Songfacts®:

• The opening track of Eric Church's Desperate Man album, this spoken-word jam acts as an allegory for the divisive two-party political system that the singer feels is splitting his country apart.
  
  Rattlesnake said to the Copperhead
  Ain't no way they can win
  Cause the mice are sheep
  And the shepherd's asleep
  And the copperhead said amen
  
  Church, a Bernie Sanders fan, told Rolling Stone that he knows that many of his fans share the frustration that this song gives voice to, no matter their political affiliation. "I believe most of them feel the way I do – regardless of their voter registration," he said. "Some of this stuff you look at and go, 'What the f---? Why is this hard? Why can we not get infrastructure done? Why don't we do more clean energy? Why are [prescription] drugs so expensive?' Because it's a lobbyist-based system. It's a money-based system. Either way, we're f-----d."
• The menacing parable is not directed at any particular political party. Instead, Church is expressing his anger at the whole toxic political regime. "The rattlesnake and the copperhead - that's left/right, blue/red, however you say it," he explained. "They sit there and fight all day to rile people up and then go get a drink. They're working together while the whole world is burning down."