Rich Men North Of Richmond

Anthony was touching the constituency the left is supposed to talk with, is supposed to reach out to, is supposed to hear and learn from and fight alongside…

By Michael Albert, Z Network

Rich Men North Of Richmond is the title of the hugely popular Oliver Anthony folk/country song that has incredibly rocketed to number one in the U.S. despite Anthony being publicly largely unknown before the song’s release in mid-August and despite his not having a record company. The volume of commentary about his song and him have been extraordinary from the right wing, from liberals, and from progressives too. While I hope most who read this article are independently aware of Anthony’s song and have even given it a listen or two, I won’t assume that’s the case. Regrettably, I can’t sing it for you, but please take it from me it has a moving, heartfelt, and what music lovers call an authentic delivery. I also can’t play it for you, but I can present it here in text and I can report that Anthony uses what they call a resonator guitar, whatever that means.

First verse:

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

I comment: Can four lines be much more explicit—especially singing outdoors, which is to say, singing where, as he says in the song, he sits to drown his troubles away.

The song continues:

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

I comment: I think we can infer, and I certainly did infer, that when Anthony sings of “people like me and people like you,” he is not talking about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. He is not thinking of rich owners or of quite wealthy professionals, either. It is not capitalists or lawyers, doctors, accountants, or managers who are like him. He is singing about and to disempowered, subordinated working people.

The song continues:

 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 comment: North of Richmond is Washington DC, so Anthony is referring to rich Senators, Congressmen, corporate lobbyists, and all the fat cats, the ruling class—who together think he and people like him are blind to rich peoples’ agendas, and who levy the taxes that he and people like him pay even as their communities go to hell.

The song continues:

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

I comment: The first two lines refer to rich people’s degenerate affinity for Jeffrey Epstein’s Island getaway for sexual predation of underage minors, spelled with an o—and to their lack of affinity for working class miners digging coal. And the second two lines refer to folks who are starving, while some he calls obese are milking welfare. With no more to guide to his meaning than these few words, this feels to me like one of those Rorschach tests. They show you a picture and what you see reveals who you are. Similarly, does what you hear when Oliver Anthony sings depend greatly on who you are? Is he spouting a ridiculous conspiracy claim or acknowledging an ugly truth? Is he punching down at the poor or acknowledging sentiments that are widely held about those who get paid, seemingly for nothing?

The song continues:

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

I comment: The first two lines refer to a very overweight person eating I guess chocolate candy or at any rate some not too healthy but good tasting food bought with a welfare benefit—or do they refer to rich people eating excessively on poor peoples’ payments, to fat cats in the vernacular. The second two lines refer to young men who put themselves in the ground but does Anthony mean they do it by drugs, by suicide, or what? Well, he tells us. They do it because the country so abuses them. So is he punching down, at the young men, or is he punching up at the systems that abuse the young men? Perhaps what the listener hears from Anthony depends as much on who the listener is as it depends on the actual few words the song offers.

The song continues:

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

I comment: Anthony is clearly bemoaning the societal mess that hurts people like himself…and he may be feeling that’s just how it is, or maybe he is feeling it is time to do something about it. What do you hear?

The song continues:

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

And I comment: After that repeat of who the rich men are and what they want—and is it not accurate—Anthony ends with repeating his clear description of who he is:

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

To me this seems like bosses and workers. But with only this one song, and with a few what you see may be what you get visuals on Youtube, plus Anthony’s vocal delivery, what would you have made of the song and the singer a few weeks back when the excitement and debate over his music first burst into public view?

Here is how I heard some people react:

First: Some on the right, including Republican candidates for President heard an angry young man who they proclaimed a kindred spirit. They heard him mention rich government—but somehow missed that that included them. They heard him mention taxes—but not that they were to no end. And they heard welfare spent unwisely, but ignored working all day for bullshit pay, and anger that people ain’t got nothing to eat.

So based on what their ears heard these right wingers likely thought to themselves, or perhaps they didn’t even think about it but just took it for granted that, hey hey hey, this guy can talk to millions. We should reach out to him. We should make him ours, make him ours, make him ours. And they no doubt thought, or again they didn’t even have to think it but just took it for granted, that if they offered Anthony enough material benefit he would be theirs. His solidarity with his listeners would disappear as his bank account ballooned.

