For decades, gangsta rappers have raked in money, fame, and recording industry awards hand-over-fist by promoting a culture of violence, drugs, crime, misogyny, hedonism, and greed. There has been not a peep of an objection from the Progressive Left to the damage this has done and continues to do to generations of young people, especially in poor inner-city communities, where rappers, gang members, and drug dealers are idolized and emulated by far too many. But let one country music star complain that American cities have degenerated into a wasteland of lawlessness and chaos, and triggered leftists leap to smear him publicly as a violent racist.

Quadruple-platinum-selling country artist Jason Aldean has found himself the target of a wave of leftist condemnation over the new video of a song (which was actually released months ago) titled, “Try That in a Small Town.” The video intersperses actual footage of rioting, looting, and confrontations with police in cities, with shots of Aldean and his band performing before a courthouse in a public square in Columbia, Tennessee.

The lyrics and imagery capture the kind of random violence that has become endemic in Democrat-run urban hellholes all across America – carjackings, the knockout game, and armed robbery – as well as open contempt for law enforcement and the American flag in a country whose children have been taught by decades of leftist educators that their homeland is a uniquely oppressive and evil nation in world history. Aldean warns in the song that that attitude wouldn’t be tolerated in small-town America, and he issues a sort of “molon labe” warning to the anti-Second Amendment activists who aim (pun intended) to disarm law-abiding gun owners.

Here are the lyrics, credited to songwriters Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher, Tully Kennedy, and Kurt Michael Allison:

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it’s cool, well, act a fool if ya like

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you’re tough

Well, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they’re gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small town

Full of good ol’ boys, raised up right
If you’re looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won’t take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don’t
Try that in a small town

The video concludes with a few nostalgic images that reflect the sanity, sense of community, and peaceful order that Aldean’s song associates with small-town America.

Pretty tame stuff, actually, but Progressives hate white America, small-town America, law enforcement, and gun culture, so it was inevitable that Aldean would face a barrage of celebrity and media condemnation.

Former singer-songwriter and prominent gun control advocate Sheryl Crowe, for example, tweeted her indignation, falsely accusing Aldean of promoting violence: “Jason Aldean, I’m from a small town. Even people in small towns are sick of violence. There’s nothing small-town or American about promoting violence. You should know that better than anyone having survived a mass shooting,” she wrote, referring to the 2017 massacre at a Las Vegas music festival where Aldean was performing. “This is not American or small town-like. It’s just lame.”

The showbiz industry rag Variety published a snarling hit piece whose headline – “Jason Aldean Already Had the Most Contemptible Country Song of the Decade. The Video Is Worse” – makes for a pretty unambiguous spoiler of where the article’s remaining 2000 words are going to go.

Rolling Stone magazine – the same far-Left outlet that published a sickening denunciation of the popular anti-child trafficking movie Sound of Freedom – predictably chimed in with an article (under the category, “Dog Whistles”) titled “Here’s What’s Wrong With Jason Aldean’s Vision of America.” It cites University of Oklahoma professor Karlos K. Hill, “a scholar of racial violence,” who labels the song a “narrative of white nationalism. But it’s packaged in this really nice, seemingly benign package of country music.” [Emphasis added]

It’s white nationalist now to want your town to be free of rampant crime and wanton destruction. Who knew?

The left-wing propagandists at The Washington Post offered up a partial explanation for the controversy by noting that some of the footage used in the video came from Black Lives Matter demonstrations (apparently it’s racist to connect BLM with the “mostly peaceful” rioting that rocked America throughout 2020). It also pointed out that the courthouse featured in the video was the scene of a lynching (nearly 100 years ago), and that Columbia was the scene of a race riot (nearly 80 years ago).

And yet WaPo then goes on to acknowledge that the video production company TackleBox confirmed that Aldean had nothing to do with choosing the site, a “popular filming location outside of Nashville” that has also been featured in the Lifetime movie Steppin’ Into the Holiday and Disney’s Hannah Montana: The Movie.

Nevertheless, the cancel culture mob swelled so swiftly that the cowards at CMT, the Country Music Television network, panicked and pulled the video from rotation. Gun control activist Shannon Watts, who had tweeted that Aldean “has recorded a song… about how he and his friends will shoot you if you try to take their guns,” crowed about her own part in the CMT cancellation, writing on Tuesday, “Proud to have had a hand in getting CMT to reject this racist and violent song.”

Prominent conservative politicos from Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis to Marsha Blackburn and Kristi Noem have stepped up in public support of Aldean. “When the media attacks you, you’re doing something right,” DeSantis tweeted. “@Jason_Aldean has nothing to apologize for.” In a video posted to Twitter on Wednesday, Noem stated, “I am shocked by what I’m seeing in this country with people attempting to cancel this song and cancel Jason and his beliefs.”

In his self-defense, Aldean subsequently posted the following on Instagram:

In the past 24 hours I have been accused of releasing a pro-lynching song (a song that has been out since May) and was subject to the comparison that I (direct quote) was not too pleased with the nationwide BLM protests. These references are not only meritless, but dangerous. There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it – and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage – and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music – this one goes too far.

As so many pointed out, I was present at Route 91 – where so many lost their lives – and our community recently suffered another heartbreaking tragedy. NO ONE, including me, wants to continue to see senseless headlines or families ripped apart.

Try That In A Small Town, for me, refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences or background or belief. Because they were our neighbors, and that was above any differences.

My political views have never been something I’ve hidden from, and I know that a lot of us in this country don’t agree on how we get back to a sense of normalcy where we go at least a day without a headline that keeps us up at night. But the desire for it to – that’s what this song is about.

A return to some semblance of normality in America sounds like a slice of heaven, but unfortunately, that ship has sailed. The Left considers the yearning for normalcy and social stability to be white nationalist nostalgia for a time before BLM conquered corporate America, before Critical Race Theory metastasized throughout our schools, and before national anthem kneeling protests ruined our national pastimes. The Left doesn’t want a return to normalcy. It wants normalcy in every facet of American life to be disrupted, if not eradicated, to pave the way for revolution, for the “fundamental transformation” of a country they hate into a Progressive utopia.

This is why the Left defended the devastation wreaked by BLM and Antifa as “mostly peaceful,” but will denounce, demonize, and destroy Jason Aldean over what they perceive to be a mere “dog whistle” in a video.

This is why the Left has normalized political violence, criminal chaos, and open borders madness – because the collapse of the entire system is the goal.

This is also why the Left turns a blind eye to the dozens of mostly black-on-black shootings every weekend in Chicago, but doesn’t want small-town gun owners to protect their loved ones, their property, and their way of life from the agents of chaos who have overrun America’s cities.

Today’s Left is a violent revolution in progress. Messages of defiance and resistance — like a hit country song — cannot be tolerated, and the messenger must be destroyed. But to paraphrase “Try That in a Small Town”: cross that line and see how it works out for you.

Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior