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patriotic guitar twangles
(lemm.ee)
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this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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How is that? I'd honestly like to know. It raises my hackles, but i can't really explain why.
"Rich men north of Richmond"... I'm not american, so maybe that's why i don't quite get it
Probably has something to do with the Mason Dixon line (civil war border) and Richmond being the northernmost city of the South.
Richmond was the former capital of the confederacy. The Mason-Dixon line is actually at the Pennsylvania-Maryland/Delaware border.
North of Richmond is referencing Washington DC which has a large, fairly poor Black population and its suburbs, which are very rich and somewhat liberal.
I think its a bit of a stretch that he's not just talking about Congress/Senate when referring to rich people in DC. That seems to be the most likely scenario.
Standard rightwingery refers to "them politicians in Washington". When he tosses in a reference to the capitol of the Confederacy, it's pretty clear who he's pandering to.
I think you're probably right due to the target audience of the song and who originally seeded its success, e.g. Matt Walsh. Although I suppose you can just argue that Richmond just sounds good put next to rich men? Though if they weren't comfortable with it being associated with the confederacy though they just wouldn't have used it.
If I was to disregard the confederacy association I would say it's an OK name because if you're referring to politicians in DC they're a group that's worthy of being called out. It would still be stupid though because of course many of their favourite politicians are, you know, politicians and also very rich (like Donald Trump but also many more who were born into great wealth and continued to be wealthy throughout their lives.)
Kinda weird when your song talking shit about politicians contains an explicit reference to the folks you're talking about being north of the capital of the Confederacy.
Did not know that about Richmond haha
Pretty sure Washington DC is directly North of Richmond. I'm not from USA but that was my natural assumption about who he was talking about just based on geography and the US centre of power.