Mostly big agree, but the sweet spot is early country music as it emerged from folk. That and old school bluegrass. And also old Western music about cowboys and shit. All of it was super anticapitalist and rules. If you're interested I can deluge you with some suggestions.
But yeah, as you said, country music as it is these days for the most part has been coopted and blows
Counter point: Townes Van Zandt is in the top 5 best folk singers ever, and he’s a country singer….
I'm not gonna fight you on this, because 95% of the time that statement is true. I'm a big folk-head, though it should be noted (and I know Citations Needed and other folks have stated this) that at many points in history the differentiation is more political than aural. An immediate example was with old American labels and the splitting up of "country" and "race" records. The major difference there was often just skin color. Still, even in modern times the white Bela Fleck found himself getting into jazz because banjo didn't apply to the country-sound that Nashville was curating at the time. So really, there's various factors like race, instruments, themes, and vocal stylings that all come into play when defining these two genres that I won't even bother getting into because I should go to bed at some point and I really shouldn't write an essay this close to bed-time.
