Try That In A Small Town? (End Times In The Idiocracy, Two.)

Well, I was born in a small town
And I live in a small town
Probably die in a small town
Oh, those small communities
All my friends are so small town
My parents live in the same small town
My job is so small town
Provides little opportunity, hey
Educated in a small town
Taught to fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic, that's me
But I've seen it all in a small town
Had myself a ball in a small town
Married an L.A. Doll and brought her to this small town
Now she's small town just like me
No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be.

~John Mellencamp, Small Town

...

"The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

~Volodymyr Zelenskyy, allegedly 25 February 2022, Associated Press

Early this morning, I saw this controversy brewing about Jason Aldean's new song "Try that in a small town." Shit, I commented on it myself, making an effort to give the artist the benefit of the doubt.

I'm a veteran, I'm a former Republican, I'm a White Guy in a small city in a remote area.

(And where I live is no less diverse than anywhere else in the country.)

Here's the lyrics, seemingly innocuous enough in a redneck sort of way. I'm old enough to remember when a basic level of morality was enforced by average people, for one thing. 

Well, then I actually watched the goddamn music video, which is full of video clips of crimes, shots of out-of-context civil strife, cops and flags. When somebody shows you what they are, believe them the first time. People policing themselves ain't even close to what he's talking about.

This motherfucker doesn't give a shit that, as I said "Some people aren't allowed to have the same feeling of community" that he did. It's the fucking point.

Guys like Jason Aldean could give a fuck that, as my old Air Force bro once told me, the cops are too often just another gang. Hell the whole damn song is about a bunch of "Good Old Boys" (a term that's a lie if I ever heard one, you have no idea, LOL) acting exactly the same way. 

As if a cop couldn't or wouldn't defend themselves...?

(*Glares in Security Forces* That's not my personal lived experience and, having been an Air Force cop, I know more about this than he does. I got Tazed, and that was just in training, fuck you.)

Meanwhile: This shit is what Republicans are busying themselves with today, I'm serious.

Republicans, be they Jason Aldean or Ted Cruz, could give a good goddamn that America isn't working out for a lot of Americans, be We The People Black, Brown, White or Other...or Poor...Straight, LGBTQ, you name it. Indeed, that's the point! 

As long as, that is, things are working out just fine for them and their buddies. 

Republicans could give a shit about America, since most of it doesn't fit their jingoistic idea of what it "Should" be. Since we're not a nation of rich white people who are all giving them money, their attitude is basically "Fuck America."

Republicans are effectively on record saying the rest of the USA outside of whatever rural White People bubble they thinks they're in could burn to the ground (or is burning down if you believe the typical FOX News broadcast) for all they care and they're all damned sure they think they know who's gonna do it and the entire thought process regarding that is usually pure Racism. 

Note: Jason Aldean only tried to say anything to the contrary once his song attracted negative attention.

Also, that's not usually how this shit works out in real life. Vanilla ISIS usually spends a lot of time preying on its own, too. 

Like, who the fuck do you think is gonna hold up a liquor store in the Small White Town? (And it happens.)

The answer is *Ding Ding Ding* White People!

As my friend said, "I wonder if this is that small town that Jason Aldean was singing about?"

And trust me, back in the day when my friend said "The cops was just another gang, bro" he wasn't just talking about cops in big cities like Detroit or Lincoln Park that he'd lived in.

America doesn't work out for Americans in a lot of places, and we used to know this, and actually try to care and even do something about it other than otherize and villainize the poor. Hell, none other than Country Music icon Johnny Cash led a big push for prisoner's rights and shit in the 1960's. Hell, I remember when conservatism and small towns in general had better attitudes about life.

Folsom Prison Blues wasn't just a good song, he actually sang it at Folsom Prison in central California. This shit used to be about something that mattered on a regular basis. I'd say I wonder if people like Jason Aldean even know what happens to people like Amber Jones but the simple truth is they don't care. 

Hell, they literally never care!

The "Conservative" mantra has become "If bad things happen to you, it's because you're a bad person and you deserve it. Fuck You!" 

