Opinion

QUAY: ‘Rich Men North Of Richmond’ Pisses Off All The Right People In All The Right Ways

OPINION
Oliver Anthony - Rich Men North Of Richmond (radiowv)

Screenshot/YouTube/radiowv

Grayson Quay News & Opinion Editor
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Oliver Anthony’s viral hit “Rich Men North Of Richmond” has commentators from across the political spectrum scrambling to either claim the song or condemn it, sometimes for contradictory reasons.

All this discourse has prompted some to suggest that we’re taking the song too seriously or that it’s become a litmus test precisely because it lacks internal coherence. This is wrong. It’s not Anthony who’s incoherent. It’s us. By pissing off so many different groups of people, “Rich Men North Of Richmond” has exposed the inability of America’s chattering classes to account for the wide variety of problems plaguing the country’s white working class — and maybe just its working class in general.

First on the list of people mad about the song, you have what I’ll call the “conspiracy scolds.” These are the ones who lie awake at night shaking with rage at the idea that someone somewhere believes in a conspiracy theory. 

They’re especially triggered by the lines “I wish politicians would look out for miners / And not just minors on an island somewhere.” 

For many on the left (and some on the right), this obvious reference to Jeffrey Epstein and his cadre of pedophilic elites marks Anthony’s song as “too online,” an expression not of working-class angst, but of Q-Anon paranoia. (RELATED: Epstein Told JP Morgan Exec About ‘Sex For Money’ With Young Women But Denied They Were Underage, Filings Allege)

As the song’s popularity exploded, the scolds quickly seized on one of Anthony’s YouTube playlists in an attempt to cancel him. The playlist, called “Videos that make your noggin get bigger,” is about three-quarters Jordan Peterson content but also features two videos diving into 9-11 conspiracy theories. Oh, and there’s an hour-long animation of a dancing potato chip. 

It’s pretty obvious what this playlist is for. Let me be vulnerable for a second: in my misspent bachelorhood, I spent a lot of nights smoking weed and watching YouTube videos. I can tell you from firsthand experience that, when you’re stoned by yourself at 2:00 a.m., videos like these become as irresistible as stale Doritos.  

But I guess you’re not allowed to get baked in your own home and go down YouTube rabbit holes anymore. My God, what’s happening to this country?

The other problem with the conspiracy scolds is that the definition of a “conspiracy theory” has been weaponized against the very people who took Anthony’s anthem to heart. Take, for instance, the viral “Conspiracy Chart.” The “detached from reality” layer runs the gamut from genuinely outrageous views (“Sandy Hook fake”) to harmless nuttiness (“Moon landing faked”) to stuff that’s just verifiably true. 

“George Soros” isn’t a conspiracy theory. He’s a real person who plows billions into promoting left-wing causes and has publicly advocated for most of the things he’s accused of supporting. Millions of Americans have suffered under the anarchotyranny of his pro-crime district attorneys. The chart also urges people who think COVID was made in a lab or have questions about vaccine effectiveness to “GET HELP.” Oh, and by the way, we never did get to see Epstein’s black book. 

So yeah, that chart didn’t age well. Neither did the massive campaign to silence anyone who entertained these so-called conspiracy theories.

Christian Britschagi of Reason attributed the song’s popularity to its “right-wing meme politics,” suggesting that any true populist anthem would eschew such topics. But for people like Anthony and his audience, those meme politics are a defense mechanism against institutions that have done everything in their power to lose the public’s trust. Unless you want to be totally hoodwinked, you have to be at least a little bit online. 

Second, you’ve got the “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” crowd, mostly old-school, libertarian-leaning conservatives.

They can’t stand hearing about blue-collar types “workin’ all day / Overtime hours for bullshit pay.” (RELATED: White House Claims ‘Bidenomics Is Working’ Despite High Inflation, Stagnating Wages)

“My brother in Christ, you live in the United States of America in 2023,” Mark Antonio Wright wrote for National Review. “[I]f you’re a fit, able-bodied man, and you’re working ‘overtime hours for bullshit pay,’ you need to find a new job.” America is a “land of opportunity,” after all!

Never mind that, for low-wage workers, wages are, pretty objectively, bullshit. According to the Economic Policy Institute, their earnings have been stagnant since 1980. 

Wright also absolves the “Rich Men” of any responsibility for the epidemic of young men “puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground” by suicide or overdose. As if decades of free trade dogmatism, skewed divorce laws and open borders played no role in reducing men to despair and providing them with the means to destroy themselves.

Having a defeatist attitude never helps. That said, it’s pure gaslighting to tell this song’s audience that they just need to buck up. Americans who’ve watched their once-vibrant hometowns turn into crime-ridden, poverty-stricken, drug-flooded hellholes have a right to be angry.

Third and finally, you’ve got the opposite of the bootstrappers. We’ll call them “the wonks,” since they tend to emphasize public policy over individual agency. This category ranges from New Right think-tankers courting the multiracial working class to full-on Marxists for whom everything is capitalism’s fault.

For them, the offending lines are the ones about “the obese milkin’ welfare” and taxpayer-subsidized fudge rounds. Democratic Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and left-wing journalist Hamilton Nolan see these lyrics as a ploy to draw “popular rage … away from the rich.” 

To D.C. swamp creatures and champagne socialists, complaints about the feckless poor can sound callous. To the people who actually live in the communities Anthony describes, they’re just a reflection of reality. Go hang out at a Sheetz or a 7-11 in a rough part of town. It won’t be long before you see a woman in Cookie Monster pajamas buy a bag full of junk food with her EBT card. (RELATED: Bystander Urges 7-Eleven Owners To Sit Back And Let Robbery Happen. They Don’t Listen)

It’s possible to recognize the importance of public policy while also admitting that the poor can absolutely make things worse for themselves.

Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance strikes this balance admirably. He is perhaps more eager than any other GOP lawmaker to use the power of the state to rectify the damage the rich and powerful have done to communities like Middletown, where he grew up. 

At the same time, however, he writes in his memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” about an acquaintance who lost a badly needed job because he took four half-hour bathroom breaks a day. He also describes the epidemic of “Mountain Dew mouth”  — tooth decay caused by parents who let their kids gorge themselves on soda, sometimes from infancy. No government policy can make someone put Pepsi in a baby bottle or slack off at work. People like that, Vance wrote, are “reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible.”

The popularity of “Rich Men North Of Richmond” proves that you can be authentically working class and also know who Jeffrey Epstein is. It also proves that you can blame both the government and your good-for-nothing neighbors for the decline you see all around you. If your political views can’t accommodate all of that, then perhaps they’re a bit too narrow.

Grayson Quay is an editor at the Daily Caller.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.