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How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

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Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#51
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really means that the US political compass is very right-wing. Also that there is a semantic difference between being left wing in the US and left wing in most of the world. Historically, those supporting the king were on his right, and those opposing him on his left. Really basically, during the restoration, the far-right was composed of anti-Republicans (old nobles mostly), the right wanted to increase the c…

> Historically, those supporting the king were on his right, and those opposing him on his left. Kings typically didn't allow their opposition a seat at the table. Where the right wing/left wing thing actually came from was a seating arrangement in the French Parliament during the French Revolution (in this case it was the King who didn't have a seat at the table). It only made sense for a short time even then. It wa…

No, the king very much was at the table. With his opposition. For almost two years, the 'constituante' was there, composed by nobles on the left, clergy on the right and bourgeois in the center. It's only purpose was to redact a constitution, using the US as a model. It added a few laws, but those were more general principle rather than laws (the king cannot 'grâce' a prisonner, Jews are now real French citizen and not second-class...)

Then France had a 'real' assembly to draft new laws, and the monarch very much had a seat at the table, and vetoing right. He also declared war on his brother in law. Then he betrayed the army and that's when the clubs really organized from right-wing to left-wing, with the 'feulliants' on the right wanting to keep the king, and the girondin and jacobin on the left wanting to remove him. Sadly (for the king), letters were found that proved without the shadow of a doubt that the king betrayed the nation, and the 'feuillants' supported to keep the 1791 constitution (so a monarchy) and take Louis 16's son as the new king while placing the original under house arrest. They lost the arguments (a string of loosing battles and Austrian army closing in on Paris didn't help tbh). The left (girondin and Jacobin at the time), supported by the population won, and decided to behead the king and abolish monarchy. Then the new political power was a mess and like you said, no left or right, those on top were called 'La montagne', but most politic was still done in clubs.

My main reading on this in Jean-clement Martin, I don't have the reference on me right now but I can go look in 2-3days if you're interested.

Left-wing and right-wing started having a significance during the restoration, exactly as I said, with right-wing trying to limit the cens, left trying to expand it, left radicals trying to go toward a full republic and far-right trying to go toward a full monarchy.

Aren't libertarians left-wing? I mean, Joseph Déjacque was pretty left-wing, even by current standards. Unless you mean anarcho-capitalist or minarchists, and to be fair, those are much, much more closer to liberals than to nazis (although according to Chapoutot, liberals are pretty close to Nazi when you look at how modern management work).

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#52
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the fudge round lyric is one of those typical conservative talking point comments, but the rest of his message is about class struggle and I think many people can appreciate the frustration found in them. The guy seems like a good bean but with a conservative upbringing. Most people should be focused on how washington fails them. I'm partial to this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB9n0XA8dks Full disclosu…

> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to pu…

I would be more than happy if my tax money could bring joy to these people who normally couldn’t afford these things.

Make better to have the money spent on luxury food items than killing people in foreign countries.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#53
post #34

No one has interest in everything that goes viral or gets popular. I mean I just tune it out, if its not interesting to me. Which means whatever is currently at the top of any list (eg obama or trump), the Attention Economy throws up (including HN) doesn't really means what people think it means. There are lots of people who are paying attention to something totally different, cause whats available on the buffet is e…

Your first sentence is logically false.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#54

Working-class hero anthems were once the mainstays of union supporters, free speech absolutists, and anti-war advocates. The Overton window has shifted hard .

Less the Overton window than the establishment priorities. There's a well discussed shift of the "left" from being the working class party, supporting unions etc to the party of the elite establishment. And the "right" occupying the working class champion spot. It was happening for years but really galvanized after occupy wall street when the establishment decided they'd have an easier time giving lip service to soci…

> There's a well discussed shift of the "left" from being the working class party, supporting unions etc to the party of the elite establishment.

No, there's not, unless you confuse the Democratic Party (which was not historically even relatively “left” before the shift in question) with the “left” and the Republican Party (which was similarly not “right”) with the “right”, and also confuse “white racial issues, including those of the white working class in industrial states” with issues of “the working class”.

The left/right (or related liberal/conservative) split never really modelled US party politics well for most of history; US parties have been characterized more by coalitions of regional, racial, and ethnic factions than left-right ideology, with a left-right alignment (centered pretty far to the right by international standards) emerging as strongly aligned with the split between the major parties only fairly recently.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#55
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to pu…

So you are saying poor people should only eat bad, cheap food? What's your point exactly?

You can support a solution without supporting it's implementation.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#56
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to pu…

Anecdotes != data. Your one example is the exception that proves the rule. https://www.cbpp.org/research/snap-is-effective-and-efficien...

Show me a distribution of how SNAP money is spent, breaking down by classifications of the food the USDA listed.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The song was good, the vibe/message to me was somewhere between "working class hero" and that song from the Simpsons episode where homer is the manager for "lurlene" the country singer: "you work all day for some old man, sweat and break your back..." not to be taken too seriously but still representative of real feelings. The insane response in particular by rolling stone about "Reagan era tropes" and other fearmong…

Well, it is dangerous. In classic right wing fashion, it starts off talking about economic elites, but pretty quickly starts running off into welfare abusers and people who don't know how to properly feed themselves using benefits, as if this is any significant fraction of the ills plaguing our society. Half the song is about resentment towards other poor/working class people.

Exactly, "Not gonna lie, you had me in the first half" is the best way to describe this song.

If the target of the song didn't change from an actual source of problems (the rich/economic elite) to conservative scapegoats (other poor/working class people) it would have resonated far more with me and actually could have been a song that might have had a chance of finding more common ground between people that typically disagree vehemently.

It's no surprise the entire song resonated with a lot of people, plenty of which I'm sure, as they always have, are okay allowing the the "rich men north of richmond" to turn them against themselves and others like them with that scapegoating

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to pu…

I would be more than happy if my tax money could bring joy to these people who normally couldn’t afford these things. Make better to have the money spent on luxury food items than killing people in foreign countries.

That's easy for us to say, most working well-compensated tech jobs. The guy working overtime hours for bullshit pay would rather the government pay for neither and give a few dollars of his taxes back.

Also, for the folks calling this a conservative talking point, Marx and Engels weren't exactly well-disposed towards the lumpenproletariat... Someone who is chronically unemployed by definition is not working class.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#59
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying poor people should only eat bad, cheap food? What's your point exactly?

You can support a solution without supporting it's implementation.

If that truly was your point, you wouldn’t have needed to include your little story about how upset you were seeing someone use their EBT card in a way you disapprove of.

Re: How ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’ Reached the Top of the Charts

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fudge rounds It's a typical conservative talking point, because it's true. https://www.ebtcardbalance.com/georgia-ebt-food-list-ef9 > From the USDA guidelines above, you can purchase the following items using your EBT card. > Soft drinks > Candy > Cookies > Snack crackers > Ice cream > Seafood such as lobster and shellfish > Steaks > Bakery cakes I followed a woman in Publix the other day who used a SNAP card to pu…

I would be more than happy if my tax money could bring joy to these people who normally couldn’t afford these things. Make better to have the money spent on luxury food items than killing people in foreign countries.

> I would be more than happy if my tax money could bring joy to these people who normally couldn’t afford these things.

But then think of the people who also can't afford these things, but are paying into the system rather than taking from it. They'd rightly feel shafted by people buying luxury items on their dime.

The perspective of a well-off person who can easily afford to pay into the system and afford most of their chosen luxuries is probably not the right one to take in this case.

The point of food stamps is not to give people a taste of luxury, it's to keep them alive and healthy by giving them access to food so they don't go hungry.

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