We just passed the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, which the poster above commemorates. The Nazis, every year after they came to power, commemorated their failed coup attempt.
Of course, we know how this story goes. German politics were a mess in 1923, but by the early 1930s they were becoming more and more polarized and voters feared the choice was between the Communists and the Nazis. Parties in the center, like the SDP and the CDP were abandoned as voters flocked to vote against the left or the right.
The Nazis came to power, to Germany's everlasting discredit, and through Europe into murder and the world into war.
On Veterans Day Donald Trump, who never served a day in the military, posted this:
Animals don't hate, and we're supposed to be better than them.
Elvis Presley
"Bolshevism without a mask" Nazi poster from 1937.
As silly as it may seem to say, something (well, a lot of things) has been really bothering me about the current blather coming out of Republican quarters.
It is not that a conservative party, although it is unclear if that is what the GOP is anymore, would have nothing to say, but it's not saying it. I'm not hearing from any William F. Buckley's or George F. Will's on the merits of conservatism. George Weigel isn't breaking through to the audience. Politician wise, I'm not hearing the voice of a Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater being taken seriously. I was hearing a bit from Mitt Romney, but he's stepping away from the podium. Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie are still there, but they're not making it above the din.
I am hearing from a lot of candidates, local and national, who speak with short invectives, however. I won't bother with the Boeberts or Greene's but even locally it's pretty upsetting.
Somebody acting in anonymity (but with enough in the way of time and resources available to purchase signs supporting their blog) is accusing people of being "RINO's", as if they can define half the state's GOP that way based on their own assessment. The head of Wyoming's Freedom Caucus and at least one of its members calls Republicans they disagree with and the Democrats the "Uniparty". Our congressman purports to have knowledge that there's a "place in Hell for those who pursue policies that are intended to increase the price of food, energy, and housing" as if anyone anywhere has a policy that actually is intended to do any of those things.
And then there's Trump.
Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Cato.
Trump rages against his opponents. They're debased, insance, Marxists, fascists, and the like. It recalls the radical statements of earlier demagogues.
Here he stops at nothing, and in his vileness he becomes so gigantic that no one need be surprised if among our people the personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew.
Rather, it's campaigning on almost one thing, and one thing alone.
Hitler, Mein Kampf.
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.
Stalin.
And what is being expressed is hatred.
Hatred.
And that, more than anything else, is what unites the GOP increasingly with the spirit of fascism, and ironically enough, Communism as well.
It's not that conservatives or populists have nothing to say. Rather, they don't say it much, and only rarely as sort of a battle cry. Instead, their public image is based on hate. It's not all of us together, and we must find a way, listen to my ideas, but rather, it's us against them, they're vile, and must be destroyed.
Trump isn't arguing any policy positions. Instead, he spews hatred. His opponents, legal and political, are mentally incompetent, deranged, fat, etc. etc. He doesn't appeal to logic, but emotion, and the emotion he appeals to is hatred. People need to fear his opponents, as they are Der Untermensch, i.e., subhuman.
Indeed, the entire yapping class appealing to the populist in the GOP, which is now a populist party, appeals to fear and hatred in a radical way. The scary left wing intelligentsia is going to insert itself into the schools, or vaccines, or whatever, and turn us all into drones, and your sons and daughters into debased freaks.
Authoritarian movements that have little else going for them other than fear have always behaved this way. If you didn't support the Ku Klux Klan, Catholics are going to take over and give the country to the Pope and black men are going to rape your daughters. If you don't support the Nazi's, the Communist Slavic Jewish hoards are going to take over and rape your daughters. If you don't support the Communists, the big monied (probably Jewish, they always get the short end of the stick in this stuff) are going to control everything and starve your daughters. It's not our ideas against theirs, but rather us against them, and in the end, they must be destroyed.
