When thinking of politics I often think of analogies. One of the things I noticed on my cruise was that there were a lot of jackasses on the cruise. They were rude to the staff. They were abusive to employees and people on shore. They were every description of the ugly American you could think of.  I have no idea if they were conservative or liberal. It would make life easier to assume they were conservative, but I have no way of verifying that.

In looking at the lyrics for Jason Aldean’s song “Try that in a Small Town” you can see the subtle nods towards racism. When looking at the video you can’t avoid the subtle nods for racism. Left vs. Right is the main fault line everyone focuses on, but big town vs. small town is another fault line. There are others. Honest vs. Dishonest. Asshole vs, Kind. Narcissist vs. Empathetic. America has always been a collection fault lines and separations. Essentially we have made it through by standing with people we have common cause with even if we have other areas where we disagree. As much as the overt racism and sexism bothers me, there was something else I noticed immediately.

“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.”

I hate to be the “nobody is talking about” guy, but there is an image inherent here about big city life. I’m sure this is what people in small towns believe. It’s only been shoved down their throats for decades. Hell, the 2017 inaugural address was titled “American Carnage”. It was offensive on any number of levels, but more offensive to me as a writer. It was like a sixth grade thought experiment where the winner got his/her dystopian essay read on national television.

The biggest fault line dividing America today is fact vs. fiction. Aldean is telling a terrific story here. You could probably picture Gotham from all of those Batman movies where everyone was afraid to go outside and crime was just around the corner. SNL had a sketch years ago where they talked about someone in New York getting mugged every thirty seconds. So, they just made it the same guy. Chicago, Portland, New York, and Los Angeles are all billed as hell on earth. Yet, crime statistics per capita would tell you that they are statistically more safe than traditional red areas.

Where does this fiction get us? Well, it gets a huge divide in our politics as rural areas vote red and urban areas vote blue. Since our constitution skews towards real estate and not people it means that these small towns are over represented in Austin, Washington, or your own state. Add in a little gerrymandering and the story keeps perpetuating itself. Only criminals and dead beats live in the city. Good people live in small towns. This isn’t left vs. right anymore. It is fiction vs. non-fiction. Certainly the picture they paint of big city life is frightening, but it is about as true as a dystopian novel.