Among observant Jews, we do not listen to music during the Three Weeks in the Hebrew calendar from 17 Tamuz to the Ninth of Av, the period when the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar ransacked Jerusalem and burned the First Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, in 586 B.C.E. and again when Rome under Emperor Vespasian and his son, Titus, destroyed rebuilt Jerusalem and burned the reconstructed Second Beit HaMikdash in 70. We established rituals to guarantee we and our generations never would forget Jerusalem and the Holy Temple.

So, I had to wait a few extra days until now to listen carefully to and view the music video of Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town.” Although the song first was released in May, the public tumult among the woke and the mass media (same thing) began only after the official video was released in July. I begin here by evaluating the song’s key lyrics, making up its first stanza, with strict scrutiny.

“Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk.”

According to NPR and the Columbia Journalism Review, this is a real thing. It is called the “knockout game.” Is it unique to Black people? Why assume so? What does it say about a person who sees the term, hears the song and condemnation of this despicable behavior, and immediately assumes that the resentment of the law-abiding lyricist is targeted at Black people, not at the animals of all colors, races, ethnicities, and religions who would do that? Where is the hint in the lyric that — wink, wink — the lyricist means Black people?

“Carjack an old lady at a red light.”

Do non-Black people never carjack? Is carjacking the exclusive domain of Black people? Are White or Asian carjackers guilty of cultural appropriation? I did not know that. Where in the above lyric is there any hint at race? And, for that matter, why not assume that it is an innocent Black elderly woman being victimized by a racist, blue-skinned Albanian?

“Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store.”

I never was much of a “drinker” except for wine every Friday night at Shabbat dinner and Saturday at Shabbat lunch — and the first Shabbat of May, the Shabbat of the Kentucky Derby, when I would mix, serve to my Shabbat lunch guests, and drink mint juleps in honor of my amazing year in Louisville when I was honored to clerk for the Hon. Danny J. Boggs, who was chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit for six years. Such imbibing had to stop “cold turkey” after my lung transplant. Still, over the years, I have been at liquor stores. It is my impression that White people also patronize liquor stores. Also people of all other colors out there. Fortunately, I tended to patronize stores that were in the equivalent of “small towns” — i.e., Orthodox Jewish communities — where there is virtually no crime by the locals because, well, because. But what is in those lyrics that imply that Blacks, in particular, hold up liquor stores? Why assume so? And why not assume that a hard-working Black entrepreneur is the owner of the liquor store assaulted by the gun wielder? What does it say about the offended woke listener, not about the composers and singer, that such a lyric spells B-L-A-C-K?

“Cuss out a cop, spit in his face.”

Is that a Black thing? I was not aware. In the movie Fargo, in the opening scene, it is a blonde-haired Norwegian type who shoots the cop. In Fargo, the TV series, season one, it is Billy Bob Thornton, a White guy, who murderously threatens the cop. What does a music viewer’s mind carry in it when such lyrics automatically say to the woke listener that the reference is racist and refers to Black people?

“Stomp on the flag and light it up.”

That’s a Black thing, too? When it comes to desecrating the flag I love, I think of privileged White kids at expensive colleges who never will get a productive job, who will take eight years to finish their college undergraduate degree in feminist theory or disruption or gender studies. I think of Mike Stivic, Archie’s son-in-law. In the famous Supreme Court cases over flag burning, the incendiary miscreants were named Johnson and — oh, how perfect! — Eichman. Here is Gregory Lee Johnson of Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989). Black? And, c’mon, do you need to see a photo of Shawn Eichman of United States v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990) to guess his color? Here is the color that comes to my mind. Why assume it is a reference to Blacks?

The point is that those on the left are the actual racists. Everything in the world to them is about race. They cannot grasp the concept of lawful citizens disgusted with street violence, social anarchy, and disrespect for the noble and sacred. Rather, everything is to be deconstructed, and all of life is about race and racism. So why didn’t more Caucasians vote for John McCain and Mitt Romney against Obama? Life is about race only when Democrat “progressives” are at the wheel, selecting tier-two Black women for positions like the vice presidency and the U.S. Supreme Court that cry out for tier-one talent of any race or gender. (READ MORE: Elton for EGOT: The Perfect End to a Stunning Career)

Which is not to say that conservatives do not notice race. Of course we notice whether a person is black or perhaps Asian. If the person wears a yarmulka, we notice he is a Jew. That is not bigotry; that is vision. We notice people who are albino or blind or who have blonde hair or blue eyes or red hair or violet irises. They all stand out as different from the norm, so we take notice. But we do not pay attention to it. We sell to Black people, buy from Black people, rent to and from Black people, enjoy deep friendships with Black people, sometimes marry Black people, and a whole bunch of us conservatives are Black people. So what? Skin color in Year 2023 America simply is an asterisk of life, and it has been so for decades upon decades. But to the Left, racial identity is life itself.

Perhaps no piece of modern “culture” captures the woke sickness as does the recent disgusting Netflix movie, You People, where liberals are so woke that they fall over themselves treating Black people like zoo objects, pets to be petted. A fellow brings his Black girlfriend to meet his White liberal parents, oozing with gooey wokeness, and they greet her for the very first time by telling her, before anything else, that they support defunding the police, as though that is the first thing on a Black woman’s mind when she first meets prospective parents-in-law. (READ MORE: Tony Bennett: The Last American Songbook Megastar)

It is telling how much the media and the Left (same thing) have shifted the national culture from a liberal orientation to one that is off-the-rails woke — and so insanely hyper-sensitive. Look at the lyrics of this song released exactly 20 years ago, on April 7, 2003, B.O. (Before Obama). There was no uproar. One of the two singers was Willie Nelson, an apolitical country music icon beloved across the political spectrum. The other, Toby Keith. The song was exceptionally popular, and listeners did not imagine any racial overtones. No condemnations of explicit references to lynching. Just a song about how law-abiding America, especially in the small towns where America’s Judeo-Christian biblical heritage thrives, will not put up with lawlessness, violent crime, or thuggery. What hidden messages lurk in these lyrics? No one perceived any, even though the words actually are bolder than those in Aldean’s song:

Willie, man, come on. The 6 o’clock news
Said somebody’s been shot, somebody’s been abused,
Somebody blew up a building, somebody stole a car,
Somebody got away, somebody didn’t get too far. Yeah, they didn’t get too far.

Grandpappy told my pappy back in my day, “Son,
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done.
Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree,
Round up all of them bad boys, hang them high in the street
For all the people to see.”

That justice is the one thing you should always find.
You got to saddle up your boys, you got to draw a hard line.
When the gun smoke settles, we’ll sing a victory tune,
And we’ll all meet back at the local saloon.
We’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces, singing, “Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.”

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds,
Too much corruption, and crime in the streets.
It’s time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground.
Send them all to their maker, and He’ll settle ’em down.
You can bet He’ll set ’em down.

To paraphrase Norma Desmond, Jason Aldean’s song — and the accompanying official video — are big. It’s the woke who got small. Not “Small Town” small — just mindset small.