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Notes -
Jason Aldean’s Try That In a Small Town has gotten substantial media discussion and has been covered here as well, with one of the themes I see being country, conservative, and small-town defenders noting that the song isn’t actually particularly violent compared to rap. While I think this is obviously true, there’s been something about it that has rubbed me wrong, and I finally put my finger on it while I was running with some country music in my ear from Spotify recommendations. The song that got me thinking for the first verse in Bryan Martin’s Wolves Cry:
Much like the Aldean kerfuffle, one distinguishing feature from rap violence is that there is implied instigation on the part of whoever’s going to be left to lie, but the verse above leaves much less ambiguity about what happens if you cross Martin on his land. Martin’s music has a decent bit of this sort of edge, with Everyone’s an Outlaw clarifying that this isn’t exactly a Back The Blue situation:
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This clearly articulates honor culture values, that you’re morally obligated to do what’s right, including stepping up and killing someone if necessary. These themes aren’t at all uncommon in country music, although they’re usually not as aggressive in the most popular music.
Returning to my point, what I’ve realized bothered me about resorting to comparisons to rap is how whiny, pussified, and self-pitying it sounds to me. While some people did just just reply that honor culture is good, that men should be willing to commit violence against outsiders that wrong them, there was this appeal to how the black people can get away with being tough and cool and they’re way tougher and cooler than country white people, which played into the hands of people that write things like this Rolling Stone article:
For me, this is another example of the woke are more correct than the mainstream. Don’t whine about black music! Respond to this criticism by saying that it’s much easier to appeal to PMC fears of chud expression, that liberals said they favored free speech, and that this is a serious art form that deals with all aspects of human life, including the negatives. Have they ever listened closely to country singers and thought about what it might mean for an artist to give voice to the people that they grew up alongside in the trailer park? It’s doubtful.
I grew up in a rural, heavily white area, and the men I knew from that area really do represent the sort of rugged individualism and willingness to engage in violence embodied in some country music. Some of this spills over into behavior that I’m not personally a fan of, maybe even “toxic masculinity”, but I think it’s a culture that’s worth articulating and defending, not one that can only be defended by way of saying that black culture is worse. Jason Aldean is the light, poppy version of this, but country music really does have a fair bit of violence, and it’s good, actually.
This misses the point, Walsh was not as much whining about rap music, he was pointing out the double standard of Aldean's critics. And even that one is not self-serving, it is just a reminder that the PMC class does not not care about the rules - they run anarchotyranny of culture. The clerics on Twitter are the ones interpreting the reality, and they are the only ones with arbitrary authority to call for excommunication for any transgression - even the one that is on the face value thousand times milder than what they regularly not only tolerate, but also praise.
Yes, this is nothing new. As an example, back in the dinosaur days of 2019 Bill Maher had Denis Prager on his show who talked to him about how there is a push to say "men can menstruate". I think Maher was absoletely clueless about it, he thought that Prager was some nut inventing conspiracy theories or some such. I think Maher now admitted that he underestimated the whole thing back in the day on Rogan's podcast, and he now does interviews with Peterson, which is interesting to see. I would not describe it as woke being more correct as mainstream as opposed to mainstream being absolutely clueless. It is almost a defining feature of mainstream, as soon as you stop being clueless you will pick a side - Maher will be right-wing coded by "platforming" people like Peterson.
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