Try This in C-Town.
If you haven’t already watched the video for Jason Aldean’s latest, don’t, but I feel the need to discuss the atrocity that it is. Dog whistle doesn’t even begin to describe the bullhorn of a racist statement that this video is, but some people need to have me break it down further so they can understand, here goes. I want to start by saying one cannot prove a negative, so proving this music video and song is not racist is an impossible position to take. I will try to bring into context the loud racial components to this mess of a song, good old Ludwig Van would be happy to be deaf today.
‘Try that in a Small Town’ is the title and I just want to point out some statistics that are relevant: among the United States population, urban residents are 44% white, suburban 68% white, rural 78% white. So among racist dentists, 4 out of 5 recommend living in a small town, and to act like the word ‘urban’ isn’t a code word for black is to deny reality. This is directed at the Black Lives Matter movement, and it is completely irrational to pretend that they don’t have things to riot about. Even though some of it is literally stock footage of rioting, they sneak in just a few spare frames to make sure you know that this is real, and happening in those ‘Democrat run cities’:
How did they find such a reputable source for riot coverage in Atlanta? Again, to act as if this isn’t intentional is absurd. If a news outlet paid out three-quarters of a billion dollars so you wouldn’t get to see the rest of Tucker Carlson’s private messages, and for intentionally misleading their viewers, you wouldn’t use them in your music video. Does he have a moonshine sponsorship yet with these lyrics? ‘Full of good ol’ boys, raised up right’, yeah, like all those good old frat boys at Fox News who keep you uninformed when they’re not triggering multi-million dollar settlements for harassing women.
And the pandering would not be complete without the Farmers (86% white in the U.S.), despite the fact that 80% of the food in the supermarket is produced by a handful of corporations. We needed a story from a sad old-timer to tell us about how people used to build barns for each other, and how it was a simpler time, and they just had faith in the lord and the crops grew. Yeah, there used to be a lot of small towns like that, they were called plantations. This song and music video is Joseph Goebbels level white propaganda, and unfortunately in modern America that still has an audience.
So what happened in that, ‘Small Town’ of Newtown, Connecticut where all those children were murdered at school? Where was that, ‘gun your granddad gave you’ then? Is the murder of 20 children in a small town not something we should be focusing more on than the small town values that are shown in the video? Let me temper that thought with another one about the small town of Uvalde, Texas where 19 children were murdered as local police held their dicks for over an hour. It wasn’t until the, ‘big city’ border patrol showed up to stop this sociopath that the chaos ended. But please, tell me about how some small town cop with a complex was, ‘cussed out’ and ‘spit on’ like it’s a national tragedy.
We see Aldean and his band playing in front of a courthouse and we’re supposed to think, ‘law and order’ is a small town value, but to whom? I think what should be in subtitles is the fact that the courthouse shown was the site of a race riot and of the small town value of, ‘lynching.’ That’s right, Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a 1927 lynching of Henry Choate, a black teenager and the Columbia race riots of 1946 led by African American veterans of World War Two who rioted against the Jim Crow laws they were subjected to. Is serving in the military not a ‘small town’ value? And after all who is more deserving of the right to, ‘stomp on the flag and light it up’ than a veteran who helped beat the Nazis only to come home to the same racism Hitler espoused?
If you’re still having trouble grasping as straws as to, ‘was this racist?’ Let me familiarize another formerly widely held term for municipalities of a certain size: sundown towns. Sundown towns are defined as all-white municipalities that openly practiced racial segregation through discrimination in local laws, intimidation or violence and got their name from the signs that emphatically said, ‘Colored people to leave town by sundown.’ Small town values right there if I ever have lived in one, and I have. Cities celebrate their diversity, small towns celebrate their ignorance.
Woke Me Up, When November ’24 Ends
Before I begin, I would be remiss not to say, ‘this has been a week.’ The george santos indictment news was as delicious as it was blatantly obvious, and I don’t want to diminish the importance of it. However, we are once again thrust into the media storm surge of another trump presidential run, pour some out for the fallen homies who don’t have to listen to this shit. Let me give his full preface: The twice impeached, insurrectionist, indicted, liable for sexual abuse, fast food obsessed former president is running again for your vote. I’ve decided I might test out those libel laws he was hoping to, ‘open up’ when describing him this time.
The struggle for free speech is a constant one, and it is being hijacked by a disturbingly large and malevolent group of people on the right wing in American politics. The situation has stopped being, ‘many horrific things are protected by the first amendment, regardless of how much you disagree with them’ and started being: ‘on what platform can I say only horrific, untrue things of no redeemable value, while being legitimized in their proximity to factual material. There is now a market-driven, media fanned rather than responsibly panned, systematic malpractice to get that hateful dollar for their shareholders.
The CNN ‘town hall for trumpers’ this week was a genocide of facts, decency, responsible broadcasting and wholly unnecessary despite Anderson Cooper’s desperate attempt to dilute the incident. Before I go any further, I want to give Kaitlan Collins a pass because nobody should have to be on a stage with that human 55 gallon drum of bud light orange for an hour. I have never seen something so unprofessional and out of control be advertised and promoted as if it had some kind of merit for voters’ decision making. The backlash was totally justified, and I would have been embarrassed for the network could I not remember the apology tour they did after making trump happen in 2016.