At the risk of getting a bit personal, but hopefully making a point, this reminds me of an instructive moment in my own life. I was then President of the student body at MIT. As such, I got to give “welcome speech” to incoming freshmen. It was an annual tradition and just before me, the president of the university offered his words. Then I gave an incredibly militant speech that told the incoming class about the disruptions that I and people like me were planning for their Freshman year. I also hurled curses at MIT and at its president, its research contracts, its approach to knowledge, and of course at its support for the war in Vietnam and at our country’s oppressive role in the world, as well as at capitalism itself. When I finished, I hopped off the stage and walked down the center aisle to leave the auditorium. I have to say, the freshman newbies were more than a little shell shocked. But ahead of me, at the exit, there was a young guy in a very fancy suit and, as I neared him, he pushed in front of me and said, and this is the actual truth, “chemicals.” I was bracing in case he was dangerous, but then he added that he was from Germany and if I went back with him right away, he and his partners would make me a partner in their chemical firm. What??!! I refused, of course, but what I found incredible was that he actually thought I would go with him. I had just delivered a talk that viciously slammed capitalism and implicitly his firm, but he found my words irrelevant. He thought his offer would make me forget all that childish stuff and gleefully join him.

So, my point is, the rich men from Richmond, and world-wide, are so fucking sure of themselves, so used to getting their way, so used to their money buying everything just as still bigger money buys them, that they figured Oliver Anthony would of course join their army. No mystery in that. They were being who they are. They were doing what they do.

Second: Many liberals and some progressives ironically seemed to have heard Anthony’s song more or less the same way the right wingers heard it. But these progressives didn’t rush to attract Anthony, they more or less harshly condemned him and his song as imperfect, flawed, and even deserving dismissive condemnation.

They heard Anthony’s mentions of taxes as being too dismissive of the possibility of useful government expenditures. They did not hear it as accurately understanding that what the rich do, they do for themselves or under pressure. And similarly, these progressives presumably heard Anthony’s mention of welfare and overweight recipients as punching down, as blaming the victim, and certainly not reporting what is felt out there by many people like Anthony, a squeeze from above and by some accounts from below as well. And somehow those progressives didn’t hear or they heard but didn’t pay much attention to the feeling in Anthony’s voice, or even to his anger at working people’s plight and at the rich men north of Richmond. They just took all that as art, I guess, or perhaps as trying to be populist, or as rhyme. They took only what they didn’t like as revealing something about the singer.

That reaction felt to me like a reflexive “assume the worst” and hammer at it dismissal. Anthony was touching the constituency the left is supposed to talk with, is supposed to reach out to, is supposed to hear and learn from and fight alongside, and what did Anthony receive from informed, educated, sophisticated, committed progressives and even radicals? Oddly, from too many—and wouldn’t even one be too many?—he received dismissive hostility or at best paternalistic guidance, as in, do it our way, we know what you and people like you feel, and you don’t. Since this reaction seemed strategically suicidal to me, I found it to be a bit of a mystery.

Third: Trying to appear above or on a different axis than all that politics, some who listened said, what’s all the fuss? The melody isn’t sophisticated. The lyrics aren’t real clever. Where are the subtle metaphors? Why is this guy getting so elevated, so lauded?

So, despite that the above is a severely truncated account of only some reactions, and despite that it highlights only what I was most attentive to and concerned about—still, for me a question arose. What led to these particular reactions? Or maybe it was three questions.

First, what led many right wingers to be blind to many of Anthony’s words, and I suspect to largely misinterpret the rest? What led them to see Anthony as someone to rope into their extended family, which they very promptly sought to do?

Second, what led many liberal and some progressive critics to be relatively blind to many of Anthony’s words, and I suspect to largely misinterpret the rest? What led them to see Anthony as some kind of threat or enemy they should trounce into invisibility or disrepute, as some very promptly sought to do?

And finally, third, what caused some to listen to Rich Men North of Richmond and dismiss it as unsophisticated, not clever, lacking subtle metaphors, and thus not worthy of audience?

So let’s take these questions in turn.

Why did the Republican presidential candidates many right wing writers to see Oliver Anthony as a kindred spirit they could and should capture for their agenda?

Isn’t the answer first that they have a shared agenda, that they have a sense of unity despite all their many differences, and second that they want to and believe that they can win their agenda and that trying to do so guides their eyes, ears, and actions? Isn’t the answer that they heard a possibility of gain, and they went for it? And that they thought of course they would succeed in getting Anthony fully onboard. So what about the right wingers’ reaction is consequential here? Their shared agenda is disgusting, but we already knew that. Their lying eyes and ears, we knew those too. Also disgusting. Likewise, for their arrogance. No surprise there. But what is noticeable, I think, and in some limited sense even admirable, is that they are constantly attuned to the battle they are waging and they constantly try to move it forward. They are strategic. They thought they saw a kindred spirit to welcome to their cause and they immediately offered high praise and big bucks to make it happen. In other words, they did what they do.

