In 2021, the liberal social outrage of the year was the specter of unvaccinated, maskless Americans.

In 2022, it was “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines.”

While 2023 isn’t over yet, the great leftist moral panic of the year could be the danger posed by trying that in a small town.

What’s “that”? Ask liberals and they’ll say it’s marching for social justice, being black or brown or simply letting your freak flag fly.

Whatever the case, country star Jason Aldean is putting Americans — especially hyphenated Americans, the only kind the left cares about — at risk with the video to his song “Try That in a Small Town.”

It glorified lynchings, the left claims, because it was filmed outside of a courthouse where a man was once lynched — even though that site had been used for many other filmed productions, including a Hallmark movie.

The fact that it juxtaposed images of protesters drew assertions that the video was an affront to Black Lives Matter protesters, even though many of the most violent protesters featured in the video were white.

And, perhaps most notably, many of the same people who are now decrying a song that doesn’t call for violence in any straightforward manner are the same people who have often overlooked rap and hip-hop songs that explicitly call for violence in the most bloodthirsty, outrageous terms — something Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan pointed out on a show this week.

Rogan noted during an episode with Canadian psychologist and academic Gad Saad that “people are upset at the country music channel” CMT over the video for “Try That in a Small Town,” which it has pulled from its rotation.

“The level of outrage — like, now, I’m not saying that’s the greatest song the world’s ever known, you know?” he continued. “But, the level of outrage coming from people that are upset about that song is so strange when there are hundreds of rap songs out there that are infinitely worse — and also enjoyable. And no, no complaints at all.”

“Misogynistic. Qualifying violence –” Saad said.

“Yeah — and no complaints at all,” Rogan responded.

He added that “we’re not even talking about old stuff. There’s new stuff too. There’s, there’s, there’s hip hop. There’s wild rock songs. There’s a lot of wild s***. And to be focusing on that one — and it’s the racial aspect of it. It was crazy because like the real antifa problems that were happening during the BLM, I think it was a lot of white people doing that, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yeah,” Saad responded.

“It was like, a lot of lost liberal whites who are very angry, who decided to take up this movement and smash things. So, like, the racial aspect of it — there’s nothing racial about the lyrics,” Rogan said.

WARNING: The following video and tweet contain graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.

Rogan isn’t the first person to point this out, mind you; on Twitter, influencer Amiri King posted the video of the song along with some sample rap lyrics.

Don’t mention these inconvenient facts to the left or the media, however. (And I repeat myself.) They’ll merely call it troll bait, like Rolling Stone did after Twitter users noted the magazine once offered a hearty endorsement of “Cop Killer” by Ice-T’s band Body Count.

The magazine went on about “violence” and “racism” and “dog whistles” in Aldean’s music with an article by Karlos K. Hill, a professor of African and African-American Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“All of what I see and feel is just the conservative narrative of Make America Great Again,” Hill wrote. “‘Look at the chaos, the ways America is unraveling. You better not try that transgender stuff in a small town. You better not try that abortion rights stuff in a small town.’ That’s the cultural polarization in this country. That’s the irresponsible part.”

This, however, isn’t irresponsible:

The magazine’s response? “This is a familiar pattern to anyone who’s paid attention to the past few decades of conservative punditry. When the heat gets too high on the right wing, they try to change the subject to hip-hop.”

Right. A song with no explicit references to violence except on the part of “fiery but mostly peaceful” protesters (to use CNN’s term) is a tacit call to “violence,” but songs with explicit calls to violence? Point those out and it’s just changing the subject.

For years, the establishment media have glorified the ugliest and most detailed violence in hip-hop and rock music.

Changing their tune to criticize Aldean over hair-splitting “dog whistles” is disingenuous at best, and knowingly stupid at worst. It’s a controversy without controversy — all because it involves a country musician.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.