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I would wager it struck a chord with more than "conservative pundits". Not only judging by its popularity, but messaging. It's a song about class struggle, not

I would wager it struck a chord with more than "conservative pundits". Not only judging by its popularity, but messaging. It's a song about class struggle, not party politics. There are lots of people on both sides who've been hit hard economically. And even those that are doing fine can relate to not feeling represented by politicians in DC. Oh, and the guy's voice is awesome.

merpnderp 3y ago
Yeah, the fed money printer made a lot of really wealthy people even more wealthy, while the ruling class mocked the idea of it being inflationary (bald faced lying). And yet here we are with food and housing out of control, and the only people suffering are the poor and middle class. That song speaks to a lot of people.
- varelse 3y ago
  [dead]
- mempko 3y ago
  Except most of that money went into their pockets and not buying food. So how could it affect food prices? The issue is that companies got greedy and decided to charge more because they thought they could get away with it. The money printer went mostly to the top who bought real-estate and other property. Some of it went to regular people and a lot of that went to pay down debt. Money printing doesn't equal inflation. Inflation happens when producers decide to raise prices. That could be for many reasons. Record profits suggests it wasn't the cost of their inputs.
  - joneholland 3y ago
    Both of you are pushing a misleading agenda so I’ll add a third one. Food prices didn’t skyrocket from an excess of demand, and they didn’t purely skyrocket because of corporate greed. They went up because the cost of production went up. Because oil went up so transport went up. Because grain supply chains were disrupted by the war. Every step of production has become more expensive. All of it was supply side driven. Not consumption driven. Almost all of the inflation in 2021 was supply side driven, but we needed to get away from the zero interest rate trap of the last decade so the fed wasn’t going to let a good opportunity go to waste.
    - merpnderp 3y ago
      I don't know how the US treasury and the Fed can pump that much money into the economy and you don't think demand changed at all. You know the basic definition of inflation is having more money than goods and services?
xeromal 3y ago
Yeah, the fudge round lyric is one of those typical conservative talking point comments, but the rest of his message is about class struggle and I think many people can appreciate the frustration found in them. The guy seems like a good bean but with a conservative upbringing. Most people should be focused on how washington fails them. I'm partial to this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks Full disclosure: I grew up in Appalachia so this is my type of music and I'm sure many/most people don't feel this way but I feel for the plight of my people even if they are idiots sometime. Christopher doesn't consider himself appalachian though. He's from piedmont.
- brodouevencode 3y ago
  > fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to purchase crab legs. A very take-a-deep-breath-and-count-to-ten moment.
  - baerrie 3y ago
    Why were you following someone? Also, you can use money to but crab legs, why not SNAP?
  - cherry_tree 3y ago
    It’s wild to me that people will say out of one side of their mouth “the government is too big, it wants to control our lives and thoughts!” And out the other side say “the government needs to be more in control of what poor people are eating”
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    I guess the point is that only conservatives care that public funds are contributing to obesity.
mempko 3y ago
It's good except all the fat phobia and hate for people on welfare. So no, it's not about class struggle. It's about rich politicians who help out fat welfare slobs instead of hard working people like himself. It's a conservative fiction. Anthony claims he is center, but center in US means right-wing everywhere else. Until Anthony makes a song about the Rich Men south of Richmond, lets wait and see about the class thing. He did make a recent video called "Moving Forward" where he talked about how there used to be a sense of community and that people now are very disconnected from each other. He talks about how you need to help your neighbor even if they are different than you. And that we need positivity and not hate. It's a great message. His message about diversity is excellent and I'm glad he is pushing that. I think he probably realized he attracted the wrong crowd.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  > center in US means right-wing everywhere else. So? This can also be said: "The US leads the world in individual freedoms" or whatever. This unspoken implication that "everywhere else" is better is interesting; quite common assumption but not actually a point that gets discussed... we're just to assume it for the purpose of engaging in the discussion, right?
  - mempko 3y ago
    When US life expectancy stops going down, we can start talking seriously about comparing quality of life here vs everywhere else.
  - orwin 3y ago