Okay, but then why did many progressives jump to dismiss Oliver Anthony’s song and to assume the worst about Anthony’s motives and direction? Asking others anecdotally indicated that many progressives felt threatened by an in their eyes ignorant rural singer. They heard words that deviated from their scripts. They felt the deviations might lead people astray. Overnight this guy had a giant audience. He looked the part. He was heard. And in some progressive eyes, Anthony got too much wrong, so these progressives defended their understanding and perhaps their identity. They found things to pick at. Things to punch. It didn’t occur to them to listen and learn. It didn’t occur to them to dialog and converse. They didn’t ask questions and offer observations so as to engage Anthony not from above but as potential partners.

Two possible underlying dynamics might help explain that progressive response. First, many progressives have little contact with lives like Oliver Anthony’s. In our current society, many progressives often have mostly coordinator class acquaintances, experiences, attachments, expectations, and even aspirations. Many progressives are relatively empowered by our circumstances as compared to workers who are relatively disempowered by theirs. Could it be that under a rhetorical solidarity for workers, many liberals and some progressives have a dismissive attitude to those deemed deplorable?

And second, perhaps unlike right wingers, many progressives lack a shared agenda, a shared sense of being part of one big movement of movements. We are quite often fragmented and many of us doubt that we can win very much at all, much less win a new world. So for some of us, perhaps every seeming deviation from each of our personal scripts feels threatening. Perhaps the idea of really reaching out, of seeking and attaining mass appeal and developing shared program, just doesn’t exist for us, so we aren’t particularly strategic. We operate more like a bunch of atomized, contending cohorts who somehow can’t see that to be unable to even try to talk with and learn from someone like Oliver Anthony is tantamount to surrender. It is tantamount to putting our hopes and ourselves, six feet in the ground.

And finally why did some listeners feel the song was not clever, lacked compelling metaphors, and had a trivial melody, making it not worth attention?

I think this may be a seemingly erudite version of the progressive critic’s also dismissive response. After all, what is a worthy song, a worthy piece of art? Do clever lyrics, compelling metaphors, and complex melody make for worthy music? They could be part of worthy music, of course, but are they the key to worthiness? Or is touching an audience with feelings and insights the key? Is to dismiss technique just saying “my way or the highway,” where my way emphasizes technical training and “elite” style?

This isn’t a simple issue, but consider this. You have a song, the lyrics are clever, the metaphors are subtle, the melody is complex—but listeners yawn. You have another song, the lyrics are not particularly clever, the metaphors are absent or obvious, the melody is simple—but listeners are enthralled. In fact, isn’t what makes a lyric, a metaphor, and a melody artful that they produce enthrallment and not yawns? And if so, is it more likely that Rich Men North of Richmond is dismissible as too simple, or is it more likely that the critic who says it is too simple is dismissible as elitist?

And above and beyond whatever answer as to why the three respondents had the reactions they did, isn’t it in any case clear that none of these respondents were in any position to so quickly arrive at the conclusions they did about the singer and even about the song? One song does not a person define.

So here is another Oliver Anthony song, or its lyrics, that I found online. It is titled “I Want To Go Home” and it starts like this:

Well, if it weren’t for my old dogs and the good Lord

They’d have me strung up in the psych ward

‘Cause every day livin’ in this new world

Is one too many days to me

And I will add, by way of my own bard, I guess that like him Anthony might have instead sung, “if my thought dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine,” but would it have worked better? I doubt it.

And the second song continues:

Son, we’re on the brink of the next world war

And I don’t think nobody’s prayin’ no more

And I ain’t sayin I know it for sure

I’m just down on my knees

Beggin’, Lord, take me home

I wanna go home

I don’t know which road to go

It’s been so long

I just know I didn’t used to wake up feelin’ this way

Cussin’ myself every damn day

There’s always some kind of bill to pay

People just doin’ what the rich men say

I wanna go home

And I will add, again by way of my bard: “They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.” And, sure, it would be nice to know what Anthony is feeling/thinking when he talks about going home. Is home for him just how things were not too long ago, or is it something much better for the future? And if is, is the former, is that really a crime against workers—or is it just heartfelt pain that isn’t yet propounding a vision?

And what if Oliver Anthony doesn’t have a future vision of a better home, economy, and society. Whose fault is that? Is it his fault, or is it the fault of people who have been radical for decades and who have not heard him and conversed with him and worked out with him a vision, supposing we even have one ourselves?

