Rich men north of Richmond

[Drunknsubmrnr]

Basically Poohbah managed to squeeze Johnny Lyle into a song and got a Lumberjack Commando to sing it. Plus a Dobro. Not really able to link it on a phone but there shouldn’t be any problem finding it.

So….just from the popularity the question is “guillotine?” And the answer is “face up”.

[Johnnie Lyle]

For those who haven’t heard it, video is here.

Lyrics:

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

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

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 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

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

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

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've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay

The song has a traditional country twang, but is more ballad than call to arms. It’s only scratching the surface of the anger and hopelessness out there.

Hillbilly Elegy is only part of it. I did my doctoral research in the hollers of West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, right in ground zero of pill mills and absolute devastation, and then went to the finishing school of rural California, whose progressive primadonnas will cheerfully tell you they don’t give a damn about. I’ve seen towns that absolutely reek of depression, worse that anything you can conceive short of an extermination camp. I’ve seen the largest steel mill in America leveled and turned into a WalMart. I’ve seen people call up all their family and friends for $15 gift cards. I’ve seen the faces of people who live on solely in the hope of a miracle. I have seen OBGYN coroners and meth babies born in the ruins of abandoned hotels. I have seen places where the only jobs are in medical care, maximum security prisons and making methamphetamines. I have seen the bodies stacked like cordwood - people who committed slow-motion suicide through booze and drugs because their lives effectively ended after high school - just for the crime of being born rural or poor.

I know, because it’s my job to count them.

And that’s just half the equation.

The other half is not just the wanton excess by the wealthy, but how they have co-opted the language of the proletariat to bemoan their largess while gatekeeping it. It’s not that they’re rich - all Americans view themselves as temporarily dispossessed millionaires. It’s that they’re both flaunting their wealth and deliberately taking away our ability to make our own piles. Rich lefty Americans deliberately sacrifice working class Americans on the altar of cheap shit made overseas in sweatshops at three times the pollution - all in the name of worker’s rights and arresting climate change. Something like 40% of US greenhouse gas emissions go to fuel the lifestyles of the richest 10% of the populace - the percentage most likely to bitch about late stage capitalism and climate change on their private jet or third vacation property. Nothing is more despicable than a bunch of liberal DINKS bitching about late stage capitalism while bragging about their second house, their ninth vacation, and their conspicuous consumption fueled by providing nothing of value. While their plan for what ails is is a perverted Auschwitz: nothing as gauche as Zyklon B, just ready access to all the drugs and vice till the drugs kill you, one way or the other.

That’s San Francisco right now.

You want a sign of how bad things are? It’s not “Rich Men North of Richmond;” it’s Breaking Bad. The rich money took the scourge of America - the meth cooker - and made him a goddamn folk hero.

The anger brewing is what Stuart infused in the Russian Front stories of TBO: people who have lots are talking what little we have, and the people who supposedly should know the most about why it’s wrong shouting “stick ‘em up!”

Face up into the guillotine is far more merciful than they deserve. Far more.

[M.Becker]

So….just from the popularity the question is “guillotine?” And the answer is “face up”.

Here's to people not just listening to the music but also voting to the tune. And doing so early and by mail. Because Maricopa County.

[Johnnie Lyle]

So….just from the popularity the question is “guillotine?” And the answer is “face up”.

Here's to people not just listening to the music but also voting to the tune. And doing so early and by mail. Because Maricopa County.

Voting is only part of it. What and who are you voting for? What do you want the people you vote for to do? How are you going to hold them accountable when they fail to do so? Or if they and reality tell you that your sacred cows need to become hamburgers because they do not work?

Half to three quarters of this mess is the direct result of people voting for fantasies and people who promise them fantasies - especially when the fantasies fail. Because people, especially well off people, want fantasies over reality - especially the fantasy that they are not the baddies.

I am proud to have been part of government programs that actually did what they were explicitly intended to do, and to have made “I’m from the government and I am here to help you” into a truth and not a cruel joke. But they required ruthlessly pairing out the feel-good bullshit and the panacea pablum and actually listening to people, accurately assessing what works and what doesn’t, and actually helping them deal with their shit themselves.

And we don’t want to do that. We’re in this mess because we want the people we’re failing to just shut up and die already, cause they’re icking rich people’s mellow by not playing out the role for which they are cast.

Glenn Reynolds linked to an old column during the first Trump campaign, about the much more bourgeoisie protest movement of the Tea Party, and how it was much more genteel and respectable than Trump: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ ... /82047484/

Bourgeoisie and Trump have failed precisely because the powers that be refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of their grievances, the need to actually address them in a way that works and is acceptable to the aggrieved and their right to exercise power when they win elections. Instead, they are busy destroying the political norms that protect them from well-deserved vengeance for short term wealth and power.

They’re sowing a whirlwind, sowing it so effectively that a panel composed solely of Romanovs and Bourbons would go “duuuuuuude.” Mixing metaphors, the boiler is stoked, the rudder jammed in place, the bow pointed at the rocks, and the captain is busily tying down the safety valves as we rocket past all the off ramps.

I won’t shed a tear when the powers that be get their well-earned just desserts. They have earned the absolute worst that can be done to them - and modern medicine makes that very bad indeed.

But revolutions are extremely messy, and generally go to the Khan Noonien Singh school of marksmanship - and it’s very easy for the innocent to get caught in the crossfire.

[jemhouston]

Johnnie, it's the

innocent to get caught in the crossfire

, it's more like one side uses them as a bullet stop.

[Johnnie Lyle]

Johnnie, it's the

innocent to get caught in the crossfire

, it's more like one side uses them as a bullet stop.

Or multiple sides.