I'm Not Buying It

 There's a typical media shitshow brewing over Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town."

The song is typical chest-thumping country machismo, sung by a millionaire who grew up comfortable. Ya know...authentic Nashville. The song itself is mildly problematic, but the music video took it to the next level. You could certainly interpret the song as having a pro-lynching angle, but the lyrics could be read another way, too. 

The video, however, features Floyd protest unrest and Aldean performs in front of a Tennessee courthouse that was the site of a lynching. 

Subtle.

Progressive country stars have called Aldean out, and of course Aldean - a Trump supporter - has vehemently defended the video and song. As a result, the song will become even more popular, as a segment of MAGAdom buy multiple copies of the song to "pwn the libs."

Let's assume that Aldean didn't know that he was singing a song that glorifies vigilante justice in front of the site of the lynching of an 18 year old boy. A normal person living in normal times would apologize and re-edit or re-shoot the video to use a different backdrop, because presumably everyone knows that lynching teenagers is bad.

In the world that Donald Trump ushered in seven years ago, if you do something bad - even horrific - you never apologize. You revel in the opprobrium leveled at you by people who think "woke" things like lynching teenagers is bad. The fact that certain people are appalled that you seem to endorse lynching is just "cancel culture" that you ride to increased sales, because you've been canceled so mcuh.

So, yeah, I think Aldean knew exactly what he was doing and where he was filming. Or at least someone associated with the choices in the video knew. 

The backlash was the marketing strategy.

I go back and forth about whether it would've been better if Trump had never run for president. Obviously, the Courts are a tragedy, but let's assume Generic Republican won against an unpopular Clinton. You lose the Courts anyway. So what did Trump accomplish? He coarsened everything about American civic life (culture life was already pretty coarse) and made apologies and contrition toxic to a third of the American people.

I think Trump's toxicity has had a profoundly important effect on the prospects of the Republican Party and not in a good way. (2024 will prove me right or wrong.) If we are entering into a generation of Democratic dominance caused by young people be repulsed by Trumpism, then the pain of Trump could be worth it to usher in a period of Democratic dominance.

But this toxic relationship with unabashed refusals to apologize or accommodate public norms is really, really bad. And it will outlive Trump.