    No, it really means that the US political compass is very right-wing. Also that there is a semantic difference between being left wing in the US and left wing in most of the world. Historically, those supporting the king were on his right, and those opposing him on his left. Really basically, during the restoration, the far-right was composed of anti-Republicans (old nobles mostly), the right wanted to increase the cens, the left wanted to expand the right to vote by lowering the cens (tax to be allowed a vote in the congress), and the far-left, 'radicaux' as they called themselves, wanted a 'radical' republic, without a king. With time this shifted, and the 'radicaux' are now center, center-right, but the idea of left-wing/right-wing is the same. Right-wing is in large part the party of old money (and to be fair small business owners who value stability, which is really fair from tel, even if it means power calcification). I met really left-wing people in the Appalachians, fighting against a pipeline and for owners/managers of a company that caused a huge spill to be prosecuted (from what I understand, the company polluted 3 towns that had to rely on bottled water for weeks, then the company was dissolved and a new one with the same mission and same executive was created after a few months. Gotta love LLCs man.) but those weren't democrats. Some voted Democrat by default, most didn't care and were realist and knew no place exist for left-wing discourse in the US outside of internet forums. One of them told my brother how he tried to unionize when working for a coal mine company. In France, owners and managers trying to pull the same shite would have been put in jail. But well, it's cultural, what can you do. I respect that.
rob74 3y ago
I haven't listened to the song, but if it alludes to politicians and pedophilia, that's a QAnon reference, which would put it firmly on one side of the political spectrum...
- Our_Benefactors 3y ago
  How can you still think this is a conspiracy after Epstein?
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > I haven't listened to the song, but if it alludes to politicians and pedophilia, that's a QAnon reference You need to re-examine your biases then because Jeffrey Epstein is (or was) very real. If QAnon are the only ones talking about the problem of pedophilia in politics then you should be more like QAnon in this regard.
  - archagon 3y ago
    Definitely do not be like QAnon in any regard.
orwin 3y ago
Ow, I'm rusty with my US knowledge, I thought it was a reference to Richmond the confederate capital, and rich northerners industrialists.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  It is a reference to Richmond VA, which was indeed the Confederate capital ages ago. 2 hours north of Richmond is Washington DC. The "rich men north of Richmond" are in DC. The song has nothing to do with Confederates, and more to do with folk anthems like those made by Arlo and Woody Guthrie. Or at least it does at first, but then syphons the rage to other targets, which look an awful lot like standard republican talking points. Grassroots popularity? Or a conservative media machine trying to deflect from the problems they helped make?
version_five 3y ago
The song was good, the vibe/message to me was somewhere between "working class hero" and that song from the Simpsons episode where homer is the manager for "lurlene" the country singer: "you work all day for some old man, sweat and break your back..." not to be taken too seriously but still representative of real feelings. The insane response in particular by rolling stone about "Reagan era tropes" and other fearmongering with simultaneous "debunking" was what got me, as in it really seems to have struck a chord as dangerous wih a certain crowd.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  Well, it is dangerous. In classic right wing fashion, it starts off talking about economic elites, but pretty quickly starts running off into welfare abusers and people who don't know how to properly feed themselves using benefits, as if this is any significant fraction of the ills plaguing our society. Half the song is about resentment towards other poor/working class people.
  - kup0 3y ago
    Exactly, "Not gonna lie, you had me in the first half" is the best way to describe this song. If the target of the song didn't change from an actual source of problems (the rich/economic elite) to conservative scapegoats (other poor/working class people) it would have resonated far more with me and actually could have been a song that might have had a chance of finding more common ground between people that typically disagree vehemently. It's no surprise the entire song resonated with a lot of people, plenty of which I'm sure, as they always have, are okay allowing the the "rich men north of richmond" to turn them against themselves and others like them with that scapegoating
  - GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago
    You nailed it - singing about low pay, hard conditions, and evil bosses is a folk music tradition. But bitching about the obese on welfare eating fudge are decidedly NOT common themes in this style of music. Here is another version of the music video that illustrates the message (substitute "fudge" for "cookies")..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL2sKWHaQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL2sKWHaQ0

merpnderp 3y ago

Yeah, the fed money printer made a lot of really wealthy people even more wealthy, while the ruling class mocked the idea of it being inflationary (bald faced lying). And yet here we are with food and housing out of control, and the only people suffering are the poor and middle class. That song speaks to a lot of people.

