00:00:00.000class is in session hey welcome to unlearn 16 classes in session guys today i'm gonna tackle
00:00:11.040i'm gonna talk about i'm gonna i'm gonna jump into oliver anthony's richmond rich men north
00:00:20.320of richmond first of all it's a mouthful but it really does in the in the way that the lyrics play
00:00:25.760out, it's quite beautiful. It's an excellent sort of sentence to throw in there. It really does
00:00:33.520roll off the tongue. But I want to talk about this song because I listened to it. It came right after
00:00:42.780the Aldean song and everybody, I mean, that video and that everything was so heavy handed about that
00:00:49.160song and so clearly problematic and directed and what a lot of people would see and the way that
00:00:55.620he handled it and his bravado and all of that stuff. I'm going to put that over here because
00:00:59.560I talked about that song somewhere else. But I've had a lot of people say, Joe, you got to listen
00:01:04.500to Oliver Anthony's song. And I wanted to do it. And I have to say this right off the hop.
00:01:12.060I'm doing this with little to no, not absolutely none, because it's impossible in these days to
00:01:19.000actually have an opinion without actually hearing something of what somebody else said.
00:01:22.940I tried not to research it. I tried not to delve into it as much as just what I think,
00:01:31.420just what I think, not what other people thinks, not what the, you know, the Guardian said or,
00:01:36.360or the Atlantic or frigging Rolling Stones already written about this song, right?
00:01:43.720Just me. Okay. And I want to go through it because I feel as though just like everything
00:01:49.340in this world, there are some things that are endearing. There are some things that touch a
00:01:56.880very particular point and are incredibly poignant about our, let's say, current reality and the
00:02:05.660human condition of right now. He's obviously saying about the United States, but we can
00:02:09.260extrapolate and we can expand this to different places. And there's some of the stuff that when I
00:02:14.100really listened, really listened. And I went, hmm, I don't know if I love that metaphor. I don't know
00:02:23.500if I love what he's trying to say there. And that's okay. I am not advocating I have to agree
00:02:30.740with anybody, but maybe what we should stop advocating is something as holistically amazing,
00:02:35.900a perfect, an anthem, or garbage, and eliminate it. Because I'll tell you one thing,
00:02:42.680Oliver Anthony's endearing. His voice, the way that he presents himself, the way that he speaks,
00:02:54.100he is seemingly, from what I've seen so far, a very lovely down-to-earth, from Richmond, Virginia
00:03:01.660kind of guy, and has this very folksy, throwback voice that makes you believe him.
00:03:12.680That makes you hear what he's saying in sort of, in my opinion, a very authentic way. And I think that's what's striking a chord for a lot of people. Even if when I jump into the lyrics, I'm like, what about this lyric? And even the title, Richmond, North of Richmond.
00:03:31.300I mean, that's the title of the song has weight and history. And, and I don't know, again, because I haven't spoken to him, nor have I heard him really do a lot of press about this. I don't know what he's really trying to say. I am going to give you my interpretation of how it can come across. And we'll go from there. So let, we're going to go by section for section. I'm not going to play the song. You guys have heard the song. You guys can go listen to the song on your own.
00:04:01.300Um, but again, let me start endearing. I kind of, you, you root for this guy. You want him to do
00:04:08.940well. He's turned down all of this money. So you have this vibe about him, although it's sort of
00:04:14.560counterintuitive to his son, turning down money, do something cool with the money. Um, but I get
00:04:20.080it turning down major establishment, but I, I also find something interestingly problematic about
00:04:26.900that, but nonetheless, let, let's talk about the lyrics. So we'll go through the first, you know,
00:04:30.720we'll go through line by line. I've been selling my soul, working all day, overtime hours for
00:04:35.780bullshit pay. So I can sit out here and waste my life away, drag back home and down my troubles0.99
00:04:42.780away. So lots of people think and believe and feel exactly that way about what job they're doing,
00:04:53.920about how they're being taken advantage of, of the system that they're in, of how
00:05:01.600that company and that sort of our system of economics is taking advantage of what they do.
00:05:10.960And it sort of can throw you into a tailspin of losing meaning for life and losing meaning
00:05:20.800for that job and your purpose and your place and your value, all of that I'm with. All of that I'm
00:05:29.260with. And you know, the interesting part about this song and the funny part about the conservatives
00:05:36.260loving it, which by the way is the initial reason that I'm like, well, now I don't want to like it
00:05:41.460because they like it. So I admit my bias there. But what this song is really talking about,
00:05:48.900If you really stripped it all away, and it's hilarious to me, it's a Marxist song. It is. It's a song about broken capitalism. It's a song about how extremely wealthy elite, because it doesn't matter what shape, size they come in,
00:06:10.100garnering and gathering that much wealth for one individual gives them a level of power
00:06:19.060and control that the rest of us just don't have. And then we become kind of puppets or victims
00:06:26.400of that. So the funny part about it is, the funny part about sort of, in my opinion,
00:06:31.580the main theme of the entire thing is this is that the average employee in the united states
00:06:41.500it's working incredibly hard that has been completely alienated from their own labor
00:06:47.340alienated from the profits in the business that they add to and the value that they bring in
00:06:54.300It is a, they're making a Marxist argument here. And what's clearly broken is the way in which we have put in place a capitalist economic ideology, taken the leashes off different economic corporations and different, you know, multinational corporations and transnational corporations and corporations at the home and all of these things.
