The problem with the people north of Richmond isn’t only their progressive politics or their self-dealing as insiders in a system they control; it’s also that control itself, the sense that the destiny of men like Oliver Anthony is decided faraway, where they have no voice.
Americans felt that way during the revolution: They had no representation in a Parliament an ocean away, where decisions about taxes, trade and the entire economic life of the colonists, to say nothing of their religious and political lives, were made by strangers.
If the counties (and states) north of Richmond were red instead of blue and treated the working men south of Richmond with magnanimity rather than neglect or contempt, there would still be a problem because what those men need isn’t patronage; it’s control over their own lives and a say in their fate of their own communities.
No wage will ever be high enough if the men who earn it aren’t free.
“Rich Men North of Richmond,” like populism itself, is about control, not wages.
R&I-Rawr
ConservativeChick