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Trumpist populations tell us that Democrats are deranged to the extent of being Untermenschen. They must be destroyed. It's gotten so bad, that to merely call somebody a "RINO" is the equivalent of calling somebody subhuman. An entire Wyoming website, which moderate Republicans asked to unmask itself, exists only to do that, as if calling somebody a RINO in the context in which the position that seem to determine that would have left you out of the GOP mainstream in the pre Trump era, is preposterous. But it happens now all the time. No Democratic or moderate Republican position can be considered, as they are the hideous Untermenschen.
Indeed, hate has become such the defining factor, that all of the former standard which conservatives adhered to have gone by the wayside, although frankly they started to as long ago as Ronald Reagan. "Family values" are to be defended, but divorces and personal sexual misconduct mean nothing, because as long as one is a populist, your infidelities are irrelevant. Biden is corrupt because he's a Democrat. Trump is pure because he's a Republican. I'm not saying anything about either man, but defining their morality based upon their party is all the more that needs to be done.
I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.
Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Cato urged that Carthage be destroyed as a detraction. Hatred never serves humanity, but in the end serves one man.
If all a politician or public figure has to offer is invective, they should be disregarded. Moreover, if that's principally what they have to offer, they should be cast aside.
Hate isn't a policy. It's a vehicle, more often than not, for the person publically spewing it.
I've met 2/3ds of our people in Congress from this state, and I may have met, but just don't remember doing so, the remaining 1/3d.
I can't say that I know any of them well, but I have spoken to the ones I've met, before they were in office, in a different context. One in a commerce sort of sense, and the other just as two folks sort of sense.
All of them are very smart people.
I frankly don't believe that they believe a lot of what they're saying. When they stand up and talk about "Biden's radical green agenda", I don't believe that they believe what they're saying. I've strongly suspected that in at least one case the speaker would be speaking for a green agenda if they had remained in their native state. And when one stated that just recently, it was combined with waiving the banner of a new mask mandate that hasn't happened and isn't going to happen, and the speaker, who is no dummy, knows that.
I think they're throwing red meat to the dogs.
They're pitching to people at the top of the GOP Central Committee here and its supporters. Those people actually do believe what they say, which raises the bigger question of how they believe it. Some of it may be due to narrowed horizons, both professionally and in reality. I.e., if you never leave your village, you'll only have the views of the villagers and the village occupations.
An example of that, I think, is the discussion on electric vehicles. All the time, around here, I'll hear somebody say something like "we'll they'll never work here. . . har, har, har."
Well, they will, and are. Technology is advancing. On top of it, they don't build cars and trucks for Wyoming. Not once, in the entire history of the automobile industry, as somebody in the industry said; "so what do Wyomingite's want? We better build that".
No, they build cards for Denverites, and Daytonites, not people who live in Bairoil.
But if you live in Bairoil, and always have, well how would you know better?
Politics at a certain level evolves from a concern of working people, who man it at the lower levels, to people who have a lot of time on their hands. That's why, at one time, the legislature, which meets in the winter, was made up of ranchers. Shipping had happened, and gathering was yet to come. Hanging out in nice warm hotel rooms in Cheyenne sounded okay and they had the time to do it.
That's repeated in the party in a different way today
At the upper levels today, we have a rancher of course, but we also have figures who are retired military officers. The latter is particularly weird for the isolationist anti-government GOP today, as how somebody who spent their entire career in the most expensive branch of the government living off the government teet would suddenly hate the government hard to explain, but whatever. They have the time.
People on county commissions, etc., they don't have the time.
So the closed circle at the top, fed by the disgruntled populist at the bottom, is convinced of extreme right wing positions.
Those at the very top of elective office, not universally, but pretty commonly, repeat the positions.
But is it out of genuine belief?
I doubt it.
Indeed, of the top elected officials at the state and the national level from this state, there's only one that I think might believe part of what that individual is saying, but only part, and I don't know how that person, whom I once knew somewhat, got there. Back in the day, I would have thought that person, based upon that person's circle of friends, to have been a liberal Democrat.