And the song continues:

Now four generations farmin’ the ground

Grandson sells it to a man out of town

And two weeks later the trees go down

Only got concrete growin’ around

And I will add, I start to suspect that this singer has eyes wide open, sees what’s goin down around him, and puts it into words all can resonate with, and it might be nice if more activists were able to do that too—but yes, it is also possible that Oliver Anthony isn’t yet looking forward to a remade world. He may be only looking back to barely better past times that bred these still worse current times.

And the song continues:

And I wanna go home

I wanna go home

I don’t know which road to go

It’s been so long

I just know I didn’t used to wake up feelin’ this way

Cussin’ myself every damn day

People have really gone and lost their way

They all just do what the TV say

I wanna go home

If it weren’t for my old dogs and the good Lord

They’d have me strung up in the psych ward

So Oliver Anthony and millions upon millions of others like him are bemoaning the increasing pain they are feeling and wondering where better times went and wanting them back, though perhaps they do not yet want completely different revolutionized times.

So what is a sensible response to that? Should a revolutionary who wants completely different times dismiss as hopeless those who do not yet seek fundamental change? Should we forget that we ourselves at some past point, weren’t seeking fundamental change? Should we forget that communicating with those who are hurt and angry but not yet seeking fundamental change is what fighting for change is mainly about? Should we forget that the job of someone who does want fundamental change is not to dismiss those who don’t yet want it, but to talk with them, to share thoughts with them? Or should we assume the worst, interpret down, and lash out? Could any stance be stupider, more suicidal for seeking a new world than to hear Rich Men North of Richmond or anything like it and assume that the singer and the song are hopeless, confused, and dismissible rather than to hear that this is someone we should really hear, listen to, converse with, and welcome?

So that’s my take but what has Oliver Anthony himself said about the response he has encountered? Being accosted from all sides is likely just beginning for him, but think about what it must be like. Will he be polarized by left hostility toward open-armed welcoming right wingers, or will the hypocrisy of the right keep him open to the left, as he waits for the left to realize it needs to start learning and growing, not circling wagons, repelling its own, and shooting itself.

Well, in the immediate tumult of his song’s success Oliver Anthony reportedly turned down eight million dollars to do an album, and he certainly said the following things when interviewed about Rich Men North of Richmond.

Anthony said: “That song’s written about the people on that stage (that is, the Republican candidates’ debate stage) and a lot more too, not just them, but definitely them… I see the right trying to characterize me as one of their own and I see the left trying to discredit me, I guess in retaliation.”

It seems like Anthony saw broadly what I saw, but what will he make of it? He also said: “I do need to address the left …  they’re sending a message out that ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ is an attack against the poor. If you listen to my other music, it’s obvious that all of my songs that reference class defend the poor. At some point, I will dissect all my lyrics of all my songs if that’s what I need to do.”

More, he said: “I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression. These songs have connected with millions of people on such a deep level because they’re being sung by someone feeling the words in the very moment they were being sung. No editing, no agent, no bullshit. Just some idiot and his guitar. The style of music that we should have never gotten away from in the first place.”

And Anthony also said, by way of introducing himself: “My legal name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford. My grandfather was Oliver Anthony, and ‘Oliver Anthony Music’ is a dedication not only to him, but 1930’s Appalachia where he was born and raised. Dirt floors, seven kids, hard times.

In 2010, I dropped out of high school at age 17. I worked multiple plant jobs in Western NC, my last being at the paper mill in McDowell County. I worked 3rd shift, 6 days a week for $14.50 an hour in a living hell.

In 2013, I had a bad fall at work and fractured my skull. It forced me to move back home to Virginia. Due to complications from the injury, it took me 6 months or so before I could work again.

From 2014 until just a few days ago, I’ve worked outside sales in the industrial manufacturing world. My job has taken me all over Virginia and into the Carolinas, getting to know tens of thousands of other blue collar workers on job sites and in factories. I’ve spent all day, every day for the last 10 years hearing the same story. People are SO damn tired of being neglected, divided and manipulated.

There’s nothing special about me. I’m not a good musician, I’m not a very good person. I’ve spent the last 5 years struggling with mental health and using alcohol to drown it. I am sad to see the world in the state it’s in, with everyone fighting with each other.”

So that’s what he has said, at least that I have seen. Does that sound like someone to punch at? Indeed, I wonder what exactly were Oliver Anthony’s deep ideological thought crimes against progressivism, so irrevocably evident, no less, in one fucking song?

Okay, it is true that Anthony sings: Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare

And he sings: Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds.

Given how people have used words like those, I wish he hadn’t sung them. But I read one commentator, Andrew Levinson in The Washington Monthly, whose head seemed to me to be screwed on rather well, and had more to say on this.

