They Need Us. We Don't Need Them.By Ward Clark
August 20, 2023
I've listened to Oliver Anthony's Rich Men North of Richmond a bunch of times now. If you haven't heard it yet, you should give it a listen before you read further:
* * *
My colleagues Jim Thompson, Bonchie, Brandon Morse, and Jeff Charles have written eloquently on Mr. Anthony's work. And I confess that I haven't read a lot of the commentary on this wonderful tune before today, but on this quiet, breezy Great Land Sunday morning I listened to Mr. Anthony's elegy again, and again, and did some surfing to see what other people were saying.
And I found this.
It almost seems as if, if Oliver Anthony hadn’t come along, someone would have had to invent him. And some progressives suspect he is an invention of behind-the-scenes forces, though there’s little evidence so far that he is not who he says he is: a factory worker turned farmer with a not-obscenely-expensive resonator guitar without a ton of industry connections waiting in the wings.
Of course, progressives suspect that Oliver Anthony is an invention. People always suspect their opponents of the actions they would take themselves.
Oliver Anthony is authentic, and while the left notes that this song of his has gone viral, they don't understand why, and they never will. Mr. Anthony's song has become an instant hit because it speaks to the people who work, who produce, who get up and go into a factory, or a car dealership, or a grocery store, or an office, every day because they need that paycheck every two weeks, and who are regularly incensed at the amounts taken from them by government, reflected in every pay statement. This is still, by and large, a country of people that work, and Oliver Anthony has given those people a voice.
* * *
Source:
https://redstate.com/wardclark/2023/08/20/they-need-us-we-dont-need-them-n2162842