I may have well been wrong. If they were really right wing, they kept it to themselves.
Which brings me to cowardice.
I'm not referencing that person today, but many others.
I can't say how many times I've been somewhere where somebody said a racist joke, or made an extreme political comment, and nobody said anything. Probably thousands. Most people don't want a fight or an argument, and most people who do want a fight or an argument are complete and total assholes. Indeed, people who say "well I want to be a lawyer because I like to argue", and mean it, are actually saying "I'm a total asshole".
It's so much easier to simply smile at a comment and move on it isn't funny. When the local anti-maskers made comments, that's what we often did around here. And when the Trump supporter in the lunchroom spouts off, figuring everyone else agrees, it's easier just to take a drink of coffee and comment on something dull, like football.
But at some point, you should say or do something.
The Apaches used to have a custom in which hey'd sacrifice a young woman annually. It endured into the horse era, during which, at one annual such event, a young man rode in, scooped up the young woman, and carried her off. The event never happened again.
That took courage, but it changed the course of things.
On rare occasions, I've seen people do that in conversations. Simply state what they believe when that belief seems to be contrary to the audience, and people immediately start agreeing with the stated.
In others, it makes the person a pariah.
But in an era in which we're asking why has so much gone wrong, and much that's being ignored is going wrong, it's time to say something.
The advice here isn't Bayard Rustin's "Speak truth to power" maxim, and it sure isn't Noam Chomsky's "speak truth to the powerless", but rather, simply; Speak the truth.
This, and it's not a new theme here, took a look at how we got to where we are, where populism has taken over the Republican Party. How, the question ultimately is, can people who see the plaint truth about Donald Trump and his attempt to subvert American democracy continue to support him?
Most of the comments along these lines never really are able to answer the question. Indeed, we haven't here. That's because they all assume that most people are rational, and this is at least somewhat true, and that most people will yield to truth in the end, which is also somewhat true. Indeed, droves of people have left the Republican Party and become independents. However, and this is important, more than 1 million voters across 43 states switched to the Republican Party from 2021 to 2022, and that trend hasn't stopped.
That is, while a lot of educated "country club" or middle class conservatives have abandoned the GOP, a lot of people are coming in. And they're coming in during the current political atmosphere.
Which leads us to this.
What if it isn't the case, deep down, that populist Republicans, who now control the GOP, aren't aware that Donald Trump is lying about losing the election. What if, at least deep down, and on some level, they know that he's lying.
What would that mean?
Well, what it would mean is that the disaffected class that intends to vote for a Rich Man north of Richmond while complaining about Rich Men North of Richmond have reached to the point where they no longer regard their class as legitimate, and therefore what they are doing and supporting as completely legitimate, because the other view doesn't count.
Consider this Facebook exchange I saw the other day:
"I almost lost my Corvette and my cat!"
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Their bullshit needs to end through constitional revolt.
Maybe Republican voters aren't really willing to believe every sort of lie, or at least not in the way baffled pundits of all types are baffled by, myself included.
Maybe they know they're lies, but lies that seem, to them, to serve a greater truth, in their view.
And that's what is really scary.
The first comment, boxed in the way some people like to do with Facebook comments, refers to one of Joe Biden's endless blundering statements, which in this case related his bad experience with a house fire to what occured on Maui. It was a really goofball thing to say. But the fact of the matter is that there isn't anything Joe Biden says that populists don't hate, even things they would have fully supported if he hadn't said them. And that's because Biden, who started off a centrist, went to the center left, and then went fully to the left, is a representative of Democrats, whom the populists essentially see asn objectively evil.
This is almost impossible for main stream and conventional Americans to grasp, and even though in the populist movement who fairly clearly hold these views would be unwilling to usually admit them in this fashion, but all the signs are there.
Class reduction through objectification is an old and very established thing.
