The song “Rich Men North of Richmond” became a number one hit in the United States by some metrics, giving fame to a previously unknown talent, Oliver Anthony. Oliver Anthony has caught the nation’s attention with his bluegrass country song “Rich Men North Of Richmond” which proclaims the plight of working class America and the indifference of the Washington DC political class. The song’s resonation has led to widespread acclaim and memes.
Much of his newfound success in this overnight rags to riches story is credited with God saving Oliver Anthony from alcoholism. Appearing as a baby Christian, Oliver Anthony read from Psalm 27 at a recent concert. But liberal Christian media has attacked him and the song. Christianity Today ran a piece calling the song unloving for being critical of the morbidly obese eating on welfare. Christian Post ran a column that’s arguably worse. Mark Tooley writes “Resenting rich men north of Richmond” which was curated from Juicy Ecumenicalism.
Of course, this scriptural preface begs the question: Who are the wicked, and who are the righteous? Who are these unnamed rich men north of Richmond, and who are their victims?
Victimology by region and class is as old as America. Jeffersonians resented the stockjobbers and speculators of northeastern cities, demonizing urbanites while romanticizing agrarian life, ignoring its reliance on slavery, whose evils far exceeded early Wall Street. Later Jacksonians rallied the backcountry against the financiers, embodied in the Philadelphia-based Bank of the United States. The pre-Civil War South resented the industrial North for denouncing slavery while profiting from it. Post-Civil War populists bewailed the plutocrats of the Industrial Revolution, especially the railroads. William Jennings Bryan rallied the South, prairie, and West against the tight money of the gold standard preferred by the Northeast. The isolationist Midwest opposed help for the Allies in WWI and WWII, claiming eastern banks and investors were war profiteers.
It’s worth noting that JP Morgan being the largest creditor of the Triple Entente was the direct cause of United States involvement in World War I. The article implies that they were wrong, and dismisses so-called flyover country.
Long after Archie Bunker had left the scene, grievance politics were amplified in 2020 with Black Lives Matter protests, which strove to articulate the anguish of many blacks contending against the legacy of centuries of slavery, segregation, and discrimination. But unlike the earlier Civil Rights Movement, which emerged from the black church, BLM did not embrace American Exceptionalism and offered no redemption, only condemnation. Its fruits were mainly the retreat of urban law enforcement followed by increased crime, of which urban blacks were the chief victims. Professions of chronic victimhood, even if justified, are often self-defeating.
Civil Rights protests in the 1950s and 1960s rejected chronic victimhood and appealed to the American Creed that rhetorically sought one nation fair to all. Modern identity politics mostly rejects national harmony in favor of preferred interest groups centered on race, ethnicity, sexuality, or economic status. They inveigh against a perceived oppressor or abstract system with vast control, privileging itself and tormenting everybody else.
Tooley completely retcons the Civil Rights Movement of much of the Marxism that undergirded it. Outside of the “I Have A Dream” speech and “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. was basically a communist, much like his Black Lives Matter successors. Liberation Theology which is the precursor to the Social Justice Gospel as we call it today infiltrated black churches during this time period.
Modern identity politics pit innocent victims against their supposed perpetual tormentors. It’s usually unclear how these tormentors will be defeated. Instead, they are just continuously denounced as part of the grievance, almost making grievance itself the goal and central to the identity.
The article takes aim at identity politics after having dismissed legitimate regional grievances, citing George Washington as “literally a “rich man north of Richmond” who like the other founders had no illusions about human nature.”
The Christianity Today article was made worse by their praise of Taylor Swift and Barbie. However, individually, this article is likely worse.
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Still new to your site. So appreciate your take on things. Thank you.