Let's start off this morning with a history lesson, direct from Music City USA!

There are lots of ultra-right MAGAts screaming "APPROPRIATION" when it comes to left-leaning folks who enjoy country and bluegrass music. I get it. I grew up in a tiny town in Illinois where modern country was the soundtrack to our lives in this deeply red area of a blue state.

Flash forward a few decades and now we have artists like @MissMargoPrice, David Allen Coe, Sturgill, Waylon, Willie, and others who are now being enjoyed by a new breed of country music listener. But this new breed doesn't look or act like your "typical" country fan.

And since those folks don't look or act like your "blue lives matter", "Trump 2020" folks, they're being accused of embracing something that isn't theirs to enjoy. Gasp! The horror!

But here's the thing, the people who are all fired up about "the left" appropriating outlaw country and bluegrass music clearly don't understand its history.

This is the music of the working-class people. This is the music of rednecks.

*GASP*! Brad! You're insulting people!

Nah. You just don't know your history. The term "redneck" was originally coined to describe the working class farmers. It was embraced by them, and they even donned red bandanas around their necks to show their solidarity.

Solidarity to what, you might ask? The early 1900s Democratic Party. Now this is important because this was in the dead middle of the party switch, finalized in 1936 by Mr. Roosevelt (is gonna save us all...)

The party of the working people who understood the role of government.

To take matters further, in the 1920s and 1930s, coal miners identified themselves with these same red bandanas to show their solidarity to the miner's union.

The working class. The ones who wanted the government to help the people.

Now we're in 2020, we have a greater disparity in the distribution of wealth than ever before, and the modern day "rednecks" are rising up. They are embracing these sounds that tell the stories to which they can relate.

They're protesting injustice. They're screaming that they're done accepting the government's pandering to corporations, and they're doing it to the soundtrack of music that was indeed appropriated.

But it was appropriated by the right, not the other way around.

So keep blasting Florida Georgia Line from your Tennessee-tilted compensation mobile. But when I roll up on a Harley, cranking Merle Haggard before proudly voting blue, ya better check yourself and ask why it offends you. Because you've lost the plot.

If you really think that pot-smoking Willie, or prison-protesting Johnny would approve of your stupidity, you've clearly never understood country music.

Country has a proud history in left-leaning, socialist ideals. You're just too ignorant to recognize it.

I'll leave you with this, and implore you to listen to the lyrics. This is the sound of protest.