The Communist Parties of the world practiced this extensively. They represented "the workers" or "the people". Their opponents were exploiters of the people, in their propaganda. Ultimately, that meant that they could be killed in the millions, as they weren't really people.
The Nazis did this with the Jews, as well as with the Slavs. Jews and Slavs were lessor, in their propaganda, although bizarrely they were also supposed to be a super crafty opponent. Never mind that none of that was true or that any rational thinking would dispel such an absurdity, that's what they promoted and that's what the German people adopted, resulting in the death of millions.
Lesser fascist movements and near fascist movements held the same view of Communists, and to some extent Socialist, that the Nazi Party did, which hated Communists along with the Jews (and indeed generally assumed that all Communists were Jewish), and therefore felt perfectly justified in suppressing them to the point of death if necessary. Of course, in many places, the Communists (who weren't majority Jewish by any means) felt the same way about right wing movements. At any rate, therefore, this produced severely repressing governments like that of the Italian fascists or Spanish Francoist, who nonetheless quite frankly enjoyed widespread popularity with large segments of their people.
And notable with all of these movements, they reduced their ideology, at the street level, to a single man.
The Nazis of course reduced it to Hitler. Indeed, the Führerprinzip held that everything should "work towards the Führer. People didn't really know what Hitler might want to do on any day to day level, but they generally could grasp it, and that was the thing to do.
Hitler in armor as "The Standard Bearer". I doubt Hiter ever rode a horse, and certainly not one like this, but goofball uberheroic portraits of autocrats is an autocratic thing. Witness all the portraits of Trump as a Revolutionary War patriot when he was never in the service.
And the Italians did that with Mussolini,
Typical portrait of Mussolini, focusing on his face with his jaw jutting out defiantly. To most people, he looks like a jackass, but to true believers, this was his admired visage.
And the Reds in Russia did it twice, first with Lenin, and then with Stalin, before becoming sufficiently entrenched that later leaders didn't need a personality cult.
The PRC did it with Mao, and North Korea has done it with every single one of their leaders.
And all of this is highly instructive.
Reduced to a man, thinking over the complicated failed thesis that these movements put forth was unnecessary. People didn't read Mein Kampf. Most Russians at the time of the Revolution could barely read, and they weren't going to sit down a read a pamphlet by a British Library Butt Sitter. Most Chinese weren't going to bother with Mao's Little Red Book. People just figured that they weren't doing well, and it was somebody else's fault, and it seemed that the Communist, the Fascists, etc. ,had their back and grasped it, at least right up until the state came for them, or conscripted them, or confiscated everything they had.
Or, by way of another example, it may very well be the case that Southern secessionist grasped that blacks were in fact people and equal people at that. Their actions clearly demonstrated, that, from entrusting their children to slaves for care to the Jeffersonian expedient to wifely succession.
In each of these instances, it should be noted, the supposed "difference" was emphasized as an excuse for acting with extreme bias towards the other group. Nazis called their opponents Untermenschen, "below people". American Southerners certainly portrayed blacks that way.
German propaganda poster, which appears to portray Soviet paratroopers as Untermensch.
Have you listed to the comments of populists?
Hearing random Republicans accuse Democrats of being Marxists and Socialists is common. Republicans that don't toe the extreme right wing line are "RINOS" or Democrats, with that being said as if being a Democrat meant you were an Untermensch, which pretty much what is meant. Even run of hte mill Republican conservatives in Congress, who at one time would have "disagreed with my distinguished colleagues" now hurl the invective "Democrat" or accuse somebody of "supporting Biden's radical. . . " as if there's any truth to the accusation. It's pretty much the same thing as a Communist in Stalin's ear accusing somebody of harboring incorrect views, of a Nazi accusing somebody of being Jewish, or of a pre-1970 Southerner claiming that "somebody has a 'nigga' in the wood pile", without any credit being given, respectively, to 1) harboring different views isn't a criminal act, 2) being Jewish isn't either, and 3) having African American ancestry (which a huge number of Southerners do) isn't shameful, except for the compulsion that ancestry may indicate.