Levinson indicated that it’s easy for progressives to condemn lines that seem to stereotype welfare recipients and slip in what can be seen as a gratuitous slap against the obese. And he went on, “we liberals and progressives much less radicals and revolutionaries should keep a couple of things in mind before we hop on that criticism too aggressively.” And he continued, “First, if you read the hundreds of pages of focus groups where working people complain about welfare cheating, it turns out most of the anecdotes do not repeat reactionary clichés but offer stories about able-bodied friends, neighbors, and relatives who draw undeserved disability payments or workman’s compensation or who cash in on Social Security checks that should be going to someone else in the person’s family. The anecdotes report contempt for these people who they know personally.”

And now I add to Levinson’s observation that this shouldn’t be a surprise. Those complaining about some welfare recipients are in direct proximity of the actions they complain about. They see it happening. They feel it. It is close to them. It is in their face. Sometimes it is in their family. And they react to it. Whereas owners, well, they may as well be on another planet, directing from afar but not so directly felt as to tell stories about them in personal anecdotes.

And now, again quoting Levinson, “the sense of injustice that workers feel about able-bodied people getting money without working is a far different thing when a worker’s job is hard, physical labor than when the job is sitting at a desk in an office or working remotely from home. To the office worker, the injustice is abstract, but to a construction worker who spends all day driving nails into two-by-fours with a 30-pound nail gun or running PVC pipe or 110-volt electrical wire through a crawl space, on the other hand, the unfairness is a raw physical reality. They come home with throbbing cramps in their calves and palms of their hands, aches in their back, and stiffness and swelling in the joints of their knees and hips that do not go away even hours after coming home and leads many to self-medicate with alcohol or drugs, as Anthony Oliver does.”

So what can I say? When I heard it, Oliver Anthony’s song struck me as honest—I guess the music lover’s word is authentic—and thus as powerful, effective, and revealing art. It didn’t strike me as program, as vision, as strategy. It was not about what ought to be, or about how to get there. It was about what is—but rendered really succinctly, really movingly, and in Anthony’s own words, closely echoing those he hears all around. It might not be your cup of tea, but it certainly isn’t arsenic.

And as I saw how Anthony’s words and tone had resonated for so many working people it said to me that Anthony’s words speak to them. HIs voice speaks to them and for them. Does the pain he has felt mean he knows what to do about it? No, he may or he may not know what to do about it. Pain gives reason to want to know what to do. Pain gives reason to think about what to do. But pain alone doesn’t provide a map.

So the pain Anthony voices, the anger he expresses, and the desire for positive aspirations he echoes says a lot about where people are at, and about what not to do about it. And one thing not to do about it is to look down on, dismiss, or otherwise not learn from Anthony and people like him.

As I prepared this essay, I checked Google again for new references, since I had prepared the earlier podcast episode, to Anthony’s unfolding story. And, lo and behold, there was a ton of new discussion. But what got the most coverage is that Anthony has begun a tour but at what was to be an early stop, he cancelled the scheduled event because the ticket prices were too high.

It would appear he is not in it for the money. I suspect we are going to see him in parking lots, and in open fields, as well as in indoor venues, assuming he sticks with performing and doesn’t get closed out. And apparently not only the ticket prices were high, $100 instead of the $25 that Anthony said tickets should cost, but then people could also buy access to a meet and great session for $200 though Anthony said the latter should be free. So he not only cancelled the event, he apologized to those who had already bought tickets, and explained that it was his fault for not yet understanding how things work.

Will Oliver Anthony’s message stop at identifying how bad things are? Will it stop at wanting better like we had in the past? If so, it wouldn’t make him much different than a whole lot of critics of racism, sexism, authoritarianism, and capitalism. Or will his message start to advocate changes to get us back to before recent losses, which would be better, but still not that different from most critics of existing relations. Or perhaps his message will start to imagine really better institutions and seek immediate gains but on a path that keeps right on traveling toward a new society. We’ll see what comes next, but I think we can already know pretty confidently that among the many factors in his life and in the tumult he is now experiencing the odds of Anthony’s fighting for immediate changes and of his enunciating visionary desires beyond those immediate changes will go up if he isn’t preached at, isn’t derisively castigated, and isn’t arrogantly ridiculed by the left, but is instead heard clearly and conversed with honestly.

And what might result from that? Perhaps Oliver Anthony will play a free concert, or three, or whatever, in Detroit in support of the autoworkers strike. Or perhaps he will donate from his tour revenues to their Strike fund. And, while we are at it, since there are a good many country singers who have been touring clubs and the like and who espouse not just working class sentiments but working class anti-capitalist sentiments, maybe we will see them welcoming Oliver as a new player, with all of them together aiding the autoworkers.