Resisting the Slavery of “The New World” with “An Old Soul”

A viral anti-woke anthem lays open the great divide in America.

By now you may well have heard Oliver Anthony’s powerful song, “Rich Men North of Richmond”, or at least have heard about it. At this writing, over 30 million people have viewed it on YouTube, with more than 2 million downloads.

The song talks about the state of the world in general, and specifically, the American dystopia that the politicians have laid upon the country. Anthony expresses his views about it with the summary line, “It’s a damn shame what the world’s gotten to.”

A Global Phenomenon

Much of the world agrees.

People from Europe, Africa and Oceania have responded in full agreement to the song’s expression of despair concerning the current state of the world and the direction it’s heading.

Anthony’s astonishing debut song follows on the heels of Jason Aldean’s confrontational anthem, “Try That In A Small Town”, which challenges the radical left to try to set up a Antifa rally or set fires in a small town. Predictably, the left media in this country condemned Aldean with their usual suspects of Marxist talking points vile epithets. 

They’re now demonizing Anthony’s song and the singer himself.

But why?

Anthony’s song isn’t confrontational. Rather, it’s a lament of what’s already happened in the country.

Speaking Truth to Power

The song references child trafficking and Epstein’s island, welfare fraud, inflation, high taxes and falling wages. All of these are well-known facts, brought about by corrupt, treacherous and spineless politicians in Washington D.C. from both political parties. The “rich men (and women) from Richmond” have sold their souls and the country’s, too, so they can enrich themselves while they destroy the culture and integrity of the nation, seemingly without paying any consequences.

That isn’t a lie or even an exaggeration. Politicians have grown rich in office with income and wealth that far surpasses their federal salaries. Their avenues to riches have included insider trading (former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi), investing in or co-owning major businesses with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Dianne Feinstein), and selling influence to China (President Joe Biden, among others).

When Republican candidates at the first Republican presidential debate referenced the song, the rising country music star quickly condemned them, and rightfully so, since the song itself was written about them as much as their democratic counterparts. But what does the exploding popularity–and the condemnation from the left and mainstream media–of songs like “Try That In A Small Town” and Rich Men North of Richmond” mean for America in the near future?

The glaring truth is that in 2023, the divisions that separate America are as deep and wide and irreconcilable as any in living memory. The wealth gap is widening faster today than in the past 50 years, which poses a growing threat to social stability. The U.S. dollar is under threat by trillions of deficit spending and debt. The country is rushing headlong toward fiscal and financial disaster.

The Culture War Is On...

On the cultural front, the country is at war. The federal imposition of the woke agenda of the left in schools and workplace, which includes the multiple gender agenda and the imposition of accepting divergent “lifestyles,” along with the overarching cancel culture directly attacks the traditional American values that are held by most conservatives. 

Alongside these cultural divisions, one could add many more.

For example, Americans are either in pro- or anti-Covid-19 vaccine camps. Pro-free speech Americans think that all information should be available, and that doctors and experts shouldn’t be censored. On the other side is the pro-censorship mob, led by the mainstream media and the medical establishment.

There is also a great divide in American between those who think that Joe Biden somehow garnered 81 million votes from his backyard without manufactured ballots added in the wee hours of the night, and those who don’t. There also exists a wide gulf of mistrust and suspicion between those who think that the Biden Administration and the Deep State are engaging in an illegal political persecution of Donald Trump with indictment after indictment in order to prevent him from running for the presidency in 2024, and those who believe Trump is the guiltiest man in America.

The War Between the New World and Old Souls Coming?

Finally, there is the ever-widening chasm between the traditional American who believes in God, country and our Constitutional rights, and those who support the fast-approaching digital dollar police state, or, as Anthony tells it, politicians “who just want total control, they wanna know what you think and know what you do.”

The cold facts are that these division–and many others one could name, from open borders to gun rights to the Ukraine war–not only are not going to go away, but rather, they will continue to widen and harden with time. It’s likely that the differences are already impossible to bridge without the total capitulation of one side or the other.

If American history is any indicator, that’s likely the case.

The irony is that the last civil war was fought abolish slavery, uphold the rights of human beings, and destroy the institutions that perpetuated the practice of human bondage. The next one, if it comes to be, will be those “with old souls” resisting the imposition of a the “New World,” a new digital slave state, brought about by those who have none.

As the song goes, “I wish I could wake up and it be not true, but it is. Oh, it is.”

A damn shame, indeed.