Country music is making headlines a lot these days, and for all the wrong reasons.

First, the corporate press chased after Luke Combs, who released a cover of Tracy Chapman’s classic hit “Fast Car,” with “Give me your breath!” — Caucasian. After enough rage, a Twitter mob unleashed over the new music video for Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town.” This is a hymn to a close-knit community uniting against the kind of anarchist violence this country saw in the summer of 2020.

To their credit, both men and Chapman responded: dignity and Grace Through it all, the pseudo-scandal reveals far more than the Left.

The controversy began last week when The Washington Post’s pop culture columnist Emily Yar published an absurd hit article attacking alleged racism in which a white man covered a “black gay woman” song. Now, Tracy Chapman is no obscure artist being exploited by big stars. She has given her cover permission and received royalties. Plus, she’s a household name in her own right, and she’d be hard-pressed to spend a night in a bar without hearing ‘ ‘.fast car” at least once.

But Jarl’s words make it seem like there’s a significant difference between the 1988 original, which peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, and Combs’ cover “soaring to No. 4.” This has been said to reflect “a larger problem in country music and black art in general”. (Related: Country artist rises to top of Billboard charts for first time in over 40 years)

Jarl uses all sorts of linguistic tricks to get his point across. She quotes activists debating how black artists were “marginalized” in the early 20th century, but skips to the next paragraph to describe how the “systemic lack of diversity” continues in country music today. The point is to paint a moral equivalence between American society today and American society a century ago.

Because country music is a “predominantly white” industry and “historically focused on ‘tradition’,” the Left, trained to see the world through the lens of racial hierarchy, inevitably sees it with hostility. In this worldview, the “traditions” of faith, family, and community that country music themes uphold are merely ploys to keep white people at the top of that hierarchy. If you believe that this is how society works, then country music is exactly the racist genre that needs to be destroyed.

The fake outrage over Combs’ cover ensured floodgates on Twitter were poised to explode against the next perceived disdain for country music. And they did. (Related: Jason and Brittany Aldean have no qualms about song backlash, and we love to see it.)

Aldean’s music video, released last Friday, features real news footage of the violence that has become all too common in America’s left-wing cities. It shows grocery stores robbed at gunpoint, carjackings, and left-wing demonstrators burning American flags and yelling at police. In his eponymous refrain, “Try it in a small town,” Aldean implies that such a thing could never happen in the average American town given the values ​​that apply, such as their unity, patriotism, and commitment to the rule of law.regardless of background or belief‘” Aldean wrote on Twitter. In other words, the true American ideal.

But left-wing critics clearly misunderstood the song. BBC defendant Aldean in “Promo”[ing] While arguing for vigilante gun violence, the viral tweet cemented a narrative in defense of “lynching.”

Recall that Jason Aldean grew up in the city (population about 160,000) and now lives in Nashville, Tennessee (population 692,000).

He has no idea “what’s going on in a small town.” He’s just a racist who writes barely covered up lynching songs. https://t.co/5JvfucZ5cN

— Kendall Brown (@kendallybrown) July 17, 2023

The left sees the BLM riots, and the widespread epidemic of violence in American cities, as a legitimate uprising of victims against their oppressors. Mobs are fighting an unjust society, and criminals are the victims of that society forced into a life of crime. All true victims are just a statistic on the road to utopia. racial equality. If we truly believe that crimes in the name of this cause are morally justified, then criticizing or trying to stop them is an immoral act, and more “oppressed” people may suffer under the influence of a pernicious system.

Because Mr. Aldean is white and espouses small-town values, leftists believe he must be secretly calling for a restoration of the racial balance that rural whites in America still fanatically believe clings to. Patriotism, the rule of law, and appeals to civic duty are all ways to deceptively cement that imagined status quo.

Ultimately, however, both of these “scandals” are quite incontrovertible to most Americans. Only radical activists question the validity of black and white musical collaborations. Most normal people agree that arson, looting, and rioting are bad, even with distorted justifications. But for critics, the very fact that country music is tied to traditional American values ​​means it must be destroyed at all costs. And they’ll keep yelling “racism” until they do.