00:07:25.100and politics because this is going to get political right because the conservatives
00:07:28.460are going to love it but it's going to get political but but politics becomes an extension
00:07:32.620thereof right when we say that politicians are using are being bought and sold for by corporations
00:07:41.260why do corporations have that much money and that much control how have we allowed them that much
00:07:46.540access to people. So we're saying people can be bought. Cool. That's an argument. Should we all
00:07:54.800have such incredibly high morals? You never can be bought. Well, I don't know if that makes sense
00:08:02.080because there's a lot of factors that go into politics and who gets elected and how they get
00:08:06.700to stay. And who, guys, money is the bottom line here, right? Why do you think politicians,
00:08:17.000they take donations and not all politicians do this. I know you guys are going to list people
00:08:20.940like Katie Hobbs. I'm going to say, but she never did. I get that. I get that. But there'll be,
00:08:25.760there may be a cap to her level of success, you know, like a Bernie Sanders. Look,
00:08:32.560Because at the end, at the end of the day, what these people are challenging is the system of capitalism. Nobody's saying, you know, everybody should be communist, by the way, and just for a refresher, Marxist is a criticism. Marxism is a criticism, an economic ideological criticism of capitalism.
00:08:55.200It does not talk about, it does not advocate a particular version of communism, by the
00:09:05.180But that's neither here nor there, because nobody really wants to read.
00:09:08.660But talking about how we get lost in this system, we, our humanity gets lost.
00:09:15.400Our humanity gets lost when we are working on a line, let's say in a manufacturing corporation,
00:09:21.300pressing holes in this particular widget, whatever the hell it happens, to be eight hours a day
00:09:27.040getting paid X amount. You never see your final product. You have no input. You have no control.
00:09:34.120You have nothing to do. And then the company itself making billions and you barely being
00:09:39.640able to make anything. And even worse than that, and I do believe this is true, even worse than
00:09:44.020that, it seems as though you have no purpose. Now, some people would say, oh, well, then you
00:09:48.840got to be an entrepreneur. Well, you know what? If everybody was an entrepreneur, if everybody was
00:09:53.180an entrepreneur, who's going to do the jobs? What kind of a world do we live in where everybody are
00:10:00.720just entrepreneurs? Nobody actually does the work in the factory, in the corporation. Nobody actually
00:10:06.460is punching the whip. Nobody's doing the stuff. And we have all these people just creating,
00:10:11.500constantly creating new things. Now what? Let's assume for a second, we need to have a plethora.
00:10:16.760We need to have a wide scope of people in an economic system doing different things. Service industry, manufacturing, educate, right? So not everybody can be the entrepreneur. So before you say, well, that's the answer. Everybody should own their own shit. No, I don't agree with that. I think it's silly, but I do think humanity, people need a connection and a purpose for what they do.
00:10:38.740And I think the assembly line, which I've argued a very long time ago, really stripped that away. And AI, here we go down another road of the exact same, you know, even grander magnification. All right, next paragraph or whatever. Stanza? Stanza. If only I was a poet. Okay, here we go.
00:11:00.600It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to for people like me and people like you.0.76
00:17:04.620But what I would also argue is, and I've said this many a time on many different podcasts,
00:17:09.620You also can't assume for a minute that the North were all about equality of African-Americans when in actuality, when that war happened and when slavery was abolished, Northern manufacturing districts took advantage of the fact that they would pay African-American men a quarter.
00:17:37.06025% of what they pay the white guy standing right next to them. Let's not forget that.
00:17:43.780And also, there's this notion that the North, sort of a federalist state, the idea of a unified
00:17:52.560country and a national government wanted more power to control the whole country, whereas the
00:17:58.960South just wanted unified states where individual states had a lot more power unto themselves,
00:18:05.300right and and that's the argument that goes back and forth i don't mind that i don't i guess again
00:18:11.660i make space for it however however are we really thinking that people in richmond that people of
00:18:22.820the south that plantation owners weren't horrifically wealthy and weren't doing what
00:18:29.920they were doing to become massively wealthy on the backs of slave labor. We're not really making
00:18:39.360that argument. We're not really making that argument that anybody who believes in stronger
00:18:43.820state rights is somehow more equitable, does better things for their employees, takes care
00:18:51.120of their employees better, is a nicer capitalist, takes care of their people, gives them health
00:18:58.280care and adequate raises and never takes advantage of their labor. Nobody's making that argument.