I fear we're here:
And if we are, that answer the question of why criminal activity doesn't phase some Trump supporters.
Now, this doesn't explain it all. Some of it is the phenomenon of extreme frustration with having been long ignored. Some of it is a long-running American belief in conspiracy theories. Some of it is the disbelief that thing could have really gotten so astray, which would mean, in part, that we let them go so badly. But not all of it, and not all populists.
The question is, therefore, how large is this group, and what does that mean? If Trump takes the Oval Office a second time, it will be disastrous, although to what extent, cannot yet be told.
Rich Men North of Richmond, which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not because it's good.
It is, as of this writing, on Billboard's Hot 100.
The ballad is played by Oliver Anthony, a genuine blue collar Virginian, apparently. All of his music videos seem to be filmed in a heavily wooded lot, which also appears to be genuine, although the rural South provides a certain cache in country music to such an extent that a Canadian band has even affected it, calling itself The Dead South. All of Anthony's music is played on a Resonator Guitar, a type of guitar I normally call a Dobro. I associate resonated guitars with the blues, not with country music, so this is a bit odd in and of itself.
How I imagine a guitar with a resonator properly being used.
Fans have gushed on the "return" of "real" or "authentic" country music, and this may indeed be the first genuine example of authentic country music to become a big hit in decades. Even 1st Lt. Austin von Letkemann, the author (host? mc?) of the wickedly funny Army satire series Mandatory Fun Day mentioned it the other day, as a real fan, citing Colter Wall at the same time. Wall is authentic, that's for sure, but in a different genre, genuine Western, i.e., cowboy, music.
But I don't think it's the music that boosted Anthony's song to the top of the C&W charts. It's the content. Consider the lyrics:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Rich Man North of Richmond, it might be noted, comes hard on the heels of In A Small Town, by Jason Aldean.
Consider its lyrics:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough
Well, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they're gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck
Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Full of good ol' boys, raised up right
If you're looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
Ooh-ooh
Try that in a small town
Aldean, I'd note, isn't from a small town. He's' from Macon, Georgia, population 150,000 or so, so it's a mid-sized city. And In A Small Town isn't real country, but rather country and enjoyed the same popularity.
Both of these songs immediately became populist anthems. So much so that none other than liberal economist Robert Reich, whom this blog has an obvious love/hate relationship, just posted on the song, with frankly a typically disappointing analysis.
Reich offers his view, but he's wrong on what's going on here, at least in part, and certainly wrong on the fix. Like other left wing economists in the United States, Reich is a corporate capitalist, which is also what all the right wing economists are. Reich correctly believes that the system has gone wonky to the detriment of the working class (whatever the current working class may be), but he fails to grasp, as nearly every economist in the United States and perhaps the Western World, or maybe even the planet, that the economy is supposed to serve average lives and average lives come first. I.e., it's 1) my life and; 2) I need to work. Not I'm a worker in a glorious worker's state and work will exalt me, or I'm a consumer in a glorious consumption state and consumption will exalt me, which are effectively the flip side of corporate capitalism.
So what's going on here?
Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't. Neither right nor left economists get it. For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.
Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all. Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).
Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics. Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist. He can't be considered one, however. He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.
1. 39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏
2. As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony
3. I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it.
Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it
4. As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛 the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥
5. And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.
And there are a lot more.
Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:
1. He has "an old soul".
2. The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.
3. He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.
4. He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).
Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .
There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy. Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now. One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.
Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.
But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.
If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pudits claim, its definately not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.
The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion. People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?
Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.
One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.
Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't. Neither right nor left economists get it. For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.
Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all. Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).
Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics. Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist. He can't be considered one, however. He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.
1. 39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏
2. As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony
3. I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it.
Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it
4. As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛 the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥
5. And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.
And there are a lot more.
Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:
1. He has "an old soul".
2. The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.
3. He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.
4. He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).
Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .
There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy. Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now. One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.
Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.
But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.
If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pundits claim, it's definitely not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.
The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion. People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?
Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.
One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.
A meme version of the economics of the 1950s. . . dealing with more than economics. This depiction of the 50s drives commentators nuts, who decry it as a myth, but there's more than a little truth to it, both in what it states, and in what it otherwise depicts.
Americans tend to look back to the 1950s as some sort of golden age, and have a really mythologized view of the era. Be that as it may, in the 50s, most men could in fact support a family on their income alone, and not just from white collar jobs but from blue collar jobs. Not only could most men do it, but most men did do it. As late as the 1970s, a lot of husbands actually objected to their wives working, whereas now most married women not only do work, but must work. Perhaps an error in here, however, is that in the 50s that a lot of people were going to college. In reality, in 1950 only 7.3% of men had a college degree and only 5.2% of women did, which by 1960 was 10.3% and 6% respectively. This means, however, that a university degree was like gold. Of interest, both of my mother's parents had university degrees, which is phenomenal given that they obtained them in the early 20th Century. Neither of my father's parents did. Also of note, my mother had a college degree, an AS, but she obtained in the 1970s and was not a high school graduate due to the Great Depression, where has my father had a DDS and his brother and one of his sisters attended university in the 1940s/1950s.
The 50s through the early 1970s really reflect post World War Two conditions, however, and might not be the best era to look at. The 40s can't be looked at either, due to World War Two, nor can the 30s, due to the Great Depression. You really have to get back to the 10s and 20s for economies to compare to, with some comparison from later decades. Any way you look at it, however, a lot more families were supported from a single, usually male, income, but it was also the case that a lot more women always worked than is recognized.
Myths have power, however, and they also reflect aspects of reality as a rule. Beowulf may not have slain a dragon in Sweden, but a warrior named Bear (Bee Wolf) probably was an early Scandinavia warrior vassal of note. There really was a big battle at Troy, and it probably did start off as a totally juvenile spat over a girl that somebody regarded as a babe, although it's likely there was more to it than that. Arthur wasn't a chivalric knight, but somebody the legend was based on, probably was a British Roman who did take on the invading Teutons in defense of Roman Britain heroically before going down on a battlefield. There was indeed an era, not long ago, when a high school education could bring a person a living wage for not only the graduate, but a spouse and kids, and provide a middle income life.
And there was also a time during which, as harsh as the reality is, that you weren't in grocery store lines behind people who are paying for food with assistance, but who had money for tattoos, and who have suspended any regard for their personal appearance.
This is all obvious to people who are barely eeking by, but who know that their grandparents, with no more education than they have, did relatively well.
To add to it, although only subtly grasped, people are also aware, even as they participate in it, that the country's become a moral sewer. The problem, in a way, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is uncommon, but rather than he is common in a way. Only the rich, of course, used him as a procurer for teenage prostitutes, but the entertainment industry is essentially a society wide procurer for cinematic prostitution that has become increasingly debased.
All that does involve wealth, but part of the underlying tone, and one that people like Reich can't seem to grasp, is that the American political left insists that it all conduct be accepted and each person's choices, no matter how self-destructive, anti-natural, debased, or weird, be celebrated. People very well know that the entire movement to support surgical gender mutilation of children is wrong, for example, as well as deeply weird, but the left demands it be celebrated, just as it insists that what nearly amount to homosexual sex manuals be placed in public schools with public funds. It is not that the standard bearers of the right are moral people. Trump is a serial polygamist. It's rather that there's a difference in promoting immorality and demanding that it be accepted and distancing policy from it, even if you engage in immorality yourself. Double standards abound, but what the unhappy class is looking at doesn't seem to be grasped.