varelse 3y ago
[dead]
mempko 3y ago
Except most of that money went into their pockets and not buying food. So how could it affect food prices? The issue is that companies got greedy and decided to charge more because they thought they could get away with it. The money printer went mostly to the top who bought real-estate and other property. Some of it went to regular people and a lot of that went to pay down debt. Money printing doesn't equal inflation. Inflation happens when producers decide to raise prices. That could be for many reasons. Record profits suggests it wasn't the cost of their inputs.
- joneholland 3y ago
  Both of you are pushing a misleading agenda so I’ll add a third one. Food prices didn’t skyrocket from an excess of demand, and they didn’t purely skyrocket because of corporate greed. They went up because the cost of production went up. Because oil went up so transport went up. Because grain supply chains were disrupted by the war. Every step of production has become more expensive. All of it was supply side driven. Not consumption driven. Almost all of the inflation in 2021 was supply side driven, but we needed to get away from the zero interest rate trap of the last decade so the fed wasn’t going to let a good opportunity go to waste.
  - merpnderp 3y ago
    I don't know how the US treasury and the Fed can pump that much money into the economy and you don't think demand changed at all. You know the basic definition of inflation is having more money than goods and services?

xeromal 3y ago

Yeah, the fudge round lyric is one of those typical conservative talking point comments, but the rest of his message is about class struggle and I think many people can appreciate the frustration found in them. The guy seems like a good bean but with a conservative upbringing. Most people should be focused on how washington fails them. I'm partial to this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks Full disclosure: I grew up in Appalachia so this is my type of music and I'm sure many/most people don't feel this way but I feel for the plight of my people even if they are idiots sometime. Christopher doesn't consider himself appalachian though. He's from piedmont.

brodouevencode 3y ago
> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to purchase crab legs. A very take-a-deep-breath-and-count-to-ten moment.
- baerrie 3y ago
  Why were you following someone? Also, you can use money to but crab legs, why not SNAP?
- cherry_tree 3y ago
  It’s wild to me that people will say out of one side of their mouth “the government is too big, it wants to control our lives and thoughts!” And out the other side say “the government needs to be more in control of what poor people are eating”
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  I guess the point is that only conservatives care that public funds are contributing to obesity.

mempko 3y ago

It's good except all the fat phobia and hate for people on welfare. So no, it's not about class struggle. It's about rich politicians who help out fat welfare slobs instead of hard working people like himself. It's a conservative fiction. Anthony claims he is center, but center in US means right-wing everywhere else. Until Anthony makes a song about the Rich Men south of Richmond, lets wait and see about the class thing. He did make a recent video called "Moving Forward" where he talked about how there used to be a sense of community and that people now are very disconnected from each other. He talks about how you need to help your neighbor even if they are different than you. And that we need positivity and not hate. It's a great message. His message about diversity is excellent and I'm glad he is pushing that. I think he probably realized he attracted the wrong crowd.

