Rich Men North of Richmond

The fact that it's a random list of grievances, blaming DC for all of them, solidifies it as right wing propaganda. The lede on every right wing propaganda network and podcast, every day, is that everything that is wrong with your life - no matter how vague and unrelated they all are - is the fault of someone else, and you should be mad at them. And oh by the way, it's all the dark people's fault. Go get 'em!

 

It's not just you. "Richmond" is a Civil War dog whistle, no credible argument against it. DC is north of many places. He's a song writer and he couldn't think of anything else that rhymes with "rich men?" It's because, "Rich men" is the term that was rhymed with Richmond. Richmond was the point, not rich men. DC liberals were the target, not wealth. It's not the money in DC, but the power. Rich men in NYC have more money and more control over our lives that those in DC, who can barely get anything done (Dems can't because the pubs obstruct; pubs can't because they don't want to - there's no profit in it for them to govern).

 

Where's the line between righteous anger and promoting a culture of grievance and victimhood? Just whether we agree with the complaints at issue?

 

I guess that's a matter of opinion. I think his voice is nails on a chalkboard. Anything that twangs is gross to me, on many levels. Mostly it is just fake. It's a vocal affectation, nothing else. It's an intentional messaging, trying to sing like their fans talk. Look at all the British & Australian singers with outrageously sharp accents when they talk. None of them sing like that, because it's not natural. Billy Bragg obviously being one of the rare exceptions. Nobody naturally sings like Randy Travis, including Randy Travis. Adding the gargle staples effect on top of the twang affectation, is just beyond what my ears can take. And I love raspy voices. But only real ones.

 

That's...disturbing. For whom are you crying when you hear this heavily contrived agitprop? People who hate POC on welfare, or people who hate liberals in DC who took their ancestors' plantations away?

 

Sorry you are disturbed. It isn’t the specific words. It is the tone of the vocals and the sincere pain he exudes. I disagree with the implication of much of what he says in the song.

 

This is why this song - and all propaganda - is so dangerous.

It preys upon what some people feel. And then turns that anger against another group that is just as victimized, or more: like POC on welfare.

And there is no "agree or not" to it. It's a living falsehood. It's demonstrable facts - we keep government records for those who can't remember or never pay attention: we know exactly who wrote the bills that created the economic machine that crushes the working class, and we know exactly who voted them into law. And it's the same people these people embracing this song all voted for. That's the brilliance of the evil of the right wing: stabbing someone, in plain sight of the stabbing victim, and then telling them they were actually stabbed by that immigrant laying on the ground, who he just stabbed twice, 5 minutes ago. And they BELIEVE him, and go kick the immigrant rather than attacking the guy who stabbed them both, or even just going to the hospital.

 

I want to write a song about rich people north of Gettysburg, but I need something that rhymes with Gettysburg. Oh, wait, how about Antietam? "We Don't Need 'Em North of Antietam."

 

Cults are crazy. It’s their brand.

 

Sometimes I just don’t know if right wingers are liars or just ignorant. The often repeated meme of the obesity of people on welfare demonstrating that they have a lot of money for food, is always either a lie or ignorance.

Most poor people are overweight, not because they eat extravagantly, but because they can’t afford healthy food. Healthy food is the most expensive food. You don’t have to be a professional nutritionist to know that cheap food is crap food, made of the cheapest ingredients, heavy on fat, sugar, and barely digestible filler, all of which is stored in the body as fat. They also cannot afford to go to a gym, to buy any exercise equipment, and they don’t have the education to know how to maintain a healthy body in the first place. They don’t have youth or adult sports leagues in their neighborhood, and they couldn’t afford them if they did. When a rich person is fat, it’s because they overindulge or choose unhealthy food over the healthy food they can easily afford, and choose not to exercise; when a poor person is fat, it’s because they eat the horribly unhealthy cheap food they can afford, and they have no means by which to exercise.

 

People are so worked up because this is a call to violence. Because if you pay any attention to news at all, you know that right wing (“white wing”) extremists have been identified by every government agency as the number one terrorist threat to the country for decades, and those threats have been accelerated into violence at an increasing rate ever since Trump went into politics. They have been committing violent act after violent act, most of them hate crimes, all of them hate crimes if you include liberal or government employee as an ethnicity. Terrorists use mass media to sow hatred and anger, and prepare their brownshirts to enact violence. This song is nothing but a manipulation tool in that campaign.

 

Man writes song attacking the system for always keeping him down, and kicking him when he’s down, never giving him a chance to better his station in life by getting what he works for and deserves.

The system offers man who wrote song $8 million dollars that would allow him to overcome all the things he attacked in his song AND put a lot of that money to work helping others to overcome it.

Man tells system he doesn’t really want or deserve anything he passionately sang about wanting and deserving.

Non-right-wingers point out this is because it was never about what he wants or thinks he deserves; it was only about racism.

Right wingers cheer anyway, because to them, absolutely nothing in life matters except “Us right/Use wrong!”

 

No it’s not. It’s huge with college-age white racists.

 

To repeat a common theme, I don’t know if you are being untruthful or actually don’t understand the concepts involved here.

You are applying a scientific or otherwise unrelated definition of tolerance to the concept of social tolerance.

There is no social tolerance for racism, white nationalism, bigotry, misogyny, ageism, cruelty, or anything else that is empirically bad. Social tolerance does not include accepting terrible behavior. That’s not tolerance in a social sense.

Social tolerance is having sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices that differ from or conflict with your own, provided they are legal and do not harm others or deny them of their legal rights or protections.

To offer an example: as a decent person, I am tolerant - meaning accepting - of this person’s voice, attire, musical style, facial hair, etc., all of which are quite different from mind, and all of which I find somewhere on the spectrum of nausea-inducement. I don’t like any of it, but I would never begrudge him his right to embrace all of those things. I would, in fact, argue and even fight for his right to be exactly who he is. I would not try to legislate against any of those things, nor mock him in the public square for being who he is. What I will not tolerate, and am under no moral obligation to tolerate, is the dripping racism and call to violence that saturates every line of this song.

You are clearly an intelligent person, and an educated person, so when you say things like this that are so blatantly and demonstrably false, you can see how my only assumption can be that you are being purposely untruthful.

 

If this song is a representative sample, it should be called “Alt-Right Country”.

 

Good grief, PD. Try reading #155 again and take it to heart this time. You are blowing up my blood pressure monitor from where you sit. I don’t want you to blow a gasket; speaking of which , I’m going back to the garage to make a new gasket #305299 for the old outboard since they are no longer available from the manufacturer. Chill. Oh, and before you apply your creative analytic efforts to #155, I did not say Suwanee Ribber and I did not try to dogwhistle Suwanee Ribber.

 

That line alone was worth reading the entire thread.

 

Ah, well that’s not disturbing. That’s not only understandable, I feel the same vibe from his expression (which is really saying something because I hate his voice). He has a gift for it, for sure.

I should not have attached judgement before getting your answer - sorry for making an assumption in absence of the information needed to do so.

 

I can certainly understand poor people getting fat from crap food. I had to change my diet a couple of years ago because of both gout and enlarged prostate. I quit eating all the crap food that I love (hot dogs, Krystal burgers, Whoppers, you name it) and started eating just healthy food. I lost 30 pounds, from 160 down to 130. My kinfolk thought I must be dying from some terminal disease.