SOMETIMES A SONG IS SIMPLY A SONG.

Reason's Christian Britschgi suggests that Rich Men North of Richmond is a lot of fun, provided you Don't Overthink Things.  "Regrettably, a lot of people are taking the song much too seriously indeed."

So it must be with revolutions.  "The revolutionary war is a war of the masses; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them."  Anthems such as Rich Men North might be part of that mobilization.

Still, some genuinely funny lines ("I wish politicians would look out for miners, and not just minors on an island somewhere," and "if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds") made funnier still by Anthony's incongruously soulful performance add life and originality to the song's generic populism.

Sure, one might quibble with the idea that food stamps are primarily responsible for driving up taxes and inflation, even if they are spent on fudge rounds. But the song's not meant to be a white paper. If you don't take it too seriously, you can have a fun and light-hearted time jamming out to the surprise viral hit.

Regrettably, people have begun to take the song much too seriously indeed.

Maybe. But maybe it's an anthem of the Long Emergency.

Karma is God’s hickory switch, and almost always applied with a cosmic chortle. Things come around when a certain excess cargo of cognitive dissonance breaks the brains of those just struggling to carry on. The country has had enough — enough walking-talking hypocrisies, enough trips laid on it, enough Tik-tok lectures from the nose-rings-for-lunch-bunch. We’re at the end of something and the beginning of something new. As in: an ass-beating is coming down.

Cue one Oliver Anthony, southern country boy with a flaming red beard and a new anthem for millions sore-beset by the relentless effronteries of the ruling elites.

Rolling Stone's Joseph Hudak, predictably, panned it, to James Kunstler's scorn.

These things listed above are…what? Things that Rolling Stone is in favor of? Pet causes? High taxes and obese people on welfare? And Mr. Anthony’s song is dissing them? You mean Right-Wing influencers shouldn’t mention Jeffrey Epstein’s name? Is it just plain rude… or does it stir up unappetizing questions that are better off not being asked (in polite company)? Kind of shows you where the battle lines are drawn now, doesn’t it?

Young people speaking their minds, getting so much resistance, but these days the old hippies are sort of the establishment. Or so does Federalist contributor Samuel Mangold-Lenett suggest.

Americans across the board are enduring a deep, existential pain. This ceaseless, throbbing ache brought about by innumerable woes spread throughout the nation — rampant economic insecurity, government corruption, cultural freefall, and anarcho-tyranny, just to name a few — characterizes our shared experience more than anything else possibly could.

Suicide rates and overdose deaths continue to increase; lawlessness, unaccountability, and corruption run amuck; economic conditions continue to rapidly worsen; and our culture is in an undeniable state of freefall while our life expectancies continue to decline.

There's a lot in that litany that could be organizing material for a more conventional, viz. socialist or communist left. "The only people who are able to escape this agony are those who can afford to insulate themselves from the reality the rest of us face — the wealthy elites, the rich men north of Richmond, Va., who make decisions that affect the rest of our lives."  Those leftists, however, found it more important to smear the messengers.

The moment right-leaning influencers like Matt Walsh and Dan Bongino stepped up to use their platforms to spread the song around was the moment the left had what they needed to attack the song that spoke to the common American.

Left-leaning rags like the Seattle Times and Rolling Stone began painting the song as a "right-wing" thing.br>
"Newly released country song ‘Rich Men North of Richmond,’ from unknown artist, instantly becomes right-wing ‘anthem’," wrote the Seattle Times for their header.

"Right-Wing Influencers Just Found Their Favorite New Country Song," reads the Rolling Stone's headline.

Within both, the song's lyrics are highlighted alongside the news that right-leaning people are gobbling it up, including all the people the left hates like Joe Rogan, Walsh, and Bongino.

Charles Lipson extends the discussion.

Although the title refers to “rich men” and makes a great rhyme, it is also a screed against control by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats, who live in Washington and its wealthy Northern Virginia and Maryland suburbs. “They all just want to have total control.” It is a powerful hymn to the forgotten, put-upon working man, sung with a full-throated, gravelly voice and accompanied solely by Anthony’s acoustic, resonator guitar.

The lyrics are as moving and authentic as Anthony’s voice. There’s a reason his song has become the most downloaded one on the Internet.

Whatever you think about populism, left or right, the lyrics are worth paying attention to. In those three minutes, you’ll learn more about the anti-Washington grievances than in hours of reading erudite analysis by journalists who visited flyover country from their homes in Georgetown, Cambridge, and newly fashionable Brooklyn.

The problem the self-styled progressives have is the old Wigan Pier problem: you have an unstable coalition of the aesthetes and the dependent, claiming to be the Erudite Experts.  It's an unstable coalition but nobody dare acknowledge it.  A Common Dreams contributor called Ari Paul comes close.  He's reacting to David Brooks acknowledging the errors of the Condescending Coasties.

Brooks’ column encouraged anti-Trumpers (among whom he includes himself) to think of themselves as “the bad guys,” because while they diagnose the Republican base’s unflagging support for its leader as rooted in bigotry and resentment, it actually derives from “the class war between the professionals and the workers.” Brooks, enlightened member of the professional class that he is, understands “why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault.” He asserted, “They’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class.”

But Brooks engaged in a trick he’s used his entire career. He presents himself as an expert on salt-of-the-earth residents of the Heartland whom elites have ignored and wronged, so our critical gaze should be cast on supposedly progressive elite institutions, not bigotry and authoritarianism—or on the real causes of the economic inequality he bemoans.

It's not David Brooks who gets the salt-of-the-earth residents, if New York Times types respected those folks, Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony might be entertaining their neighbors after Little League events, as the cosmopolitans would be celebrating Normals, not deplorable-shaming them.  But the integrity of the Freakazoid Coalition must be defended.  "In reality, it’s people who identify as Latinx, think intersectionally or who aren’t cisgender who have to 'walk on eggshells'—not because of a social stigma, but because of punitive laws passed by authoritarian legislatures."  No, the reality is that Jason Aldean and Oliver Anthony catch on with the right-populists because thinking intersectionally and using "cisgender" as a pejorative is more important than the class struggle.  "The column is yet another example of the Times, a mouthpiece for the ruling economic order, stoking a fiction about cultural divides to distract from brutal class inequality driven by politicians from both parties."

Advantage, Charles Lipson, of the right-populist persuasion.

It’s impossible to understand the popularity of “Rich Men North of Richmond” without understanding the widely shared grievances behind it. Anthony voices one of them as, “I wish politicians would look out for miners, and not just minors on an island somewhere.” You don’t have to love coal-fired electric power plants to have sympathy for the people who have lost their jobs, their hope, and their future.

Now it might be that Christian Britschgi calling for calm, and for treating a song as simply a song, is correct.

Sad country songs speaking to poverty and social anomie didn't start with food stamps and "Epstein didn't kill himself" memes. Something tells me that the people who kept coal country folk songs like "Which Side Are You On?" alive had some economic and cultural anxieties as well. And the fact that Anthony has the musical equipment and technology necessary to sound good and reach a mass audience from his backyard suggests the times we live in aren't so lean after all.

And while it gives me no pleasure to burst the bubble on Murphy's working-class realignment, not every song sung by a sad guy with a guitar is a window into the soul of blue-collar America. The Epstein lyrics probably should have made that clear.

Still, just because Matt Walsh and Chris Murphy like the "Rich Men North of Richmond" doesn't mean you shouldn't. Like other pieces of right-wing musical media (think MAGA rap), it's catchy and fun. It's even more fun when you don't take it that seriously.

Or, perhaps that is Karma playing the walk-up music for Reality.