My car radio is newly parked on my local country-western music station. It’s giving me the opportunity to hear music tangled in my ranch roots. The music partakes of both the familiar and the strange. In certain respects I’ve changed and it hasn’t. Or maybe I thought I had, and it has — knowing what’s true is all but impossible these days.
The vocals seem weighted male, and have a strong-arming thrust to them. I suppress a reflex to run from these guys. Yet they’re telling me something I need to stand and hear, which is the voice of an America that elected MAGA.
Johnny-Cash-like baritones are rare in current country-western. In its classic conformation, the genre is the domain of the nasal tenor with a drawl. The celebration of women is jauntily sexual alternating with ostentatiously reverential. There’s many a gusty apology to a long-suffering woman for having strayed while liquored up. I’m changin’, honey!
The songs occupy a tightly defined range of key and chord sequence. The lyrics are comfortable with unabashed schmaltz. The fellas sing about their feelin’s with loquacious earnestness and stick-to-your-ribs wit. It has taken me aback how verbal the songs are. Almost every ballad leaves me doing an eye roll, yet singing its hook at the next stoplight. This is music running strong in deep fissures.
Vibes gleaned from the radio coalesce around a resounding affirmation of contentment with a personal and cultural status quo. The troubadour is profoundly proud of who he is, what and where he comes from, resolved to be none other. There’s an exaltation of, and exulting in, rural landscape, the old ways, talking damn straight, standing tall for the Protestant red-white-and-blue.
The paeans to we’uns (apologies — the pun is decadent) go with slaphappy scorn for the mincing modalities of the nabobs of knowledge, the prissy castrati, the preening city dwellers who haven’t a clue as to what it’s all about.
(c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Very interesting analysis Jim!
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Thank you, Sue! I may get carried away now and then. But it’s from sincere bafflement! 🙂
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Jim, I tried to add some more political comments to your post but they were blocked. We are in difficult times.
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Blocked?! I’m stunned, Sue. How did the blocking manifest itself?
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I typed quite a long comment mentioning a joke about the naming of the Gulf of America being a description of the divide in the population. When I tried to post it, there was a message saying this comment could not be posted right now and my comment just disappeared. This has happened to me a few times when replying to other posts on WordPress. It could easily just be an IT glitch, but I suddenly felt that it could also have been an AI intervention. In retrospect it’s probably the former. However we need to be on guard, I think! Anything is possible. cheers Sue
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How strange (and disquieting). Something involving AI occurred to me as well. I want to believe it’s some kind of glitch. I was unable until recently to leave a comment on Josie Holford’s blog. She was mystified about it too, and gave me her email address. Recently I went directly to her site and by filling out some info associated with commenting was able to make it stick. (?) But in the Reader I always got a “Sorry…” error message. If you have further trouble I’d like to consult WordPress tech support about it. Thanks and regards, Sue.
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There are definitely gremlin glitches abroad in ye intertubes of WordPress comments. I keep running in to odd requests and blocks.
Nevertheless – the best persist.
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It seems they’ve done an update (improvement?) recently judging by the look of my screen. I hope they’ll trap and remedy the inevitable bugs quickly. I’ve found I can’t comment on your posts from within the Reader (“Sorry, try again”), but when I go straight to your site (a richer experience anyway) and fill in the comment fields, my remarks are registered. Hoping that’s the case. That’s still a bug. They need to fix the Reader.
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Ah yes, it was Josie’s blog that I had trouble with too. What was strange was that if I put in a shorter message, like the one to your blog, that went through. I thought at first it was the length that was the problem then paranoia kicked in for a few moments!!. But thank you – let’s hope it’s just a glitch. cheers.
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Forward through the fog, and God bless us! 🙂 Yours in confusion, Jim.
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My goodness! What a title!
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That one came from left field, Josie. It shivers my timbers as well in the stark light of hindsight!
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