The term "overnight sensation" is overused, but in recent memory it's tough to find someone more overnight and more of a sensation than country singer Oliver Anthony.

A few weeks ago, he released "Rich Men North of Richmond," a combination protest song and primal howl, and instantly transformed into a superstar. Within a fortnight, he'd gained millions of fans, and his songs were burning up charts of every genre.

His songs' lyrics represent a kind of public nudity, a stripping-down of grievances, and Anthony's voice is authentic.

"I've been selling my soul, working all day," he sings. "Overtime hours for bull—-t pay."

Anthony has a good voice and writes moving songs, but there's a deeper reason for his success.

It's the same reason conspiracy theories run rampant, and the same reason Donald Trump won in 2016: People feel scared and powerless. They believe a force is holding them back, holding them down, and they're desperate for someone, anyone to do something about it.

After Anthony's meteoric rise, progressives tripped over themselves to be the first to call him out. They said his song, which talked about overweight people buying "fudge rounds" with tax money, made clear his conservative ideals. They wanted to categorize, then disregard him.

"Oh, he's just MAGA," they sighed with relief.

Republicans made the same mistake, trying to adopt Anthony as one of their own. At the GOP debate, a question about the "Richmond" song gave Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who somehow did not understand that he is a rich man north of Richmond, the chance to tee off on President Joe Biden.

When Anthony pointed out that the people on the Republican debate stage were exactly the corporatized politicians he'd sung about, the media seemed confused. Was Anthony ... a liberal? Did he like Joe Biden?

It was like a pingpong match, with the winner getting to claim Anthony as the prize. He's clearly a conservative in some regards, but the roiling resentment he gave voice to isn't. He sings about corruption and hopelessness, but politicians can't or won't tackle those issues.

In the comments under Anthony's YouTube videos, there's little discussion of politics, other than to express despair at the filth endemic in both major parties. There are comments, instead, about drug addiction and loneliness. There are lamentations.

Meanwhile, senators like Mitch McConnell, a Republican, and Diane Feinstein, a Democrat, manage to cling to their power even when physically incapable of handling the positions' demands.

Folks can be forgiven for thinking there's an unseen hand moving the levers, a force that regular people cannot harness, one constantly propelling the powerful to greater heights.

Conspiracy theories can be a cry for help, an expression of the suspicion that there's an important club you can't join. It capitalizes on a kernel of truth and plays to the fear that evil is too veiled in shadow to ever be defeated.

In Yanis Varoufakis' book "Adults in the Room," about his attempts to resolve the Greek debt crisis in 2015, he writes that he's often asked what caused the implosion. Whose conspiracy was it? The corporations? The politicians? The bureaucrats?

"If only matters were that straightforward," he writes with melancholy. "If our sharply diminished circumstances can be blamed on a conspiracy, then it is one whose members do not even know that they are part of it."

That, however, seems so pessimistic, so flatly European to us.

It would more comforting and more American to have a boogeyman, someone to fight, vote out or imprison. The truth, that it's a Gordian knot, perhaps impossible to untangle, is scary.

But, like the actual Gordian, even the most complicated knot can be cut with a sword. And the powerful ignore these common resentments, the ones expressed by Oliver Anthony, at their peril.

There is always the danger of a great awakening. You can only persuade people for so long that the economy is fine, tell them only so many times that they're imagining wage stagnation, political corruption and their declining health.

You draw the shades down, hoping they won't see the burning landscape outside, but inside them, they have eyes that can see, even in darkness, and ears that can hear, even in silence.

To learn more about Georgia Garvey, visit GeorgiaGarvey.com.

Photo credit: Jacek Dylag at Unsplash