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E-Van-Gelicals, let’s talk. You have got to be the most spineless, broken, talentless, toothless, moronic voting group of people to still support trump at this point right? But we all know that you’re not. I’m not going to name-call and disparage with exaggeration, although it’s easy and justified. I’m just gonna call it like I see it: you’re just terrible people, full stop. Religious people are some of the most hypocritical people on the planet. You love trump’s tax cut, you love his racism, you love his decade by decade wavering opinion on fetuses because it wavered in your favor this decade. You hate the poor, you are racist, and you hate women, as was made obvious by the fact that it was you laughing in the audience at a woman that trump was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming, as he defamed her publicly again. You attempt to mold the worst parts of the Old Testament into policy ideas, and ignore the entirety of the New Testament (For you lay people, ‘The Jesus Part’) and that is the reason you continue to support trump blindly despite all the evidence otherwise. There is no afterlife, so luckily you won’t all be frying.
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The First Amendment is far too important and so clear in what it provides even 200 years later that we can’t give up on it now. I am for every voice being heard, but as soon as you’ve seen them admit to maliciously disseminating untrue information, cut the cord. The fact that they promoted it, and profited from it, and were unapologetic about the response is a good reason to change the channel or medium for that matter. It’s a day like this that I wish Jon Stewart was still on tv four nights a week to see him filet this atrocity with enough jokes to make me forget for a moment that it’s my reality. Quoteth the prophet Snoop Dogg, ‘CNN can eat a big fat dick.’
Just (Be Rational)
‘You do it to yourself, just you, you and no-one else.’ That was the Radiohead lyric that came to my mind as I was reflecting on America’s most recent school shooting yesterday. The new, ‘Only in America’ tagline is no longer the moniker for inspiring stories of success, but of the irrationally tragic gun violence that only exists to this extreme extent here. The cause of death for children in this country that is most likely is from guns, surpassing auto fatalities and all cancers and deadly diseases. You would think we would have learned from Columbine, or Sandy Hook, but this exists as a largely one sided political problem.
Republicans in both chambers of Congress have torpedoed every attempt at responsible gun legislation for my adult lifetime behind the monetary backing of gun lobbyists. With each passing tragedy, nothing is able to penetrate the wall of strategic indifference to a national epidemic. We don’t know all the details yet, but a 28 year old woman was able to wander into a school with not one but two assault rifles and a pistol to murder 6 people before being killed by police. I hesitate to even write this today, because I could probably end up doing the same post in two weeks.
While cozying up with Wall Street is a bipartisan elixir, gun regulation is not, and we need to start holding these out of control conservatives accountable for the damage they are doing to our society. They frequently malign statistics by citing total numbers instead of per capita numbers about gun violence and murder rates in cities run by Democrats. This is something often quipped by presidential wokeful Ron DeSantis, despite the fact that the murder rate is higher in Florida than either New York or California. He is actively pushing a permitless carry law, so you may be seeing a lot more of those, ‘Florida Man’ stories in the news.
Lauren Boebert, a lunatic representing Colorado (Yes, the Columbine state) stood in congress to declare that Americans possess 46% of the guns in the world, and followed the statement saying, ‘I think we need to get our numbers up boys and girls.’ This kind of idiotic sentiment is far too pervasive among the far right. Marjorie Taylor Green, a lunatic representing Georgia said, ‘If Steve Bannon and I had organized that (The January 6th Assault on the Capital), we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.’ After backlash she claimed it was sarcasm, but this kind of rhetoric from elected officials is dangerous.
I’ll be driving through Indiana again tomorrow so how could I forget Mike Pence, ‘The truth is, the most violent and lawless cities in America have the most stringent gun controls.’ Despite all of the negative press that Chicago gets, Indiana actually has a very comparable homicide rate to Illinois (11.2 and 9.7 per 100,000 respectively). The point he is trying to make is also obliterated by the fact that 66% of the guns used in crimes in Chicago come from neighboring states with weaker laws like Indiana. I’m not being hyperbolic to say I’m more worried about being shot at a gas station in Indiana than I am on the Chicago Metra.
The truth is that an assault rifle serves no civilian purpose but to commit mass homicide, and we should all be voting in the direction of re-instating the national assault weapons ban. On my bucket list next to Medicare for All is a national mandatory buyback program to get these weapons out of mass circulation, but that is a pipe dream. Locally, we should all work to support candidates who enforce ‘Red Flag’ laws that would drastically reduce incidents of domestic violence. We can make progress together if we try, ‘If I had a gun, I’d shoot a hole into the sun, and love would burn this city down for you.’
