I'm from a small town of 4,000 people in Northeast Texas and ...in the late 90s...
Had to finish high school out of church because a kid literally burned down the school. He got expelled and on his way out the door he said I'm going to burn this m*********** to the ground and he did.
Person I went to school with got strung out on meth and decided to murder three gas station attendants.
So yeah the entire thing is stupid. As if protest and crime are new concepts due to a new world order brought about by liberalism.
These are serious issues no doubt but when I see all the memes about this song in particular all I can think about, " The sky is falling Chicken Little" or "if these kids could read they'd be angry" or "it's funny until it happens to me"
Can confirm, my small town of 2300 has like six sex offenders living here. Family got arrested a few years ago for having an incestuous relationship, old man was shot by a cop outside his home in a standoff a couple years back because he pointed a rifle at the cop. I know of a guy on the other side of town (like maybe 5-7 town blocks) who shot his wife in the face in front of their two kids, served time, and later re-married and had another kid. According to some hearsay, the new wife and kid apparently think his old wife faked her death and framed him for her murder. A kid in my local school took his own life after extensive bullying. The school wouldn't do anything about the bullying but made sure to have a huge anti-suicide campaign after the kid died. The parents of that kid didn't get any of their other kids counciling after his death, and one of his brothers would later attempt suicide, only to end up blowing off one of his shoulders. (He survived and his shoulder was even fully reconstructed) Local hospital had an RN work there for years only for them to find out she had zero certifications AFTER she quit. Same hospital also had a nurse baptize a stillbirth because she believed the baby would go to hell. I'm told that nurse was fired, but not for that incident. Had a cop that was fired after he was caught having sex with a sex worker on the hood of his police car.
Those are the things I can recall off the top of my head, though most of them are stories from my mother. I'm almost certain they all happened within the last 30 years though.
Okay all I know about this song is that it seems that it's pro redneck and subtly racist with strong suggestions of "I'm a fraud of the big city because scary". Also I hear the Iowa governor quoted it.
Jason's also from Macon, GA. Population 150,000. Small town country boy my arse. To quote Shooter Jennings:
I get home from a long day, put on the radio
Lookin' for some country soul, but I don't find it, no
It's a dirt road free for all, some old boys sayin' they're outlaws,
They dress the part and they talk the talk
You know they've been taught to walk the walk
These boys think they're tough like they been robbin' banks
Cause they name drop Johnny Cash and they name drop poor old Hank
And Jason Aldean was onstage during a shooting at one of his concerts, and do you know what Mr. "Try That In a Small Town" Big Britches did? Ran offstage and hid. Which like, I don't blame the guy, but don't release a song cosplaying as some big tough guy that will stand up to bad gunmen when there is literally evidence that you won't.
lol, I'm from a town of 9000 people, and in my state that still wasn't a "small town". We had a pizza joint! People drove to our town because we had a pizza joint. Douche has no idea what it's like being in a small town.
I'm a half hour South of Macon and while it isn't tiny, it isn't big either. My home town population was only a few thousand (an hour South of Macon) and had a lot of farms / livestock. Granted, it seems most "country" people round here are only aesthetically country
I remember living in a small town and being on the outside of the "community" he so proudly boasts about. Small towns aren't "communities", they're gossipy high schoolers that never left. I remember going to church and having "friendly" church people openly make slights about my family because we were poor. I remember people say hello to you on the street and then immediately turn to their friend and say "Did you hear about ____ and what happened?"
Nah, screw all of that. Big cities no one knows you and you can be you without being ostrasized just for going outside. I don't have neighborhood karens asking me what I'm doing in their neighborhood.
I have never been carjacked or mugged, but I have been pushed out of small town cul-de-acs because I had police called on me and my friends for being "up to no good". So yeah, keep your small town "communities", I'm much happier being outside of them.
Nobody's mentioned it yet so I have to bring up the music video. It removes all the subtitles of the racism. It flashes back and forth between carefully chosen snipits of BLM protests - sometimes as they desolve into riots, sometimes as the police get violent - and scenes of the band playing in front of a court house where a famous lynching happened.
I don't think they thought too much about the lynching, but I find it hard to believe that in a song so intentionally racially charged nobody glanced at the Wikipedia page for their filming location and thought twice about it.
Wow. That's uh, really subtle. I haven't watched it, definitely not going to now.
I remember in my small town they all claimed to be open minded and welcoming. Oh yeah we love black people! We even had one in our school of 400 students! Of course I was young and naiive, looking back, there was a ton of racism around every corner. If any black person showed up in town everyone would know about it. It wasn't "the family down the street" it was "The hispanics down the street" - or worse. It's hard realizing that just because no one is telling you that you're racist, or everyone around you says you aren't, it doesn't mean anything.
Shame on him for inciting more violence and stirring up more fear and resentment in people.
Because…what white man would live in the swamps of the Seminole, and the US Army lacked clear goals.
shrug
Sherman, was pro union and anti confederacy. It was that simple—to own slaves, or not, was not his concern.
There is no glory in war; Sherman’s own words say it often…the ACW was the waste of poor young American men, dying in fields because wealthy plantation owners would have it so.
This was the unforgivable sin in Sherman’s eyes, to inflame the passions of our youth, to no end.
Why glorify Sherman? He slept, rode, and ate, as his soldiers did. To know the capability of his army, he did not separate himself, unlike his peers.
He suffered ill health, mental breakdowns, familial loss, often on the verge of quitting — and yet, saw it to the end, despite the death and senseless carnage.
I'm in a town of 3600.. People are super fucking poor and still work their asses off. None of them would give a fuck if you "try that" or w/e the fuck that guy is on about.. They'd go on about their business because they are just surviving. They'd sure as fuck not give a shit about any sorta of vigilante justice. They'd say "that's definitely not my problem"
Pretty sure this dude is pandering to wannabees who probably have never actually spent any time in a small town in the US.