The Hillbilly Who Struck a Chord and America’s Nerve

Recently a Young guy from Virginia wrote a song.  He sang it in his backyard to a microphone and his dogs.  Surrounded by dead cars from the 1990s and a deer hunting stand, he sang it loud.  The words were his feelings and simple, and he yelled them loudly so they could echo down the holler.  Like the silent shock waves from a thunderclap, the message from his heart and his soul reverberated out of the woods, out of the holler, onto the internet, around the world, and the pain from his acoustic guitar shocked millions of people.  Overnight, his audience spread from a white mutt and a black lab to human Americans, white, black, of all colors and races.  Too many people have been working too hard for bullshit pay.

 
But it’s not the money that brought tears.  It’s the memory of something we never actually had, but something we all feel was lost.  Americans have never really been united.  After 911 we had two messages: Enough is enough-let’s fight, vs. do not change in any way or the terrorists win.  Even after Pearl Harbor, there were still plenty of people who did not want to fight Germany in response to something Japan did.  Hundreds of thousands of mothers sent their sons and husbands off to die in Tunisia, Libya, or Italy or over the skies of Romania, and they didn’t understand why that was a good response to a Japanese attack on Hawaii.   Americans have never really been united

Then why do we long for a time that never happened?  It is simple; we wish it so.  Deep in the foundation of our nation, there is a live electric cable with old cloth insulation that has been eaten off by a press, a media that is not free, but rather bought and paid for.  Like rats, TV pundits chew away the cloth insulation and leave the live wire exposed.  They do it for fame, fortune, vanity, for dinner parties with the elites, and because they have the absolute power to do so.  Everyone knows that absolute power always comes with absolute abuse of power.  If they did not, if the press were really on the sides of the citizens instead of partisan politicians and competing corporations, then they’d keep those two in check instead of leaving us bare, open, unprotected, uninsulated, and constantly short circuiting.

The live wire is like a nerve going down the spine of the American people.  Media on one channel use editing and half-truths to make you believe one thing.  Media on another channel gives you the other half of a story but then neglects the other parts.  Half-truths are not the truth.  It is as stupid as getting news and information from a comedy show “because it’s based on the news” or “they go after both sides.”  No, America’s spine is constantly being stepped on.

Then this hillbilly comes around.  He posts a song on the internet, and people from both sides of the aisle weep.   A quick look at the reaction videos to his song shows that rappers from da hood, hillbillies from the hollers, cowboys out in the country, and artists from all over feel the same pain.  Both remaining middle-class Americans are reported to have watched his video and almost vomited at its accuracy. 

The only people who hate it are those who distort it, lie about it, and do so because every breath of his lyrics takes oxygen away from their divisive hate speech.  Rolling Stone magazine went on a political tirade about his song and ignored his song.  Pundits on MSNBC called it racist, but they call everything racist, and those race-centric, prophets of prejudice (or is it profits?) can’t even handle the label on a bottle of syrup or a box of rice.

Oliver Anthony’s message was not about longing for a government that would give him and everyone else more free stuff.  He did not cry out for better government phones, more welfare, housing subsidies, and healthcare reform.  He cried out longing for the days when a person could work hard, get paid, and have enough money to live to live on their own, not the government tit.

Why would Americans of all races, religions, and colors be so upset in the 21^st Century?  How can that be after eight years of Barack Obama and Joe Biden with another three years of Joe Biden, and four years of Democrats doing nothing except divide the country because they hate a billionaire who didn’t wanna play their little “reign” deer games?  Now, no one really “feels” the national debt, but it’s in the $30 TRILLION range now, and maybe there’s a large number of Americans who felt that banks shouldn’t have gotten billions in bailout money in 2008, or corporations that donated to Dems shouldn’t have gotten billions, but rather that the American people should have been bailed out with their own money instead of the banks?  Maybe it’s the trillions spent on wars that Democrats worked hard to lose, and the Pentagon never really wanted to end; trillions that the American people could have used?  Could it be the $10 trillion in spending that Joe Biden and Democrats tossed to corporations and banks instead of Americans and then stamped as “covid relief” or “green” or “inflation reduction?” 

Ya know, you start looking at a few trillion here and a few trillion there, and the math gets a little questionable-really there is one single question that every American feels, but doesn’t ask, knows, but can’t describe, and infuriates, but leaves us all (people of both parties, all colors, and all religions)…leaves us all pissed.

Are YOU better off now than you were 3 years and $16,000,000,000,000 ago?  How could your life possibly be worse after spending $16 trillion dollars in 3 years?  How can any American look back at the 21^st Century, and all that our government has accomplished, and not feel like $90 trillion dollars or so since 2000 wasn’t worth “all of this”?

History doesn’t show a time when the American people were really, fully united.  There are, however, things that make Americans different than others, and one of those is our nationalism.  Ask anyone from any country who has come to visit, and there sure to say something about all the flags we fly.  We can be divided between the Gadsen flag and a pride flag, but most of us see something special in our American flag.  We feel a common shock when we’re reminded about the absolute, unquestionable, mathematically clear incompetence shown by our elected leaders, those rich men north of Richmond.  We all feel the spine-crushing weight of the taxes and restrictions they impose on us.  We all see them spending trillions of our dollars, while we can’t afford a carton of eggs, or gas in our car to get to work or get enough hours to pay for the Obamacare deductible.

Here is the real rub, and here’s why they need to stop voices like Oliver Anthony and the rappers who are singing with him.  Where the American people feel pain, and frustration across party lines, where they are losing faith in government institutions, and where our women, our mothers, wives, and our little girls are reduced to “birthing persons” or “egg carriers” there is another wire, another nerve being eaten raw.  It’s live and almost ready to short-circuit.  This wire is far, far more powerful.  That live wire is anger, the bottom of the barrel, nothing left to lose, and drained of everything including hope.  The anger of a united middle- and lower-class America is a power the likes of which the world has never seen, but for more than 200 years, learned to respect, and fear.  535 Rich men north of Richmond would do well to wonder how many more trillions they can spend on restricting cow farts and such before the American people do unite, not with tears to a song, but with reckoning.