h2odragon 3y ago
> center in US means right-wing everywhere else. So? This can also be said: "The US leads the world in individual freedoms" or whatever. This unspoken implication that "everywhere else" is better is interesting; quite common assumption but not actually a point that gets discussed... we're just to assume it for the purpose of engaging in the discussion, right?
- mempko 3y ago
  When US life expectancy stops going down, we can start talking seriously about comparing quality of life here vs everywhere else.
- orwin 3y ago
  No, it really means that the US political compass is very right-wing. Also that there is a semantic difference between being left wing in the US and left wing in most of the world. Historically, those supporting the king were on his right, and those opposing him on his left. Really basically, during the restoration, the far-right was composed of anti-Republicans (old nobles mostly), the right wanted to increase the cens, the left wanted to expand the right to vote by lowering the cens (tax to be allowed a vote in the congress), and the far-left, 'radicaux' as they called themselves, wanted a 'radical' republic, without a king. With time this shifted, and the 'radicaux' are now center, center-right, but the idea of left-wing/right-wing is the same. Right-wing is in large part the party of old money (and to be fair small business owners who value stability, which is really fair from tel, even if it means power calcification). I met really left-wing people in the Appalachians, fighting against a pipeline and for owners/managers of a company that caused a huge spill to be prosecuted (from what I understand, the company polluted 3 towns that had to rely on bottled water for weeks, then the company was dissolved and a new one with the same mission and same executive was created after a few months. Gotta love LLCs man.) but those weren't democrats. Some voted Democrat by default, most didn't care and were realist and knew no place exist for left-wing discourse in the US outside of internet forums. One of them told my brother how he tried to unionize when working for a coal mine company. In France, owners and managers trying to pull the same shite would have been put in jail. But well, it's cultural, what can you do. I respect that.

rob74 3y ago

I haven't listened to the song, but if it alludes to politicians and pedophilia, that's a QAnon reference, which would put it firmly on one side of the political spectrum...

Our_Benefactors 3y ago
How can you still think this is a conspiracy after Epstein?
nonethewiser 3y ago
> I haven't listened to the song, but if it alludes to politicians and pedophilia, that's a QAnon reference You need to re-examine your biases then because Jeffrey Epstein is (or was) very real. If QAnon are the only ones talking about the problem of pedophilia in politics then you should be more like QAnon in this regard.
- archagon 3y ago
  Definitely do not be like QAnon in any regard.

orwin 3y ago

Ow, I'm rusty with my US knowledge, I thought it was a reference to Richmond the confederate capital, and rich northerners industrialists.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
It is a reference to Richmond VA, which was indeed the Confederate capital ages ago. 2 hours north of Richmond is Washington DC. The "rich men north of Richmond" are in DC. The song has nothing to do with Confederates, and more to do with folk anthems like those made by Arlo and Woody Guthrie. Or at least it does at first, but then syphons the rage to other targets, which look an awful lot like standard republican talking points. Grassroots popularity? Or a conservative media machine trying to deflect from the problems they helped make?

version_five 3y ago

The song was good, the vibe/message to me was somewhere between "working class hero" and that song from the Simpsons episode where homer is the manager for "lurlene" the country singer: "you work all day for some old man, sweat and break your back..." not to be taken too seriously but still representative of real feelings. The insane response in particular by rolling stone about "Reagan era tropes" and other fearmongering with simultaneous "debunking" was what got me, as in it really seems to have struck a chord as dangerous wih a certain crowd.

rjbwork 3y ago
Well, it is dangerous. In classic right wing fashion, it starts off talking about economic elites, but pretty quickly starts running off into welfare abusers and people who don't know how to properly feed themselves using benefits, as if this is any significant fraction of the ills plaguing our society. Half the song is about resentment towards other poor/working class people.
- kup0 3y ago
  Exactly, "Not gonna lie, you had me in the first half" is the best way to describe this song. If the target of the song didn't change from an actual source of problems (the rich/economic elite) to conservative scapegoats (other poor/working class people) it would have resonated far more with me and actually could have been a song that might have had a chance of finding more common ground between people that typically disagree vehemently. It's no surprise the entire song resonated with a lot of people, plenty of which I'm sure, as they always have, are okay allowing the the "rich men north of richmond" to turn them against themselves and others like them with that scapegoating
- GlibMonkeyDeath 3y ago
  You nailed it - singing about low pay, hard conditions, and evil bosses is a folk music tradition. But bitching about the obese on welfare eating fudge are decidedly NOT common themes in this style of music. Here is another version of the music video that illustrates the message (substitute "fudge" for "cookies")..https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL2sKWHaQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlL2sKWHaQ0