This is America, No, This Is America

Jason Aldean and the Two Americas

Is this the first time you've been to our little town? 
I said, I think it is 
He said, I don't like to brag 
But we're kinda proud of that ragged old flag
Johnny Cash, 1974

The hoo-ha around country singer Jason Aldean’s latest Number 1 hit ‘Try That In A Small Town’ is not a cancel culture story. It is neither a free speech story nor a censorship story, tempting as it is to frame it as such.

Sure, the powers that be at CMT cut the song’s video from rotation on Monday, three days after its release, without letting us know their rhyme or reason. As we speculate why, it Streisands up the Billboard charts. But no, this is a deeper story. A story of the two unreconciled Americas.

“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk, carjack an old lady at a red light, pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store, you think it’s cool? Act a fool if you like… try that in a small town.. I recommend you don’t”

So sings Aldean. At face value you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an anti-violence song. Country singer Sheryl Crow begs to differ. “There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence”, she wrote in response. Crow leads a cacophony of voices taking umbrage with the song and its video.

I’m old enough to remember the heady days of 2020 when silence was violence. Today denouncing violence is promoting violence. Keep up everyone.

Aldean’s video shows footage from Georgia’s State of Emergency in January this year. Not, as is being claimed, the “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” of 2020. The video is spliced with clips of burning flags, an attempted gun-point store robbery, rioters and looters and police being spat at. All the while Aldean and his guitar-straddling outfit are filmed posing, all-American and legs-wide, beneath a small town courthouse. The type of courthouse that could be anywhere from New England to California but so happens to be in Columbia, Tennessee.

America was swept by an increase in crime in 2020. According to SafeHome.org's 2023 analysis of the FBI’s Crime in The United States (CIUS) Report. “[there was a spike] in violent crimes starting in 2020 and 2021.” The analysis also found “murder rates increased dramatically between 2011 and 2021, jumping 46% in one decade. Murder rates also increased by 8% between 2020 and 2021.”

SafeHome connect the crime increase to lockdowns. They join much of the MSM in ignoring the crime surrounding the BLM protests and Antifa riots from 2020. At face-value ‘Try That In A Small Town’ is about crime. And the leap to Number 1 in the charts suggests that many Americans share Aldean’s concern.

Having said that, a rather uncomfortable statistic for Aldean is that SafeHome.org's analysis also shows “the murder rate in extra-small cities has grown 42 percent in 10 years. Statistics also show that rape occurs in extra-small cities nearly as often as in the largest urban areas, and only in extra-small cities is a citizen more likely to be raped than robbed.” Aldean’s claim that “round here we take care of our own” might not be technically true.

Detractors have attempted to link the video to the lynching of black teenager Henry Choate in 1927. Choate was killed on Armistice Day by a white mob outside the very same courthouse where Aldean is filmed singing in Columbia, TN. Such a connection indicates only supreme bad faith. No one, for example, has linked the upcoming ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ production at Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C. to the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

An op-ed in CNN links the video’s implicit symbolism to Jim Crowe, the KKK, Jan 6th and Charlottesville. Hashtags have been making the twitter rounds also referencing the lynching of Emmett Till in 1955. These pieces of history are cherry-picked to suit a narrative. But a piece of recent and immediately relevant history is completely and conveniently ignored in the opprobrium.

It was this January that black-clad Antifa protestors vandalised and allegedly shot at state troopers at the planned public safety training complex dubbed ‘Cop City’. One of the protestors, Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán, was shot and killed as a consequence. The city of Atlanta descended into rioting, vandalism and destructive attacks on the Atlanta Police Foundation on Peachtree Street. A police car was torched. This State of Emergency is directly referenced in Aldean’s video in the chyrons of the news broadcast montage. In March, twenty-three of the one hundred and fifty or so ‘Cop City’ protestors were arrested on domestic terrorism charges.

Atlanta, GA, Jan 21st 2023

There is an America that sees this. The half of America that didn’t turn a blind eye to the rise in crime from 2020. The half of America that saw the destruction caused by the BLM riots that saw 19 killed in their first 14 days. The side of America that notices when such incidents are not reported in the media. That side of America have sent Aldean up the music charts.

So how is it that one video can evoke such drastically different responses in one nation? It seems there are two versions of America, two histories that the American people have not reconciled. One a story of Original Sin, slavery, and racism being so inescapable and pertinent as to be relevant to every single imaginable issue. The other of a great America, a patriotic people who escaped persecution in Europe and across the world to build small communities in a new land. A people who defeated the Nazis and the Communists.

I suspect these two Americas line up with political theorist David Goodhart’s theory of “somewheres” and “anywheres” as described in his 2017 book ‘The Road to Somewhere’. “Somewheres” value tradition, place and the security of their communities. “Anywheres” thrive in the globalised, cosmopolitan world. Sheryl Crow may be from a small town, but her touring schedule no doubt stole her away.

This difference plays itself out politically. In 2016 an Atlantic/PRRI poll found “White voters who still live in the community in which they were raised are supporting Trump over Clinton by 26 percentage points (57% vs. 31%, respectively). Trump also has an advantage over Clinton among white voters who live within a 2-hour drive from their hometown (50% vs. 41%, respectively). However, among white voters who live farther away from their hometown, Clinton leads Trump (46% vs. 40%, respectively).”

I’m not suggesting the difference between the two Americas is as simple as that. There are no doubt myriad differences. One can’t ignore the deep history between North and South who only 160 years ago were at war. Pop culture has long played out this dynamic. Neil Young once sang “Southern man, better keep your head, Don’t forget what your good book said, Southern change gonna come at last, Now your crosses are burning fast” only for Lynryd Skynyrd to repost “Well, I hope Neil Young will remember, A Southern man don't need him around, anyhow”.

Today, Small Town America and Big Town America continue their dance of mutual disdain. A stand-off with both sides yelling “This Is America” “No, This Is America”, both digging in their heals, both believing they are the counter-culture and both with their own pop stars. Current events are memory-holed just as easily as historical events, just to maintain sophistic worldviews.

But these two Americas are reconcilable. The complex story of America is within everyone’s grasp. One country singer who understood this was Johnny Cash.

The King of Country was just as at ease performing in Folsom Prison as he was at The White House. In his 1974 song ‘Ragged Old Flag’, Cash thread these two histories together. Cash’s Ragged Old Flag, hung proud in a county courthouse square, was ripped, torn, cut and burned, from Washington crossing the Delaware, through the Civil War and World Wars. The song is a tapestry of American history, reconciling the diabolic darkness with the honourable, miraculous light. That Ragged Old Flag has seen it all, and waves on.

And she's getting threadbare and wearing thin
But she's in good shape for the shape she's in
'Cause she's been through the fire before
And I believe she can take a whole lot more

So we raise her up every morning
We take her down every night
We don't let her touch the ground and we fold her up right
On second thought, I do like to brag
'Cause I'm mighty proud of that ragged old flag

I eagerly await the coming of a 21st Century Cash. Sadly, the Aldean affair suggests the divisions of recent years are not yet healed. In the meantime I won’t let bad-faith hysteria spoil a perfectly good country song.

WM