Small Town

This is only about half-baked, so feel free to skip over the holes, or fill the holes with something that makes sense to you, or ignore it all, or whatever.

Yeehaw and away we go

The GOP has been flacking "small town values" forever. It used to be "traditional family values", and "Real Values Of Real America", and "the uncomplicated ways of the country folk".

But it needed to be "updated" - I guess.

One thing about that "small town" message is that it's code for "Don't let people gather in large groups - keep them separated into small groups so they don't get the chance to figure out how we're fucking them all with their pants on. We can't hold on to power if we can't hold sway over the rabble, and if the groups are small enough, we only need a few aggressively loud-mouthed jerks to keep everybody in line."

• Pol Pot emptied out the cities.
• Mao emptied out the cities.
• Kim Jong Un emptied out the cities.

When a guy like Trump gets up and yells Make America Great Again, he's invoking an image of a mostly agrarian economy (from a good hundred years ago), when the populous was just well-enough divided between rural and urban to keep fresh food in the markets, and to make sure the bankers and robber barons had ready supplies of mansions, private rail cars and liveried servants.

But most of all, it's a good way for middle class Boomer slobs to soothe their own egos, and to rationalize having a monumentally shitty attitude towards "others" who "don't want to work any more", while pretending they're living a kinder gentler lifestyle that they remember Grandma & Grandpa talking about.

In the standard narcissistic narrative, you can be the Hero or the Victim, but you're never the Culprit or the Accomplice.

So I got off on this little rant because of the Jason Aldean thing (Try That In A Small Town), but I won't put that piece of crap on here. I'm sure it'll be played at every redneck rally, and NASCAR event, and on 4th of July, and the company picnic, and and and. They're not going to miss you with it.

I'm looking forward to the time when even the rubes don't want to hear it anymore - like "Boot In Your Ass" and "Proud To Be An American".

Me, I prefer a song that gives us a truer look at those small town values.

Jeannie C Riley - Harper Valley PTA