00:19:05.360Are they? Because this is where I start to get frustrated. Because if that's the argument you're
00:19:12.860making, it's absolutely asinine. Absolutely asinine. We can sit here and talk about1.00
00:19:19.940incredible wealth, corporate wealth, the creation of billionaire after billionaire and what they
00:19:26.460do with that money and how tax law and corporate law and all of the legislation that's passed down
00:19:32.940by the people they've gotten elected helps them first and helps them best i'm with you i'm all in
00:19:39.580but that's not just north of richmond and using that as a template you're creating yet another
00:19:48.300illusion that the good old boys of the south take care of each other better
00:19:54.140and I'm not a fan. I'm not, I'm just, I'm not a fan with you there.
00:20:00.280Lord knows they just want to have total control, want to know what you think,
00:20:06.220want to know what you do. And they don't think you know, but I know that you do. So they want
00:20:13.640total control. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, and this is where we're going to go back to
00:20:20.220who's looking for total control? How are they looking for it? How do we have a United States
00:20:27.160of America based on constitutional principles of freedom, liberty, and justice for all, yet,
00:20:35.000yet we still have such incredibly high levels of discrimination, incredibly high levels of things
00:20:40.700like police brutality, incredibly high levels of this kind of sort of aggressive level of capitalism
00:20:50.080right we can't say any of that so total control sure i think lots of people are looking for total
00:20:58.900control but i actually believe that it's coming through more so from corporations and the broken
00:21:07.520sense of capitalism than it is coming from politics if you want to fix the politics you
00:21:12.000got to fix the capital is you want to fix the capitalism well that's a whole other story and
00:21:17.300I promise you that's just not north of Richmond. Because your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to0.98
00:21:23.580no end, funnily enough. Look, comparing the taxes in the United States to the taxes up here,0.99
00:21:27.780I don't even understand how to have that conversation. What I do understand is this,
00:21:32.160you are the wealthiest nation in the world. And the fact that you don't have free healthcare,
00:21:38.240tax-based healthcare for every single person is a travesty, is a human rights injustice,
00:21:43.960is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. Now here's where it gets interesting. Here's where I think0.98
00:21:51.620some interesting shots were fired. I wish politicians would look out for minors and not1.00
00:21:57.360just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street ain't got nothing to eat.
00:22:05.140and the obese milking welfare. Okay. It's like he comes with something interesting and then comes0.69
00:22:15.680with a left hook of something I'm not in love with. Okay. We want to look out for, so this,
00:22:22.300this probably is in reference to, there's a lot of talk about what went on in that island. I'm
00:22:28.380not going to talk about him. I'm not going to talk about anything like that because we know that
00:22:32.140that YouTube is not going to go down that road. So this one Island, this one Island and this one
00:22:38.780group of people, whatever happened, what I do, people held me to be held accountable for doing
00:22:45.340horrible things. Absolutely. But I think what he might be getting at, and here's where I find him
00:22:49.960interesting. He might be getting at the fact that there's a bunch of kids in the United States right
00:22:54.660now. The levels of child poverty, the levels of kids going without food, the levels of kids not
00:23:04.240getting educated, the levels of kids not having proper housing and proper clothing, and those,
00:23:09.600whether they be whatever child you're talking about, how do we not care that much, right?
00:23:20.820You have a lot of people talking about all sorts of anti-abortion and pro-life movements, but not about pro-life in the sense of how do we enable these kids to have what they need to have a good start, regardless of the family in which they are born into.
00:23:36.760You know, how do we protect kids? Because let's also focus on this. They like to talk about that. Conservatives like to talk about that island. But a vast majority, a vast majority of abuse, either physical, sexual, emotional, goes on inside the house. The call's coming from inside the house. It's family and close friends.
00:24:00.600So if that's the case, why are we spending so much time talking about the island, again, I'm not negating the need to speak about it, and nothing about what's going on and how we're supposed to mitigate and protect kids from their own families, when the vast majority, statistically, is coming, or calls are coming from inside the house.
00:24:24.420now i don't like this this whole welfare line
00:24:28.880number one you start looking at how much tax dollar goes into welfare um if you eliminated
00:24:39.800it in its entirety you'd barely notice now in the states i should have looked up the number
00:24:44.920before i did this in canada if you looked at a pie graph of where our tax dollars go
00:24:50.500Welfare is such a thin line, it doesn't even get a color.