I was there when this really started to become a thing. In my opinion, this really started with the rise of Newt Gingrich and the prominence of Evangelical groups like "Focus On The Family" in the 1990's. Just as a reminder, James Dobson literally wrote in a book about beating a dog.

These people's Gospel is basically the Prosperity Gospel (with or without all the holy roller shit) and if you don't have health and wealth and all the various social statuses to guarantee protection from the predators, fuck you. The American Church has become an Idiocracy where "I like money too!" is its defining characteristic.

It literally doesn't matter to them if you're Christian or conservative or not. If you run afoul of "What Conservatives Want Right Now" they'll throw you under the bus, or at least try to. This is true for individual people and for whole countries, like Ukraine.

It happened in my church in 1998 when a lady who was important in the church (Her family had been in that particular church for a couple generations) had to have an abortion so she didn't die. Mind you we're talking a conservative family with five kids here. It wasn't an easy choice or one anybody wanted to make. 

Within a matter of a couple months (only took that long because her health did not permit them coming, for awhile) they got ran out of the church. Her husband lost his job (Construction, company owned by another church person) because he supported his wife's right to be alive. And they both ended up going back to school, him to get a degree, her to get a better one. A year later, both this lady and her oldest son were in one of my classes at North Central Michigan College.

I was one of the people who switched to a different, smaller Baptist church because of this, a place I've written about once or twice on here.

If they'd do their own people that dirty 25 years ago, I suppose it's easy to see now why they'd try to throw Ukraine under the treads of Soviet tanks, despite the fact that Ukraine is mostly Christian and conservative. The Ukrainians decided they believed in democracy.

And the Ukrainians fought for each other and their own freedom and right to exist, without asking certain Republicans if they could first. In all honesty, that's probably the important part, right there. 

Never mind that Republicans will often say no, simply because they can. I remember a story from 2016 about a lesbian Republican who quit the RNC because they wouldn't even agree with the statement that she had a right not to be killed for being gay. 

The cruelty is the point.

The being seen sticking a giant middle finger up at the world is the point.

I suppose it ends up being easy to see why Evangelicals support an incest-desiring perverse traitor like Trump despite the fact that he rather loudly and publicly isn't even a Christian.

I suppose it's easy to see why they prostrate themselves before the Hammer and Sickle and suck Vladimir Putin's cock now.

And these fucking people feel cheated and get mad when whatever bullshit they're up to isn't given an audience and treated as valid. Hell, they're still mad about the obvious-bullshit "Hunter Biden's Laptop" fake-October-Surprise that didn't go anywhere in 2020 because it was obvious bullshit you didn't really have to have familiarity with rules of evidence to see how obviously it was bullshit.

It never caught on, and Oh My Lord how these motherfuckers are mad about that!

Now I see it's basically escalated to creepy stalker tactics and revenge porn, with oh-so-Christian Marjorie Taylor Greene leading the charge? Yeah, it tracks.

I've seen what happens when people try that in a small town, too.

I've seen what happens when individual people, let alone groups, get so crazy or high on the smell of their own farts that everything is a conspiracy against them.

And if you wonder why this series is titled "End Times in the Idiocracy" that's why.

You can't reason with this shit. There comes a point where the proper response becomes "If you do that again I'm going to smack you right in the mouth."

And then do it.

Freedom isn't free, and sometimes you have to defend your freedom if you want to keep it.

And the goddamned fascists will sing songs railing against that then, too.

I can tell you what would've happened if somebody would've tried that 30 years ago in my small town, but Jason Aldean ain't going to like it. 

As I said to a friend of mine in 2017, if somebody would've showed up in my hometown in 1993 introducing themselves as "Milo Yiannopoulos, Gay Nazi" would have automatically got beat up for two reasons.

I'm all for supporting LGBT people, myself, but this toleration of Nazi bullshit has got to stop.

One

Слава Україна!

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other.

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. 

In America, "white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men. 

~Malcolm X, letter written following the Hajj.