Jason Aldean Knows What He’s Doing. Own It.

This is the best America can offer?

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444 retired

GED/HEO

7-21-23

 

US country singer Jason Aldean has stirred up a hornets nest with his song “Try that in a small town”. Aldean has been accused of Racism and among other things, supporting gun culture and vigilante violence. Capitalism’s social, economic and political crisis that is decimating the lives of working class people, the poor and, as always, those sectors of the working class most marginalized and oppressed throughout US settler colonial history, has faced some serious opposition over the past period. Given the absence of a mass movement and a political party of our own, when society offers the masses of people no avenue for settling grievances people are driven in to the streets as the only path open to them. Riots, Martin Luther King pointed out, are the language of the unheard.

 

Despite the US mass media’s efforts to portray protests simply as riots having no underlying causes we have seen one of the most racially diverse responses to this crisis, initially driven by the police murder of black people, usually unarmed black people. The Black Lives Matter movement though was clearly a multi-racial movement, drawing other sectors of the working class in to its orbit, young people in particular, and at its peak was overwhelmingly peaceful. Criticize it by all means, but Aldean opposes this resistance. He might try reading some history of colonial America and see that this sort of protest is not new. The Urban Crucible by Gary Nash would be a good place to start although given his views it’s clear which side Aldean would have been on in that revolutionary period and it wouldn’t be the revolutionaries; his fawning over cops is a dead giveaway. And as for burning the flag, I would not advocate it as it is provocative and doesn’t accomplish anything except increase division among the working class, but I would not support banning it. Isn’t that what the US is about as well?

 

Aldean, like the rest of us, is fed up with the mass killings, the poverty, the crime, the violence. “It’s like everyday you turn on the news and see something crazy happened or some heartbreaking story.”, Aldean says. But rather than show sympathy and solidarity with the millions of Americans who cannot afford the basic necessities of life, food, health care, a job, a roof over their heads. He attacks them. Even the so-called middle class is mired in debt. He expounds some ridiculous cowboy nonsense about how people in small towns are above it all. How rural America is this paradise. It might be for him of course------he has money.

 

But while we’re on about paradise. Paradise Ohio is one of the more recent victims of so-called market savagery a small rural town in Ohio. And rural America is also in a state of social crisis. Crime, adultery, teenage pregnancies, and other issue are rampant.

 

We have mentally ill people wandering our streets like zombies as the facilities for the mentally ill are pretty much non-existent. Jail is the best option and we have more people incarcerated than any other country in the world. What has Aldean said about that? Did he raise it with the degenerate Trump when he was at Mar a Lago? The right wing mass media and friends of Aldean like Trump, without doubt a serial sexual abuser, and others who blame workers and the poor for a crisis that is not of our own making, cover for the perpetrators of this crisis; the bankers, hedge fund managers, speculators and others whose unproductive, parasitic activities are behind the present state of affairs.

 

Aldean did not write the song apparently and I would like to take the high road and conclude he’s just and idiot and has been duped by the extreme right wing characters who penned it. However, I think the reality is that Aldean is unable to overcome his racial animus, centuries in the making, in particularly with regard to black people, descendants of the Africans that were enslaved and after the civil war and the great betrayal that followed, faced white vigilante violence and the introduction of the Jim Crow era by the “good old boys” Aldean loves so much. All workers should heed the words of Martin Luther King who pointed out that racists will always be labor haters.

 

“Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.” Martin Luther King The Three Evils Speech 1967.

 

Aldean chose this spot for his music video

We need to not give Aldean's protestations of innocence any credibility. We need to condemn this fantasy world he has concocted with regards to rural America and the small towns throughout the nation. Imagine living in Columbia and wanting to openly express divergent views to this moron and his “good old boys”. The fact that the “official” music video was shot outside the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee where in 1927,a white racist mob murdered Henry Choate, a young black man is enough; he was killed then his murderers, “…dragged him through the city behind a car, and then hanged the body from the courthouse.”. This despite the young white woman he was supposed to have assaulted couldn’t identify him as the culprit and after the 16-year old’s mother pleaded with the mob to let him live and have a fair trial. Even if Aldean claimed he didn’t know this, that’s worse.  And, as to be expected, the opportunist and serial sexual predator Trump says Aldean is a "fantastic guy"

 

If we give Aldean any credibility or the benefit of the doubt given his whining response to this racist anti-worker song, more fool us.