notions of “white fragility,” I think they can even serve to reify the notion of race, but people saying they’re color blind is such a dismissal to address the world around you.
Having something resonate with a bunch of people, and saying something true isn’t always the same thing. You can say a bunch of dumb bullshit about society that resonates with people but isn’t really true, just like how he does. You have just fallen for the grift. Get his dick out of your mouth.
Did you know that iTunes play counts are hidden and he has pitiful numbers on Spotify? He’s not popular. He’s being astroturfed by fascist propaganda channels. He’s the Sound of Freedom if it was a backwoods white supremacist hick.
Yeah I don’t think many people even use iTunes anymore anyway.
Fox news viewers are more likely to use iTunes because it’s the default app on the most authoritarian platform.
Most of the lyrics are benign and he has plenty of musical talent. But the lyrics that comment on politics are just incredibly brain dead, I don’t know what else to tell you. It is proposing welfare recipients as the reason for poverty, but what percentage of tax returns go to welfare? Obviously like, nothing. Additionally his own region of the country has some of the highest rates of welfare recipiency and if that was cut off does he really think that would improve anything?
I think the reason it leaves so many people with a bad taste in their mouths is because clearly a bait and switch is being performed. The first part draws your attention to the issues the singer is experiencing in his life such as low pay, then in the middle he goes on to talk about the “Rich men North of Richmond-” which if that is in reference to DC politicians then fair enough- in addition to welfare recipients as if those two things are related. He is just running defence for the wealthy by trying to distract people from the problems downstream from general extreme wealth inequality by trying to convince us fat people buying candy is causing everyone’s problems. Not to mention the humour there is in seeing someone that looks pretty severely overweight themselves calling out other fat people (much like how he is an apparent working class man going after over working class people.)
In my opinion the purpose of the song is just to turn poor people against each other so we won’t get any ideas about taxing the rich or anything like that. This is probably be reason why lovely people like Matt Walsh were early promoters of the song.
Aw yes because punching down never resonates with the masses. We’ve never elected politicians who distract from real issues by blaming poor people who don’t use them bootstraps…
How do you punch down on poor people when you are living in a camper?
You can totally hate on poor people while being poor yourself. I’ve seen it loads of times. The mentality is “I deserve welfare, but those people don’t! They’re cheating the system!”
The few negative opinions I have seen about this song have been from people it is calling out.
Short, fat people?
If you want the truth instead of the myth being pushed by the fascists who are astroturfing this guy all over social media, you can watch this video. It’s long, but there’s a ton of evidence in the first 10 minutes.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this song. And it is a real feeling that people have.
But it is also just whining.
The way he goes from talking about people without anything to eat and then talks about how someone that poor and fat shouldn’t eat a fudge round just seems to be a confused message.
Is big government the problem? Or is it lack of corporate regulations that then allow big companies to pay people less than what they need to survive.
Washington can do things to fix what he is talking about, but I would be shocked if he is interested in any policy that helps poor people or people drowning in student or medical debt.
It’s the worst of both worlds. They regulate away our right to unionize and strike.
What a great point. The regulations that are “acceptable “ are all about protecting the corporations.
And so is the corporate music machine that markets this excuse for a protest song, it’s just another culture war debate masquerading as politics.
I think he’s talking about people that have deliberately gotten themselves so fat that they get a disability check from the government for it. I definitely have a problem with where he’s placing the blame, but he’s talking about what he sees around him.
I’m from an area similar to him, and the number of people trying to line themselves up for government assistance as their career is substantial. I think it speaks to the hopelessness of the area we live in these days, on top of generational poverty. Things have always been bad around here, but they got a lot worse after mining, and its supporting industries fell apart.
I doubt there’s more than five people who have deliberately gotten themselves into disability by getting themselves fat. It’s incredibly hard to get onto disability and “I am fat” doesn’t cut it, you have to be able to not move to have even a chance
My mother is clinically diagnosed with a psychological disorder that caused hallucinations, anxiety and delusion. She tried to get disability for 30 years. She never got it even though she was institutionalized multiple times
Yeah. My brother in law has severe physical and mental disabilities which makes him unable to work at all and he can’t get on. Been trying for a decade and a half. It’s like these people think you can send a letter to the government saying “I am fat and lazy” and you’ll get money.
But…but…the Simpsons did it
No one has “deliberately” gotten morbidly obese.
I’m not absolving anyone of all personal responsibility for their body and what they put in it, but you should read about food deserts and similar. Many folks in this country ONLY have access to a McDonald’s and a gas station snack aisle.
deleted by creator
You said it yourself-- the reason those people need to make weird choices like trying to find any way to qualify for more government assistance is because historically their income came from industries that don’t and can’t exist anymore. They don’t have any other choice. The solution is actually more availability of assistance resources so people from those places can have enough stability to be able to make choices like learning new skills or moving to a new place. Why can’t people like him-- who see this happening to the people around him, his neighbors, his family-- empathize?
