Rural life

Jason Aldean’s critics have clearly never been to a small town

Country music superstar Jason Aldean has come under fire for a song that condemns violent crime and promotes the Second Amendment. But the people trying to cancel “Try That In A Small Town” are desperate race-baiters who have evidently never visited a small town (the song has been playing on country stations since May, but the left has only just now become outraged by it). Though their charge that the song is a “pro-lynching” anthem is obvious nonsense, Aldean is correct in saying such absurd rhetoric must be addressed, as leaving it unchecked is “dangerous.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?

jason aldean

East Palestine and the roots of rural mistrust

The East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment has thrust rural America into the national spotlight. Town mayor Trent Conaway, a hefty, scruffy figure who resembles many a resident of flyover country, has been all over cable news expressing his “frustration” over how the federal government has handled the disaster. “Frustration” is exactly the word I’d use to describe the predominant feeling I encountered last week during my visit to East Palestine. It’s the same attitude I come across constantly in my rural Pennsylvania homeland. The way the East Palestine disaster has unfolded magnifies the rural perception of government, and both sides of the aisle would be wise to take a closer look and listen.

rural

The coronavirus class divide

Tone-deaf media elites and celebrities demand we all just stay home just as they do, self-isolating in their multi-million-dollar LA mansions or NYC brownstones. Journalists who don’t care to educate themselves about rural America — even after wildly misunderstanding the rise of Trump in 2016 — now lecture us country bumpkins, because we’re too stupid to understand how to quarantine ourselves. The architect of this condescending union of the fatuous and the famous was the New York Times.

quarantine