Mary Magdalene Must Have Been a Great Listener
I was having such a good Sunday, Manchester United advanced to the Semi-finals of the FA Cup, and I talked to my loving parents. I start watching Nascar at one of my favorite speedway tracks, Atlanta, and Denny Hamlin, my Toyota guy is leading. Then it goes to commercial and I am once again bombarded with the, ‘He Gets Us’ campaign. I am confused and frustrated by this advertising idea, it is something superfluous and illogical coming out of the right wing the way that usually left wing organizations are accused of things like, ‘Give Peace a Chance.’
I am not writing this to dispute the existence of Jesus Christ, just to provide a critique on the latest attempt to monetize and completely destroy his message as is described in the New Testament. Preface: I’m about to say a bunch of horrible things about religion because from the bottom of my L3 vertebrae I believe it is detrimental to the progress of humanity. My position for many years has been, call him Jesus Christ Philosopher, without the miracles, and I have no problem. I agree with much of the New Testament and adamantly believe Jesus, if resurrected again, (Christ, can we let the man sleep?) would be a Bernie voter.
What I cannot accept is the hijacking of religion in the United States to serve a political goal. This is what the right wing has been sanctimoniously doing for my entire lifetime, and it is despicable. The saying shouldn’t be, ‘As American as apple pie.’ The saying should be, ‘As American as the separation of church and state.’ Building on the greatest thinkers of all of history, the founding fathers created an imperfect republic that has endured over 300 years. Don’t swallow that bit from your preacher about this being a Christian nation, it was explicitly not. The early law of the United States shares don’t kill and don’t steal with the ten commandments, get over yourself, theologobats, or do I wanna say theologicians?
If I have to burn in eternity because we both read the same texts and they came to the conclusion that America is Christian and I came to the conclusion that we can be free from the intentional suspension of critical thinking that is faith in religion, I will take that chance. Growing up Catholic was so frustrating if you had 20 brain cells in your head during my timeline because it wasn’t even the child abuse that’s been going on for centuries, but the fact that our junior religion textbook had one paragraph on the crusades. I can’t let it go, religion forces you to be less than you can be mentally and when weaponized is dangerous.
I never want to crucify anyone, and if you want to have your religious candy because that is what gets you through the day, that’s fine and that is the right afforded to you by the constitution. However, when you do serious damage to the country, like electing Donald Trump, and getting 3 unqualified, lying justices put on the Supreme Court, that is a problem. The affected rights and healthcare of over 50% of the people in the country will have something to say for many years to come. I cannot believe that this is the way that this ends, but if you were trying to keep the country safe and secure with your vote in 2024, ‘What would Jesus do?’
Fox On The Run
‘Fox On The Run, your scream and everybody comes runnin’, take a run and hide yourself away.’ I have to agree with the 1975 Sweet song if I was a lawyer advising Fox News on their landmine filled future. As more private messages are revealed to the public about the stratospheric gymnastics that Fox hosts were doing on air vs. their actual feelings, I have to quote The Hives and say, ‘Hate to Say I Told You So.’ This may never reach a Fox News viewer and that’s fine, but I hope they know the level to which they have been duped.
My distaste for Fox News as a propaganda arm of the Republican Party goes back 25 years to when I first started paying attention, and the caviar appetizer was my high school speech teacher telling all of us that, ‘The O’Riley Factor’ was a good example of something balanced. Hold on, I need the Stones now, ‘Gimme Fucking Shelter!’ There was no greater example in the early 2000s of an entitled white man claiming bullshit ideology about how working hard was all you needed to do to be successful in America and completely ignoring what I’m about to get into.
I’m so sick of it being called, ‘woke.’ I would refer to it as, ‘awake.’ As in, I was awake when I was reading about our history as a country, and when I was in college classes giving months worth of details on the subject. I’m sorry this makes you uncomfortable Florida white people, but this country was built by the genocide of the people who already lived on this continent and the early economy was based on systemically enslaving Africans beginning in 1619. Maybe if you step out of your retirement communities for a minute you can, ‘woke’ the fuck up.
Back to the Fox on the run, Tucker Carlson is one of the most detestable media personalities in history, and he went over the line again this week. While his company is in the midst of a 1.6 billion dollar lawsuit he decides to show the highlights of his 40,000 hours of January 6th footage given to him by McCarthy to lie again and come to the conclusion that it was a tourist visit. That there was minimal violence at all and the Qanon Shaman should be released. Cherry picking small clips does not remove what I saw live that day, and to insult your viewers’ intelligence shows that you are without a doubt the worst thing to ever come out of La Jolla, CA.
Tucker, as Jon Stewart so aptly put in 2004 on your show Crossfire, ‘You’re hurting America.’ Your show was quickly cancelled after that and I hope the same fate is in the near future for your show now. The amount of bad information and intentional deception on this network is, I hate to say, not that surprising to me. Their viewers have consistently scored the lowest when current events questions are asked of any news outlet, and I hope they lose the lawsuit. I gotta go to The Clash for this part, ‘You start wearing blue and brown and you’re working for the clampdown.’ Since, ‘woke’ has been highjacked, I wanna say then why can’t we stop calling them MAGA and start calling them the fascists that they are?
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