Living in a camper…off the grid on 90 acres of land that he owns and plans to build a farmhouse and raise livestock on. Working class my ass…
He bought it, yes, but technically the bank owns it yet. IIRC he says he owes $60K on it, and he’s paying it off. Very common practice.
With this debt, and working a standard job, he doesn’t have the means to raise livestock atm. So yes, he’s planning to, someday.
What does this even prove? If I take out a mortgage to buy a house, the bank “technically owns” my house. Does this make me not middle class?
Well, I don’t really care for the subtle, haughty undertones in your initial statements & acting like he’s some super well-off dude that has no problems. “off the grid on 90 acres that he owns”. He’s working on owning it, he wants to own land…and he’s going about it in a modest way.
But oh my god , he’s planning to do stuff on that land. Eventually. He plans to build a farmhouse & raise livestock. The sheer audacity of these life goals. That he doesn’t have cash money for, but is working towards.
Something tells me a house he builds is probably pretty different from a house you would build. It doesn’t have to be some crazy-ass expensive mansion.
You then casually dismiss this man by saying “working class, my ass”. He’s gone through his past, IIRC a lot of warehouse/industrial work. He dropped out of high school, got his GED. I think that pretty much fits into the definition of working class. It does get a little more hairy when exploring what is middle class, because it does mention “owning land”. Okay. But there’s also emphasis on education & white collar professions…that’s not this guy at all.
And maybe his dreams of owning land, building a home, and raising livestock are the main cause of his suffering. Life is exponentially harder for him because he is actively striving for life improvement, not living in a tiny box & watching Netflix on the couch.
I think that’s the main source of his frustration that shines in his song, he’s working hard & then what little he makes is “taxed to no end”. The system makes it so hard for average, ordinary people to get ahead and actually do something of value with their lives.
Hahaha haughty? “The poor renter looking down on the middle class landowner.” Lol, what the fuck are you talking about.
Tell me, have you ever lived in a rural area? Or been a farmworker? Because I really honestly can’t tell if I’m dealing with city folk who equate farmer who owns land with farmer who does farm work, or if I’m dealing with middle class folk who don’t understand the privilege of owning property, even if “the bank technically owns it.”
Something tells me a house he builds is probably pretty different from a house you would build.
Brave of you to assume I could even consider building a house anywhere, much less buying one.
And yeah I really don’t give a shit about his past or education. Is Jay-z working class because he grew up in the Marcy projects? Is Richard Branson working class because he left school at 16?
Life is exponentially harder for him because he is actively striving for life improvement, not living in a tiny box & watching Netflix on the couch.
This tells me everything I need to know about you. “Average and ordinary” for you and “average and ordinary” for me mean completely different things. Have you ever talked to an actual poor person?
Tool the band? :D
Yeah, because a group of people have never rallied up for something they believed is true but isn’t…wait…
Who tf is this anyway?
Apparently his name is Oliver Anthony.
Thanks friend!
The name of the song itself is a huuuuuggggge dog whistle, imo. Tells me everything I need to know about the target demographic.
How is that? I’d honestly like to know. It raises my hackles, but i can’t really explain why.
“Rich men north of Richmond”… I’m not american, so maybe that’s why i don’t quite get it
Pretty sure Washington DC is directly North of Richmond. I’m not from USA but that was my natural assumption about who he was talking about just based on geography and the US centre of power.
Probably has something to do with the Mason Dixon line (civil war border) and Richmond being the northernmost city of the South.
Richmond was the former capital of the confederacy. The Mason-Dixon line is actually at the Pennsylvania-Maryland/Delaware border.
North of Richmond is referencing Washington DC which has a large, fairly poor Black population and its suburbs, which are very rich and somewhat liberal.
I think its a bit of a stretch that he’s not just talking about Congress/Senate when referring to rich people in DC. That seems to be the most likely scenario.
Standard rightwingery refers to “them politicians in Washington”. When he tosses in a reference to the capitol of the Confederacy, it’s pretty clear who he’s pandering to.
I think you’re probably right due to the target audience of the song and who originally seeded its success, e.g. Matt Walsh. Although I suppose you can just argue that Richmond just sounds good put next to rich men? Though if they weren’t comfortable with it being associated with the confederacy though they just wouldn’t have used it.
If I was to disregard the confederacy association I would say it’s an OK name because if you’re referring to politicians in DC they’re a group that’s worthy of being called out. It would still be stupid though because of course many of their favourite politicians are, you know, politicians and also very rich (like Donald Trump but also many more who were born into great wealth and continued to be wealthy throughout their lives.)
Kinda weird when your song talking shit about politicians contains an explicit reference to the folks you’re talking about being north of the capital of the Confederacy.
Did not know that about Richmond haha
Dude is a full blown nazi, his YouTube channel had (possibly still has) a playlist of videos titled something like “videos to make ya think”, including stuff about the dancing Israelis conspiracy theory.
Anybody who uses that phrase is just so unaware of how they sound. To accuse everybody else of not thinking is just so arrogant. Oh look at me, I’m the one who figured it out, all I had to do was start thinking. No one else is thinking
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