Indeed, as the left repeatedly fails to grasp in regards to the that unhappy class, is that the class itself may not really apply the standards it mourns all that deeply, in regard to at least some of them. Critics from the left, like Robert Reich, keep branding the movement "Christian Nationalist", as do some critics from the right, such as Susan Stubson. They're both in correct. Christian Nationalist take the practice of Christianity really seriously. Southern Cultural Christian Populist, however, have a world roughly framed out by the Southern Baptist Convention, the pre-1970 Episcopal and Methodist Church's, or the African Methodist Church loosely in mind, but as a framework, not as a fortress. Put another way, Christian Nationalist look to the Apostolic age and know what that meant, and aren't really comfortable completely with people who sit around watching NASCAR on Sundays. Southern Cultural Christians are perfectly comfortable with watching NASCAR on Sundays and attend church for weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas. They aren't the same thing.
But what both are uncomfortable with, but in different ways, is a liberalism that insists that genders can be changed, and there's nothing wrong with books in public schools that explore sodomy. That exceeds the boundaries of the loosely defined structure for Southern Cultural Christians and is definitely gravely immoral to Christian Nationalists, as well as frankly gravely immoral to any Christians of any stripe who are serious about what their faiths hold.
In 2008, I stopped at the liquor store on my way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer. It was late summer.
In the liquor store there were two young women, in their very early 20s, with a young man of the same age. One of the young women was holding a baby.
The girl, and that's really what she was, holding the baby was pretty, but in a trashy sort of way, and in the way that you know won't last. The other girl was not. Both young women were wearing t-shirts that were too small for them, and too tight to be decent. They were both wearing Daisy Dukes. The young man was shaking and incredibly disheveled. It was pretty clear that he was the father of the baby, equally clear that he and the young woman weren't married, and just as clear that he was a tweaker.
The pretty girl holding the baby had eyeliner and a proud visage, sort of like the pretty but trashy girls did back when I was in high school. They'd retained the eyeliner sort of make up that girls in junior high wore, back when I was in junior high, after girls of that age first started taking up makeup. Most girls abandoned that by high school, but the ones that were of a certain type didn't. That girl, the pretty one, was wearing an Obama for President t-shirt. I knew at that moment, well before the election, who would win.
The image that was on the girl's t-shirt. It wasn't "Hope" that they had a vested interest in.
Now, this isn't a comment on President Obama at all, but rather on something else, and that something else gets back to Rich Men North of Richmond.
The young man in that group is likely dead by now. Tweaking in his early 20s, it's unlikely he survived another fifteen years. The girl who the mother likely is, and if she was 21 then, she's 36 now. She's also likely in the 300 lbs category the song referenced, the signs of that already being there. And indeed, what she was supporting, and likely at least her female cohort, wasn't "hope", as Obama was espousing, it was government assistance. The child, now 15, has probably spent his or her entire life on it.
And that, in some vague sort of way, is what Oliver Anthony is lamenting.
All of these people likely descended from people who had held blue collar jobs. But a modern society reconstructed in a liberal image had turned them into wards of the government in some ways, and they weren't ashamed of it. Their attachment to any sort of conventional morality had lapsed, perhaps beyond repair, and they were reproducing without structure and raising a generation behind them, perhaps as they'd been raised, that recalls Philippians, "Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things." They didn't go on to be Megan Rapinoe, who would be just about their age, almost undoubtedly, but probably heavily tattooed, and living on the funds generated by others.
A large number of abandoned rust belt and other blue collar Americans are well aware of this, even if they aren't necessarily beyond some of the call of that themselves.
That's what liberal pundits are missing, and that's what populist, some sincere and some not, have picked up on.
El Paso Sheriff : What's it mean? What's it leadin' to? You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago, that I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you.
Ed Tom Bell : Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearing "sir" and "ma'am," the rest is soon to foller.
El Paso Sheriff : Oh, it's the tide. It's the dismal tide.
No Country For Old Men.
And that's why their message is failing.
And for traditional conservatives, as, well as liberals, there may now be, by this time, something even scarier at work. . .
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